_Nationales Eigentum_ with a vengeance! Whether they are using the Royal suite for bureau or bedroom, or both, I know not.
At all points, and indeed acting as police for the city, are soldiers and sailors of the security service with white bands on their arms. Large parties of these men patrol the streets, with a peculiar movement in the column due to juxtaposition of the measured military step, and the easy swing of the sailor. We would pass such companies with a more or less unseeing eye, but we are continually assailed by cheery greetings of “Wie geht’s?” and “Guten Morgen!”
If we pause before a public building, a soldier or sailor immediately approaches and asks if we desire to enter. In suchwise we get glimpse of a number of the important public institutions, including the modern and rather magnificent Royal Library. In the Royal Opera House, despite the revolution, performances are announced for to-night of Verdi’s “Otello,” for to-morrow (Sunday) night of “Rigoletto.”
Some of the streets running off Unter den Linden bear marks of yesterday’s fighting; some of them are still big with agitation; groups and queues of gesticulating soldiers and civilians. We pass the Legations and through the Brandenburger Tor into the Tiergarten, and take leisurely view of the Reichstag, looking deserted and dejected, and as if all the glory of debate had departed from it for ever. Here is the Siegessäule and the Denkmal to Bismarck, Moltke, and the long lineage of German warriors. Here also is the Hindenburg statue, looking decidedly forlorn and rather foolish. Tim and I decide that it would hardly be expedient for us to drive in a couple of nails!
Now approaches a great procession of men and women, silent, sad, slow-moving, sombre-hued save for the red banners which here and there droop into the ranks and show through the trees like gouts of blood. It is the Spartacusbundes Party, with Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg at their head. They are doubtless come to mourn their dead of yesterday and to demand redress and revenge. The procession winds its way through the paths, and ultimately the speakers take up position beside the statue of one of the Margraves, where Liebknecht’s father agitated before him in less agitated times than these.
