A "non-resistance" order, the first one of many that helped make the revolution possible, was also issued on Tuesday by the military authorities. Officers were commanded not to use force against the strikers. "Only mutual understanding of the demands of the moment can restore orderly conditions," said the decree.
Wednesday, the fourth day of the revolt at Kiel, was the critical and, as it proved, the decisive day. When night came the mutineers were crowned with victory, and the forces of orderly government had lost the day. And yet, strangely enough, neither side realized this. The strikers believed themselves isolated in the corner of an undisturbed empire. The more conservative among them began to consider their situation in a different light. There was an undercurrent of feeling that no help could be looked for from other quarters and that a reconciliation with the authorities should be sought. Noske shared this feeling. Speaking to the striker's delegates late on Wednesday evening, he advised them to compromise. Seek an agreement with the government, he said in effect. The government is ready and even eager to reach a fair compromise. We stand alone, isolated.
Neither Noske nor the bulk of the mutineers yet knew what had been going on elsewhere in northwestern Germany. The Independent Socialist and Spartacan plotters for revolution at Berlin saw in the Kiel events the opportunity for which they had been waiting for more than three years, and they struck promptly. Haase and some of his followers went immediately to Hamburg, and other revolutionary agents proceeded to the other coast cities to incite strikes and revolts. The ground had been so well prepared that their efforts were everywhere speedily successful. In the few cities where the people were not already ripe for revolution, the supineness of the authorities made the revolutionaries' task a light one. Leaders of the Kiel mutineers met the Berlin agitators in different cities and coöperated with them.
The procedure was everywhere the same. Workmen's and soldiers' councils were formed, policemen and loyal troops were disarmed and the city government was taken over by the soviets. By Thursday evening soviet governments had been established in Hamburg, Cuxhaven, Wilhelmshaven, Bremen, Hanover, Rostock, Oldenburg and other places. The soviets in virtually all these places were controlled by Independent Socialists--even then only a slight remove from Bolsheviki--and their spirit was hostile not alone to the existing government, but equally to the Majority Socialists. At Hamburg, for instance, the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council, which had forcibly taken over the Majority Socialist organ _Hamburger Echo_ and rechristened it _Die rote Fahne_, published a proclamation forbidding the press to take any notice whatever of proclamations issued by the Majority Socialists or the leaders of trade-unions. The proclamation declared that "these elements will be permitted to coöperate in the government, but they will not be permitted to present any demands." Any attempt to interfere with the soviet was declared to be counter-revolutionary, and it was threatened that such attempts would "be met with the severest repressive measures."