"After organization, which is effected with a show of parliamentary form, Richard Mueller, chairman of the executive committee of the _Vollzugsrat_, mounts the speaker's tribune to give an extended report of the committee's activities. The report, which turns out to be really a defense of the committee, gets a cool reception. The _Vollzugsrat_ has drifted steadily to the left ever since it was appointed, and is strongly Independent Socialist and Spartacan, and it is already evident that the Majority Socialists have an overwhelming majority in the Congress. "Chairman Leinert interrupts Mueller's speech with an announcement that a _Genosse_ has an important communication to make. A man who declares that he speaks 'in the name of at least 250,000 of Berlin's proletariat, now assembled before this building,' reads a series of demands. The first, calling for the strengthening of the socialist republic, is greeted with general applause, but then come the familiar Spartacan (Bolshevik) demands for the disarming of the _bourgeoisie_, weaponing of 'the revolutionary proletariat,' formation of a Red Guard (loud cries of 'No!'), and 'all power to remain in the hands of the workmen's and soldiers' councils.' In other words, the Russian Soviet republic. "A half dozen officer-delegates present join in the protests against the demands. Loud cries of '_raus die Offiziere!_' (out with the officers!) come from a little group of Spartacans and Independent Socialists at the right of the room. Order is finally restored and Mueller completes his defense of the _Vollzugsrat_. "A delegate moves that 'Comrades Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg be invited to attend the session as guests with advisory powers, in view of their great services to the revolution.'[57] The motion is voted down, five to one. It is renewed in the afternoon, but meets the same fate, after a turbulent scene in which the Spartacans and their Independent Socialist allies howl and shout insults at the top of their voices. [57] Neither Liebknecht nor Luxemburg had been chosen as delegate, although desperate efforts were made to have them elected. "Liebknecht, who has entered the building while this was going on, addresses his followers in the street in front from the ledge of a third-story window. The '250,000 of Berlin's proletariat' prove to be about seven thousand, nearly half of them women and girls and a great majority of the rest down-at-the-heels youths. His speech is the usual Bolshevik rodomontade. A middle-aged workman who leaves the crowd with me tells me: "'Two-thirds of the people there are there because they have to come or lose their jobs. One has to eat, you know.'