The fighting so completely took on the aspects of a real war that the wildest atrocity stories began to circulate. They were, like all atrocity stories, greatly exaggerated, but it was established that Spartacans had killed unarmed prisoners, including several policemen, had stopped and wrecked ambulances and killed wounded, and had systematically fired on first-aid stations and hospitals. Noske rose to the occasion like a mere _bourgeois_ minister. He decreed:
"All persons found with arms in their hands, resisting government troops, will be summarily executed."
Despite this decree, the Spartacans, who had erected street-barricades in that part of Berlin eastward and northward from Alexander Platz, put up a show of resistance for some days. They were, however, seriously shaken by their heavy losses and weakened by the wholesale defections of supporters who had joined them chiefly for the sake of looting and who had a wholesale respect for Noske as a man of his word. They had good reason to entertain this respect for the grim man in charge of the government's military measures. The government never made public the number of summary executions under Noske's decree, but there is little doubt that these went well above one hundred. A group of members of the mutinous People's Marine Division had the splendid effrontery to call at the office of the city commandant to demand the pay due them as protectors of the public safety. Government troops arrested the callers, a part of whom resisted arrest. Twenty-four of these men, found to have weapons in their possession, were summarily executed.
_Die Freiheit_ and _Die Republik_ denounced the members of the government as murderers. The office of the Spartacans' _Die rote Fahne_ had been occupied by government troops on the day of the outbreak of the Bolshevik uprising. The _bourgeois_ and Majority Socialist press supported the government whole-heartedly, and the law-abiding citizens were encouraged by their new rulers' energy and by the loyalty and bravery of the government troops. There was a general recognition of the fact that matters had reached a stage where a minority, in part deluded and in part criminal, could not longer be permitted to terrorize the country.