The German Socialists have always had a keen appreciation of the influence of the press. No other country has such an extensive, well-edited and influential array of Socialist newspapers and periodicals as Germany, and in no other country are the Socialists so carefully disciplined into taking their political views from their party organs. As the parent party, the Majority Socialists already had their press. The Independents had no organ of any importance in Berlin, and Liebknecht's Spartacans had none at all. This, for persons who, if not in abstract theory, nevertheless in actual practice refuse to admit that the _bourgeoisie_ has any rights whatever, was a matter easily remedied. Liebknecht, at the head of a group of armed soldiers, went in the evening to the plant of the Conservative _Lokal-Anzeiger_, turned out the whole staff and took possession. The paper appeared Sunday morning as _Die rote Fahne_ (The Red Flag). Independent Socialists and members of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council at the same time took violent possession of the venerable _Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung_, which they published Sunday morning as _Die Internationale_.
The Wolff Bureau had already been occupied by members of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council. It was compelled to send out any articles coming from that council, and its other news dispatches were subjected to a censorship quite as rigid and _tendencieuse_ and even less intelligent than that prevailing under the old régime. The committee put in charge of the Wolff Bureau was nominally composed of an equal number of Majority and Independent Socialists, but the latter, by dint of their rabid energy and resolution, were able for a long time to put their imprint on all news issuing from the bureau.
_Die rote Fahne_ of Sunday morning published on the first page a leading Article which undoubtedly was written by Liebknecht himself. It began:
"Proudly the red flag floats over the imperial capital. Berlin has tardily followed the glorious example of the Kiel sailors, the Hamburg shipyard laborers and the soldiers and workingmen of various other states."
The article glorified the revolution and declared that it must sweep away "the remains and ruins of feudalism." There must be not merely a republic, but a socialistic republic, and its flag must not be "the black, red and gold flag of the _bourgeois_ Republic of 1848, but the red flag of the international socialistic proletariat, the red flag of the Commune of 1871 and of the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1912. **** The revolutionary, triumphant proletariat must erect a new order out of the ruins of the World War. **** The first tasks in this direction are speedy peace, genuine proletarian domination, reshaping of economic life from the pseudo-socialism of the war to the real socialism of peace."