e, were placed before the military tribunal as evidence that
he was plotting against the Government. The trial was secret, and
police blockaded all streets a quarter of a mile away from the court
where he was tried. Throughout the proceedings which lasted a week the
newspapers were permitted to print only the information distributed by
the Wolff Telegraph Bureau. But public sympathy for Liebknecht was so
great that mounted police were kept in every part of the city day and
night to break up crowds which might assemble. Behind closed doors,
without an opportunity to consult his friends, with only an attorney
appointed by the Government to defend him, Liebknecht was sentenced to
two years' hard labour. His only crime was that he had dared to speak
in the Reichstag the opinions of some of the more radical socialists.

Liebknecht's imprisonment was a lesson to other Socialist agitators.
The day after his sentencing was announced there were strikes in nearly
every ammunition factory in and around Berlin. Even at Spandau, next
to Essen the largest ammunition manufacturing city in Germany, several
thousand workmen left their benches as a protest, but the German people
have such terrible fear of the police and of their own military
organisation that they strike only a day and return the next to forget
about previous events.

If there were no other instances in Germany to indicate that there was
the nucleus for a democracy this would seem to be one. One might say,
too, that if such leaders as Liebknecht could be assisted, the movement
for more freedom might have more success.

It was very difficult for the German public to accept the German reply
to President Wilson's _Sussex_ note. The people were bitter against
the United States. They hated Wilson. They feared him. And the idea
of the German Government bending its knee to a man they hated was
enough cause for loud protests. This feeling among the people found
plenty of outlets. The submarine advocates, who always had their ears
to the ground, saw that they could take advantage of this public
feeling at the expense of the Chancellor and the Foreign Office.
Prince von Buelow, the former Chancellor, who had been spending most of
his time in Switzerland after his failure to keep Italy out of the war,
had written a book entitled "Deutsche Politik," which was intended to
be an indictment of von Bethmann-Hollweg's international policies. Von
Buelow returned to Berlin