[64] _Encyclopedia Britannica_, title "Germany."
Except that the reactionary forces were too weakly represented at Weimar to make them an actual source of danger this characterization of the Frankfort Congress might have been written about the proceedings of the National Assembly of February. It is a significant and illuminating fact that the greatest animation exhibited at any time during the first week of the assembly was aroused by a difference of meaning as to the definition of a word. Professor Hugo Preuss, Prussian Minister of the Interior, to whom had been entrusted the task of drafting a proposed constitution for the new republic, referred in a speech elucidating it, to "an absolute majority."
"Does 'absolute majority' mean a majority of the whole number of delegates?" asked some learned delegate.
The other delegates were galvanized instantly into the tensest interest. Here was a question worth while! What does "absolute majority" mean? An animated debate followed and was listened to with a breathless interest which the most weighty financial or economic questions had never succeeded in evoking.
And while the National Assembly droned thus wearily on, clouds were again gathering over Berlin and other cities in the troubled young republic.
Article xxvi of the armistice of November 11th declared:
"The Allies and the United States have in view the provisioning of Germany during the armistice to the extent deemed necessary."[65]
[65] Les Alliés et les États-Unis envisagent le ravitaillement de l'Allemagne, pendant l'armistice, dans la mesure reconnue nécessaire.
Even by the end of November it had become apparent to all intelligent observers on the ground and to many outside Germany that such provisioning was urgently necessary, and that if it did not come at once the result would be a spread of Bolshevism which would endanger all Europe. Allied journalists in Germany were almost a unit in recognizing the dangers and demands of the situation, but they were greatly hampered in their efforts to picture the situation truthfully by the sentiments prevailing in their respective countries as a result of the passions engendered by the conflict so lately ended. This was in the highest degree true as to the Americans, which was especially regrettable and unfortunate in view of the fact that America was the only power possessing a surplus of immediately available foodstuffs. American correspondents, venturing to report actual conditions in Germany, found themselves denounced as "pro-Germans" and traitors by the readers of their papers. More than this: they became the objects of unfavorable reports by officers of the American Military Intelligence, although many of these men themselves were convinced that empty stomachs were breeding Bolshevism with every passing day. One correspondent, who had been so bitterly anti-German from the very beginning of the war that he had had to leave Germany long before America entered the struggle, was denounced in a report to the Military Intelligence at Washington on March 3d as "having shown pro-German leanings throughout the war." An American correspondent with a long and honorable record, who had taken a prominent part in carrying on American propaganda abroad and upon whose reports high diplomatic officials of three of the Allied countries had relied, was astounded to learn that the Military Intelligence, in a report of January 11, 1919, had denounced him as "having gone to Berlin to create sentiment in the United States favorable to furnishing Germany food-supply."