stration in the Potsdamerplatz, in Berlin, he delivered the speech which became famous in consequence of his immediate arrest. The gathering was a huge one and the most remarkable circumstance attending it was its almost complete silence. Women and children predominated: whilst the men present were mostly of advanced age. Liebknecht said :--

"Comrades, some time ago a witty Social Democrat observed: 'We Prussia's are a privileged people.' We have the right to serve as soldiers, we are entitled to bear upon our shoulders the entire burden of taxation, and we are expected to hold our tongues. So it is. The authorities never cease to call upon us to keep silent. Quite a simple thing--hold your tongue, that's all. Don't talk! If you are hungry, don't talk! If your children starve, don't talk! They ask for milk--hold your tongue! They ask for bread--don't say a word!

"Comrades, we are starving, but no one must know it--least of all the soldiers. Such news would weaken the warlike spirit of the fighters, therefore, don't complain. Women, hide away the truth from your own men! Lie; don't tell the truth, lest the soldiers in the trenches learn how things stand. Prussian censorship takes good care that this does not happen. Poor German soldier, he really deserved pity. Under the compulsion of a warlike Government he has invaded a foreign country, and is doing his bloody work, suffering untold horrors. Death reigns on the battle-field and his children at home are succumbing to hunger and want. The poor mother in is distress and cannot share her grief with her husband.

"The workers of Germany have to bleed because such is the will of the capitalists, of the super-patriots, of the cannon-makers. The people have to make blood-sacrifices without a murmur in order that these robbers may mint gold out of their valuable lives. The war was ushered in with a lie, so that the workers would rush to the battlefields, and now the lie still presides over the continuance of this awful carnage."

Liebknecht had scarcely completed the last sentence when the police broke through the crowd and, throwing many of the crowd and trampling others underfoot, arrested him. In the days which immediately followed he addressed his famous letters to the Royal Court-Martial in Berlin. There were circulated in leaflet form and are dated the 3rd and 8th of May, respectively. Liebknecht boldly indicts the German Government for its reckless championship of expansion and junkerism in world politics, and its activity as an agent of world war. He denounces its suppression of the working people, its war on their liberty of speech and writing. He indicts its system of specious legality and sham nationality as a system of actual force, of genuine hostility to the people, and of guilty conscience as regards to the masses. And he adds that struggle of the most strenuous character, class struggle against