"3. For the maintenance of confidence between officers and men the soldiers' councils have advisory powers in matters relating to provisioning, furloughs and the infliction of military punishments. It is their highest duty to endeavor to prevent disorder and mutiny.
"4. Officers and men shall have the same rations.
"5. Officers and men shall receive the same extra allowances of pay and perquisites."
"Voluntary submission" by soldiers to officers might be feasible in a victorious and patriotic army, but it is impracticable among troops infected with Socialist doctrines and retreating before their conquerors. Authority, once destroyed, can never be regained. This was proved not only at the front, but at home as well. _Die neue Freiheit_ (the new freedom), a phrase glibly mouthed by all supporters of the revolution, assumed the same grotesque forms in Germany as in Russia. Automobiles, commandeered by soldiers from army depots or from the royal garages, flying red flags, darted through the streets at speeds defying all regulations, filled with unwashed and unshaven occupants lolling on the cushioned seats. Cabmen drove serenely up the left side of Unter den Linden, twiddling their fingers at the few personally escorted and disarmed policemen whom they saw. Gambling games ran openly at street-corners. Soldiers mounted improvised booths in the streets and sold cigarettes and soap looted from army stores.
Earnest revolutionaries traveled through the city looking for signs containing the word _kaiserlich_ (imperial) or _königlich_ (royal), and mutilated or destroyed them. Court purveyors took down their signs or draped them. The _Kaiser Keller_ in Friedrichstrasse became simply a _Keller_ and the bust of the Kaiser over the door was covered with a piece of canvas. The Royal Opera-House became the "Opera-House Unter den Linden."
One of the most outstanding characteristics of the German people in peace times had been their love of order. Even the superficial observer could not help noticing it, and one of its manifestations earned general commendation. This was that the unsightly billboards and placarded walls that disfigure American cities were never seen in Germany. Neat and sightly columns were erected in various places for official, theatrical or business announcements, and no posters might be affixed anywhere else. Nothing more strikingly illustrates the character of the collapse in Germany than the fact that it destroyed even this deeply ingrained love of order. _Genossen_ with brushes and paste-pots calmly defaced house-walls and even show windows on main streets with placards whose quality showed that German art, too, had suffered in the general collapse of the Empire.
