But judged by the solemnity and seriousness of the conference, the destiny of the world was seemingly at stake, so we asked one bird, who was sort of a jay, what he thought about it. “Mr. Chairman,” he said seriously, “I make a resolution that we declare that we are for the party that gets us out of Germany the fastest, and we don’t give a damn which one it is.” At that, the meeting almost ended in a riot, though in my mind the jay had absolutely the correct solution. Finally, it was decided that we would leave our fate to the council of three—the three most influential prisoners in camp, the controllers of the food supply, namely, the Red Cross Committee. Shortly, conditions began to get real tense around there, and we actually didn’t know what was going to happen for, about our camp, the prison authorities had hoisted the red flag of Socialism. The few days during which that flag stayed there were the only days of my life that I have not been a Republican—I was a Socialist like all the rest of our boys, from force of circumstances. Amid all this excitement, we were summoned together, and the official representative of the new revolutionary party came up to address us. Amid the quietness of death, the great man announced to us that he was now the great representative of the Great Revolutionary Party, and that the Great People of the Greater State of Bavaria had had a greatest revolution—not a bloody revolution like the Russians, but a quiet, orderly revolution, for realizing that the old government had failed to take care of the needs of the common people, the soldiers and the workmen of Bavaria had gotten together and had overthrown the monarchy. The outcome had been the ideal democratic form of government—a Republic—and the revolution had been entirely successful, for the soldiers and workmen were in complete authority and command and the old régime had been entirely displaced. “Indeed,” he said, “everybody realized the inevitable and made no attempt to stop the onward movement, and such a thing as mob violence or shooting has been unheard of.” He had just started on his next sentence when, down in the town, a machine gun sputtered. We had been hearing pot shots occasionally for some time. So we all began to laugh. It was a rather embarrassing situation, and the old boy immediately modified his statement to the effect that in rare instances there had been a little shooting. Then he went on and blabbered about fifteen minutes more as to the aims of the new Government, what it had in mind, how it wished especially to be the friend of America and the good things it was going to do for the prisoners, and, as a Republic, the prisoners would, of course, be released. Here was the one thing that interested us, so, at this with one voice the prisoner colony responded, as if to a yell leader, “When!” The great man was almost taken off his feet by the anxious débutantes anticipating the “coming out.”