The "Council of Deserters, Stragglers and Furloughed Soldiers" announced a number of meetings for the afternoon of December 6th to enforce a demand for participation in the government. The largest of these meetings was held in the Germania Hall in the Chausseestrasse, just above Invalidenstrasse and near the barracks of the _Franzer_, as the Kaiser Franz Regiment was popularly known. The main speaker was a man introduced as "Comrade Schultz," but whose Hebraic features indicated that this was a revolutionary pseudonym. He had hardly finished outlining the demands of "us deserters" when word came that the _Vollzugsrat_ had been arrested. It developed later that some misguided patriots of the old school had actually made an attempt to arrest the members of this council, which had developed into such a hindrance to honest government, but the attempt failed. The report, however, threw the meeting into great excitement. A motion to adjourn and march to the Chancellor's Palace to protest against the supposed arrest was carried and the crowd started marching down Chausseestrasse, singing the laborers' Marseillaise. At the same time the crowd present at a similar meeting in a hall a few blocks away started marching up Chausseestrasse to join the Germania Hall demonstrants. Both processions found their way blocked by a company of _Franzer_, drawn up in front of their barracks, standing at "ready" and with bayonets fixed. The officer in command ordered the paraders to stop: "Come on!" cried the leaders of the demonstration. "They won't shoot their comrades!" But the _Franzer_ had not yet been "enlightened." A rattling volley rang out and the deserters, stragglers and furloughed paraders fled. Fifteen of them lay dead in the street and one young woman aboard a passing street car was also killed. The incident aroused deep indignation not only among the Spartacans, but among the Independent Socialists as well. The bulk of the Independents were naturally excited over the killing of "comrades," and the leaders saw in it a welcome opportunity further to shake the authority of the Majority Socialist members of the government. Even the _Vorwaerts_, hesitating between love and duty, apologetically demanded an investigation. The government eventually shook off all responsibility and it was placed on the shoulders of an over-zealous officer acting without instructions. This may have been--indeed, probably was--the case. The cabinet's record up to this time makes it highly improbable that any of its members had yet begun to understand that there are limits beyond which no government can with impunity permit its authority to be flouted.