But perhaps all this will in time be swept away, for there were signs pointing in that direction. The city council of Berlin had already decreed that all pictures and statues of the Hohenzollerns, “especially those of the deposed Kaiser,” must be removed from the public halls and schoolrooms. That of itself would constitute a decided change in the capital. In these first days of May several hundred busts and countless likenesses of Wilhelm II and his family had been banished to the cellars of municipal buildings, not, be it noted, far enough away to make restoration difficult. “Among the busts,” said one of the local papers, “are some of real artistic value”—I cannot, of course, vouch for the esthetic sense of the editor—“as for example the marble ones of Kaiser Wilhelm I and of Kaiser Friedrich III, which for many years have adorned the meeting-place of the Municipal Council itself.” For all this there was no lack of graven images of the discredited War Lord and his tribe still on exhibition; the portraits “adorning” private residences alone could have filled many more cellars. It would be difficult to eradicate in a few brief months a trade-mark which had been stamped into every article of common or uncommon use. In return for these artistic losses the city was taking on new decorations, in the form of placards and posters unknown in kaiserly days. To begin with, there were the violent representations in color of what the Bolshevists were alleged to perpetrate on the civil population that fell under their bloody misrule, which stared from every conspicuous wall unprotected by the stern announcement that bill-posting was _verboten_. These all ended with an appeal for volunteers and money to halt “the menace that is already knocking at the eastern gates of the Fatherland.” Then there were the more direct enticements to recruits for newly formed _Freicorps_—“the protective home guard,” their authors called it—usually named for the officer whose signature as commander appeared at the bottom of the poster. Even the newspapers carried full-page advertisements setting forth the advantages of enrolling in the independent battalion of Major B—— or the splendid regiment of Colonel S——, a far cry indeed from the days of universal compulsory service. “If you will join my company,” ran these glowing promises, after long-winded appeals to patriotism, “you will be commanded by experienced officers, such as the undersigned, and you will be lodged, fed, and well paid by the government. What better occupation can you find?” These were the _freiwillige_ bands that composed the German army of 1919, semi-independent groups, loosely disciplined, and bearing the name of some officer of the old régime. They may not constitute an overpowering force, but there is always the possibility that some man of magnetism and Napoleonic ambition may gather them all together and become a military dictator. Besides, there is still the trickery of