Revolution was now fairly on the march. The Independent Socialists and Liebknecht's Spartacans were already endeavoring to form a Workmen's and Soldiers' Council for Greater Berlin. General von Linsingen, commander in the Marches, made a last desperate attempt to forbid the revolution by issuing the following decree:
"In certain quarters there exists the purpose to form Workmen's and Soldiers' Councils after the Russian pattern, in disregard of the provisions of the laws.
"Institutions of this kind conflict with the existing state order and endanger the public safety.
"Under paragraph 9b of the law regarding a state of siege I forbid any formation of such associations and the participation therein."
This was the last order issued by the military authorities in Berlin. A counterpiece was the last anti-revolutionary order issued by the old police authorities, which forbade eight mass meetings which the Independent Socialists proposed to hold Thursday evening, with "The Anniversary of the Russian Revolution" as their theme. The police order, however, was enforced.
The first revolutionary emissaries reached Berlin Thursday evening, in the form of various detachments of armed marines from Hamburg. The military authorities, more resolute than those in the provincial cities, sent troops to the railway station to receive them. The marines suffered themselves to be disarmed and went without resistance to barracks, with the exception of one detachment of about two hundred and fifty men, of whom all but some seventy escaped into the streets with their weapons. These men formed the nucleus of the revolution in Berlin.
Berlin was still without any but the most meager news of the revolution Friday. The papers complained of an even more narrow-minded and arbitrary censorship by the new government than that under the old régime. The press was on the whole restricted to printing official reports, although some of them added a few paragraphs of explanatory comment. An inspired report that the excesses in the northwest bore no political character was contradicted by the _Vorwärts_, which declared that they had a "liberty seeking socialistic character everywhere." Unimportant disturbances took place during the day in Rosenthalerstrasse, in the old city, and a few arrests were made, but the day passed quietly on the whole.