Further reports came of street demonstrations. Bloodshed appeared imminent. Colin Ross went to the palace of the Chancellor and found Prince Max. The Prince was nervous and all but entirely unstrung. Ross told him the Majority Socialists had decided that there must be no firing on the people, and asked him to issue an order to that effect. Max said he would do so. Ross thereupon went to Minister of War Scheuch and told him that the Chancellor had ordered that the troops should not fire on the citizens. The order was communicated to the various garrisons and also to police headquarters. What would have occurred if this order had not been issued is a matter of conjecture. Assuredly there would have been bloodshed. Quite apart from the question of the reliability or unreliability of the troops there were the Berlin police to deal with. Their ranks had been thinned by calls to the front, but those still on duty were no inconsiderable factor. The force was made up entirely of veteran non-commissioned officers, who must have served twelve years in the army. They were, moreover, like all great city police forces, picked men, above the average physically, and far above the average in bravery, resoluteness and loyalty. Only a negligible number of them had been perverted by red doctrines, and they were well armed and fully prepared for the day's events. High police officials assured the author that they could have put down the revolution in its very beginnings if the order had not come forbidding them to offer resistance. Viewed in the light of subsequent events, this statement must be rejected. The police could and would have put up a brave battle, but there were too few of them for one thing, and for another, the revolution had too great momentum to be stopped by any force available to the authorities. One military defection had already occurred when Saturday dawned. A corporal of the Naumburg _Jaeger_, who were quartered in the Alexander barracks, had been arrested for making an incendiary speech to some comrades, and when the troops were alarmed at 3:00 A.M. and ordered to be ready to go into action they refused to obey. Major Ott, commander of the battalion directly affected, came and told the men that the Kaiser had already abdicated. They sent a delegation to the _Vorwaerts_, where they learned that the major's statement was not true. The delegation thereupon announced that the battalion would place itself on the side of the workingmen. The Kaiser Alexander Guards followed the _Jaeger's_ example.