General assault on Spartakus!
"Down with Spartakus!" they shout in the streets.
"Take them, beat them, shoot on them, slaughter them, trample on them, tear them into pieces!"
Cruelties are commited, compared to which the cruelties of the german troops in Belgium appear far less barbarian.
"Spartakus defeated !" the newspapers jubilate, from the "Post" to the "Vorwaerts".
"Spartakus defeated !" And the swords and the guns of the reestablished old-germanic Police and the disarmement of the revolutionary workers will seal its defat.
"Spartakus defeated !" Under the bayonets of Lieutenant Reinhardt, under the machine-guns and the artillery of general Luettwitz, the elections of the National Assembly will be held, a plebiscite for Napoleon-Ebert.
"Spartakus defeated !" Oh Yes. The revolutionary workers of Berlin have been defeated! Yes! A hundred of the best of them have been murdered! Yes! Several hundred have been thrown into prison.
Yes, they were defeated. Because they were left alone by the marines, the soldiers and the security troops, the peoples guard, on whose help they had relied. And their force was paralysed by the indecision and the weakness of their leaders. And they were burried under an immense counter-revolutionary flood of mud of the conservative part of the people and rich class.
Yes, they were defeated. And it was a historical necessity, that they were defeated. Because the time had not yet come. Nevertheless - the struggle was inevitable. Because giving up without fight the police Headquarter, this Palladium of the Revolution, to Eugen Ernst and Hirsch, would have been a dishonouring defeat. The Ebert-Gang has forced the Proletariat into this struggle; and with elementary violence the Berlin masses took up the challenge, despite all doubts.
Yes! The revolutionary workers of Berlin have been defeated! And those Ebert-Noske-Scheidemann have won. They have won, because the generals, the bureaucracy, the aristocracy of the country and industry, the priests and the money-bags, all those who are small-minded and conservative, were on their side. And won for them with shrapnells, gas-bombs and artillery.
But there are defeats which are victories; and victories worse than defeats.
The defeated of the blood week of January have well defended their honour; they have fought for a great matter, for the best aim of the suffering humanity, for spiritual and material liberation of the masses; they shed blood for a holy matter, and their blood became holy. And from every drop of this blood, this dragons-seed for the winners of today, the revengers for the fallen comrades will rise, out of every fibre will rise new combattants for the great cause, which is as eternal as the sky.
Those who are defeated today will be victorous tomorrow. Because the defeat serves as an instruction. The german Proletariat is still lacking revolutionary experience. Only by trying, making errors, it can undergo the pratical school wich will guarantee future successes.
For the living forces of the social revolution whose growth is a natural law of the development of society, a defeat is a stimulus. From defeat to defeat their way leads to victory.
But those who are victorious today ? For a criminel cause they did their criminel work. For the Powers of the past, for the mortal ennemies of the Proletariat.
And even now they are defeated! They are the hostages of those, who they intended to be their tools and whose tools they have always been.
Actually they label this company. But their time will be short.
They are at the pillory of history. Never before the world has seen such Jaudasses, who not only betrayed the most holy but who also put it on the cross with their own hands. As the german socialdemocracy committed a greter treason than others, they offer now, at the dawn of the social revolution, the most horrofying image.
The french middle class used a butcher of June 1848 and the mass murderers of Mai 1871 of its own rows. The german middle-class does not the work itself: "Socialdemocrats" accomplish the dirty-dishonorable, the bloody-cowardly task; their Cavaignac, their Gallifet is Noske, the "german worker".