The Independent Socialists had "made the revolution." They claimed the right to determine its development. The _bourgeoisie_, itself incapable of restoring the old order and, for the most part, not desiring to do so, supported the parent Socialist Party as the lesser of two evils. The Independents found themselves without the power to determine what course "their revolution" should take. All revolutionary history showed that this course would not be that desired by the Independent leaders and promised by them to their radical followers. The occurrences of the first month following the revolution again demonstrated what might be called the natural law of revolutionary development. The Majority Socialists in the government refused to let themselves be hurried into disastrous socializing experiments. They refused to ban intelligence and ability merely because the possessors happened not to be _Genossen_. They even believed (_horribile dictu!_) that private property-rights should not be abolished out of hand. They were so recreant to the principles of true internationalism that they resented foreign aggressions against Germans and German soil, and they actually proposed to resist such aggressions by force.
With heretics like these there could be no communion. They could not even be permitted to hold communion among themselves if it could be prevented, and the result was, as we have seen, the efforts of the Independents and Spartacans to wreck the tabernacle.
To recount the developments of the period from the crushing of the March uprising to the signing of the Peace of Versailles would be but to repeat, with different settings, the story of the first four months of Republican Germany. This period, too, was filled with Independent Socialist and Spartacan intrigues and armed opposition to the government, culminating in the brief but bloody reign of the Communists in Munich in April. Strikes continued to paralyze industry. No food supplies of any importance were received. The National Assembly at Weimar continued to demonstrate the philosophic tendencies, academic learning and political immaturity of the German people. Distinct left wings came into being in both the Majority Socialist and Democratic parties. Particularism, the historic curse of the country, again raised its head.