The government, averse though it was to the employment of force to maintain its authority, had realized at the beginning of December the increasing strength of the Spartacans, and had begun assembling a military force of loyal soldiers in various garrisons outside the city. Three thousand of these troops now marched into the city. Hundreds of the men in the ranks carried rifles slung across officers' shoulder-straps. They marched as troops ought to march, sang patriotic songs and looked grimly determined. For miles along their route they were greeted by frantic cheering and even by joyous tears from the law-abiding citizens who had been terrorized by the scum of a great capital.[61] [61] The task of the government was made harder throughout its darkest days by the aid and comfort given its enemies by the character of the reports published in certain enemy papers regarding conditions in Germany. Nearly the entire Paris press regularly published extravagantly untrue reports concerning the situation, and many English and American papers followed suit. The London _Times_ of December 10th gravely told its readers that "in a political sense Ebert is suspected of being a mere tool of the old regime, whose difficult task it is to pave the first stages of the road to the restoration of the Hohenzollerns months or years hence." Three days later it declared that "the German army chiefs propose to let the Spartacans upset the government so that they can summon Hindenburg to save the day and reestablish the monarchy."Articles of this stamp were eagerly pounced upon and republished by Independent Socialist and Spartacan organs of the stamp of _Die Freiheit_, _Die Republik_, Liebknecht's _Die rote Fahne_, and others, and were of great assistance to the enemies of good government in their efforts to convince the ignorant and fanatical that the government was organizing a "white guard" for counter-revolutionary purposes and was plotting the restoration of the monarchy. One dispatch from Paris, published extensively in the American press on February 26th, quoted in all seriousness "a prominent American Socialist in close touch with German Liberals and with exceptional sources of secret information," who had learned that "the German revolution was a piece of theatrical manipulation by agents of the militaristic oligarchy to win an armistice." That such a report could be published in responsible organs is a staggering commentary on the manner in which the war-psychosis inhibited clear thinking. The Conservative Deputy Hergt, speaking in the Prussian Diet on March 15th, said: "We Conservatives are not conscienceless enough to plunge the land into civil warfare. We shall wait patiently until the sound sense of the German people shall demand a return to the monarchic form of