The Kaiser's flight had the double effect of encouraging the Socialists and discouraging the Conservatives, the right wing of the National Liberals and the few prominent men of other _bourgeois_ parties from whom at least a passive resistance might otherwise have been expected. The Junkers disappeared from view, and, disappearing, took with them the ablest administrative capacities of Germany, men whose ability was unquestioned, but who were now so severely compromised that any participation by them in a democratic government was impossible. "The German People's Republic" as it had been termed for a brief two days, became the "German Socialistic Republic." Numerically the strongest party in the land, the Socialists of all wings insisted upon putting the red stamp upon the remains of Imperial Germany.
In their rejoicing at the revolution and the end of the war, the great mass of the people forgot for the moment that they were living in a conquered land. Those that did remember it were lulled into a feeling of over-optimistic security by the recollection of President Wilson's repeated declarations that the war was being waged against the German governmental system and not against the German people, and by the declaration in Secretary Lansing's note of the previous week that the Allies had accepted the President's peace points with the exception of the second.
The Soldiers' and Workmen's Councils held plenary sessions on Monday and ratified the proceedings of Sunday. The spirit of the proceedings, especially in the Soldiers' Council, was markedly moderate. Ledebour, one of the most radical of the Independent Socialists, was all but howled down when he tried to address the soldiers' meeting in the Reichstag. Colin Ross, appealing for harmonious action by all factions of Social-Democracy, was received with applause. The _Vollzugsrat_, which was now in theory the supreme governing body of Germany, also took charge of the affairs of Prussia and Berlin. Two Majority and two Independent Socialists were appointed "people's commissioners" in Berlin. It is worthy of note that all four of these men were Jews. Almost exactly one per cent of the total population of Germany was made up of Jews, but here, as in Russia, they played a part out of all proportion to their numbers. In all the revolutionary governmental bodies formed under the German Socialistic Republic it would be difficult to find a single one in which they did not occupy from a quarter to a half of all the seats, and they preponderated in many places.