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doing a revolutionary act. I had the alternative of either refusing to submit to these orders and declaring that I place myself under the protection of the Berlin workers, thereby causing a general strike in Berlin, which would undoubtedly have followed the very next day—or of refraining for the time being from causing a conflict, and submitting to brute force. After consulting my friends, I chose the latter alternative. Two considerations prompted me to do so. First, I did not want at the moment when the party was not yet organised that it should have a conflict over me, which could easily grow into a most formidable encounter. Secondly, I had made in Berlin a series of appointments with representatives of over ten Communist parties of various countries, and I hoped (this hope was fully justified) that, in spite of all, I would be able to see them.
Only the night previously—at Halle—I was under the protection of the law. This morning I am subjected to a domiciliary arrest, and guarded by a dozen detectives, who were placed in the street, at the entrance, on the stairway, etc. I had only one consolation: I was told most of these spies were Scheidemannists, i.e., members of the Second International. This is surely flattering for a Communist rebel. The whole German press, as if it had acted on a signal, let loose the most rabid attacks on me. The press seemed to run amok, and remained in this state for a whole week. The whole press, from "Freiheit," the organ of the Right Independents, to "Deutsche Tageszeitung," the organ of the reactionary bandits and the "Orgesh," concentrated on that part of my speech on terror, to which I referred above. All the accusations which Martov made against the Bolsheviks generally, and against myself in particular, were reprinted on the front pages of all the reactionary and bourgeois papers. The bourgeois papers yelled that it was not enough to expel me, that my place was not in the hotel under the protection of officers of the political police, but that my place was on the lamp-post. The "Deutsche Tageszeitung" openly incited to murder. The atmosphere became very stormy. It was exactly like the July days of 1917 in Petrograd. The only topic of conversation in the streets, in the trams, in the papers and in the theatres was the cursed
