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"despot" and "dictator" who had come to Germany to advocate the wholesale murder of the bourgeoisie. The leaflets of the Russian White Guards, issued in Berlin, added fuel to the fire. The "facts" reported by Martov were seized upon greedily and were still more exaggerated and distorted. The whole German press was one ferocious counter-revolutionary howl against me.
The local comrades assured me that the persecution was similar to, if not greater than that which was directed against Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg in the January days of 1919. Only the "Rote Fahne," the paper of the German Communists boldly opposed the savage attacks of the counter-revolutionaries, maddened by hatred and fear. The effect, of my speech in labour circles, where it was thoroughly discussed the very day after it was delivered, made the enemies of the proletarian revolution realise in dead earnest the spectre of Communism. There was no limit to the wrath and hatred, the dirt and calumnies which filled the pages of the whole German press.
Our German friends found if necessary to take their own measures of precaution. They doubled their watch in the street where our hotel was situated, sent a number of trusty comrades as guests to that hotel, and took other measures for armed defence in case a direct attack was made upon us.
Certain measures of defence were taken by the German workers even in Halle. We were inclined to chaff them for these precautions, and thought that our friends went too far in their fears. Once in Halle I entered my room on the fourth floor and saw a mysterious wire sticking out of the wall. My friends told me in confidence that this wire communicated with the street, and that in case of danger they could pull it in the street, and then an alarm bell would warn me of impending danger. This, of course, was a naive measure of precaution. But those taken in Berlin were perhaps far from superfluous. We have never since July 1917 witnessed such a wild orgy of madness.
Germany exhibited in those days instances of incredible lying about Soviet Russia. True, we have somehow grown accustomed to the absence of the so-called "liberty of the press." "The liberty of the press" in the happy, "free" German Repub-
