downfall of von Falkenhayn and von Tirpitz, there was only one recognised authority in Germany. That was the Chancellor and the Foreign Office, supported almost unanimously by the Socialists and by the Liberal forces which were at work to reform the German Government. But this was in May, 1916, scarcely eight months before the Kaiser _changed his mind and again decided to support the people who were clamouring for a ruthless, murderous, defiant war against the whole world_, if the world was "foolish" enough to join in. CHAPTER VI THE PERIOD OF NEW ORIENTATION Dr. Karl Liebknecht, after he had challenged the Chancellor on the 4th of April, became the object of attack by the military authorities. The Chancellor, although he is the real Minister of Foreign Affairs, is, also, a Major General in the Army and for a private like Liebknecht to talk to a Major General as he did in the Reichstag was contrary to all rules and precedents in the Prussian Army. The army was ready to send Liebknecht to the firing squad and it was only a short time until they had an opportunity to arrest him. Liebknecht started riots in some of the ammunition factories and one night at Potsdamer Platz, dressed in civilian clothes, he shouted, "Down with the Government," and started to address the passers-by. He was seized immediately by government detectives, who were always following him, and taken to the police station. His home was searched and when the trial began the papers, found there, were placed before the military tribunal as evidence that he was plotting against the Government. The trial was secret, and police blockaded all streets a quarter of a mile away from the court where he was tried. Throughout the proceedings which lasted a week the newspapers were permitted to print only the information distributed by the Wolff Telegraph Bureau. But public sympathy for Liebknecht was so great that mounted police were kept in every part of the city day and night to break up crowds which might assemble. Behind closed doors, without an opportunity to consult his friends, with only an attorney appointed by the Government to defend him, Liebknecht was sentenced to two years' hard labour. His only crime was that he had dared to speak in the Reichstag the opinions of some of the more radical socialists. Liebknecht's imprisonment was a lesson to other Socialist agitators. The day after his sentencing was announced there were strikes in nearly every ammunition factory in and around Berlin. Even at Spandau, next to Essen the largest ammunition manufacturing city in Germany, several thousand workmen left their benches as a protest, but the German people have such terrible fear of the police and of their own military organisation that they strike only a day and return the next to forget about previous events.