"'I remain with the army.' "I took leave of him and have not seen him again." In the general condemnation of the Kaiser, his flight to Holland has been construed as due to cowardice. His motives are unimportant, but this construction appears to be unjust. He was convinced that he had nothing to fear from his people, nor is there any reason to suppose that he would for a moment have been in danger if he had remained. It is also probable that he entertained hopes of leading a successful counter-revolutionary movement. But his protests were overruled by men in whom he had great confidence. Hindenburg and Groener, following an unfavorable report from nearly all the army chiefs regarding the feeling in their commands, told the Kaiser that they could not guarantee his safety for a single night. They declared even that the picked storm-battalion guarding his headquarters at Spa was not to be depended on. Others added their entreaties, and finally, unwillingly and protestingly, the Kaiser consented to go. With him went the Crown Prince. There was no one left in Germany to whom adherents of a counter-revolution could rally. Scheming politicians for months afterward painted on every wall the spectre of counter-revolution, and it proved a powerful weapon of agitation against the more conservative and democratic men in charge of the country's affairs, but counter-revolution from above--and that was what these leaders falsely or ignorantly pretended to fear--was never possible from the time the armistice was signed until the peace was made at Versailles. Counter-revolution ever threatened the stability of the government, but it was the gory counter-revolution of Bolshevism. The Kaiser's flight had the double effect of encouraging the Socialists and discouraging the Conservatives, the right wing of the National Liberals and the few prominent men of other _bourgeois_ parties from whom at least a passive resistance might otherwise have been expected. The Junkers disappeared from view, and, disappearing, took with them the ablest administrative capacities of Germany, men whose ability was unquestioned, but who were now so severely compromised that any participation by them in a democratic government was impossible. "The German People's Republic" as it had been termed for a brief two days, became the "German Socialistic Republic." Numerically the strongest party in the land, the Socialists of all wings insisted upon putting the red stamp upon the remains of Imperial Germany.