The formation of the new party furnished a rallying point for all radical Socialists and also for the discontented generally, and the numbers of these were increasing daily. Under the protection of their parliamentary immunity these members were able to carry on a more outspoken and effective agitation against the war. Haase, Ledebour and other members of the group issued a manifesto in June, 1916, wherein it was declared that the people were starving and that the only replies made by the government to their protests took the form of a severe application of martial law. "The blockade should have been foreseen," said the manifesto. "It is not the blockade that is a crime; the war is a crime. The consolation that the harvest will be good is a deliberate deception. All the food in the occupied territories has been requisitioned, and people are dying of starvation in Poland and Serbia." The manifesto concluded with an appeal to the men and women of the laboring-classes to raise their voices against the continuance of the war. The underground propaganda against the war and the government assumed greater proportions, and encouraged the revolutionaries in the Reichstag. Grown bold, Haase announced that a pacifist meeting would be held in Berlin on August 30. It was prohibited by the police. Sporadic strikes began. Ruehle had staged the first avowedly political strike at Leipsic on May Day. It failed, but set an example which was followed in other parts of the empire. Liebknecht, who had been mustered into the army and was hence subject to military regulations, was arrested on May Day in Berlin for carrying on an anti-war and anti-government agitation among the workingmen. On trial he was sentenced to thirty months' imprisonment and to dishonorable dismissal from the army. This was the signal for widespread strikes of protest in various cities. There was serious rioting in Berlin on July 1st, and grave disorders also occurred at Stuttgart, Leipsic and other cities. Liebknecht appealed from the conviction and the appellate court raised the sentence to four years and one month, with loss of civil rights for six years. This caused a recrudescence of July's demonstrations, for a sentence of this severity was most unusual in Germany. Liebknecht's personal followers and party friends swore vengeance, and many others who had theretofore kept themselves apart from a movement with which they secretly sympathized were rendered more susceptible to radical anti-war propaganda.