Here we find a large music hall which before the war was a typical scene of flamboyant Berlin night-life. On this grey winter's morning it is crammed full of grimly earnest men--the delegates. On the stage is the Executive Council. The chairman the Independent, Richard Müller, is of the pastor or professor type--his colleague Däumig a heavily built, grey-haired man, might be an English engineer or merchant captain. On the left of the hall are the Communists, in the middle the Independents, and on the right the Social-Democrats, with a little knot of Democrats--the two latter parties supporters of the Government and opposers of the strike--but in a minority here. The business before the Assembly is the filling of the vacancies on the Executive Council left by the Communists who seceded from it when it declared the strike off, and the appointing of delegates to the National Congress of Councils which is to meet next month. But the Communists intend to force a discussion of the Government's policy as to the street fighting which is still going on at Lichtenberg, and the chairman has to concede this. First come forward representatives of the Councils' Commissions delegated to investigate the stories of cruelties by the insurgents and to negotiate a cessation of hostilities between them and the government commanders. They give their reports in impartial and unimpassioned language, but indicate their impression that the military authorities they had to deal with were less concerned to restore order with as little loss of life and of time as possible, than to create the impression that the disorder was worse than it really was. They were exploiting a local "putsch" so as to carry out a general "pogrom." The first speaker, Richard Müller, for the Independents, deplores the disorder, but denounces the Government for instructing its troops to shoot everyone found with arms, in reprisal for atrocities invented by its own secret service. The defence of the Government is undertaken by a Social-Democrat, who declares the Independents responsible for the disorders, amid stormy interruptions from the Communists. The chairman can hardly get him a hearing, and he leaves the stage, indignantly threatening that his party will secede unless it is better treated. Next dashes on to the stage the Communist leader, who delivers an effective indictment of the Government's proceedings--at first interrupted by angry interjections from the Right. But as he develops the tragedy of what is going on outside, gives one name after another of comrades shot on no more than suspicion and describes the ring of howitzers firing into the crowded tenements of Lichtenberg, a silence falls over the meeting, and at last expressions of disapproval and dissociation come from supporters of the Government. For here is an Assembly that is alive enough, and though organised in parties, yet still open to the appeal of facts and to the force of arguments.