the trade-union leaders; that revolutionary tribunals were established at Munich, where twenty-eight judges continued, in relays of seven, to pass sentences day and night, and, finally, that a decree was issued by the Communist government confiscating all dwellings.
Shortly after these reports reached America, the peasants of Bavaria rose up against the revolutionary government in Munich and declared an effective ban on the shipment of food to that city. No attacks were made upon Munich by the troops of the moderate Hoffman government of Bavaria which had been ousted by the Communists, for it was feared that the whole country might thus be plunged into civil war. The only strategic movement of these troops was to cut off the supplies of food.
Discord soon sprang up among the Soviet leaders themselves, who engaged in open street fights against each other. Before the end of April, 1919, the Central Council had been dissolved and the Communist mob had turned to plundering. Food ration cards were taken away from the bourgeoisie, and barricades were erected around the city to defend it from Noske's army, sent to attack it by the Ebert-Scheidemann moderate Socialist Government of Berlin. In the early part of May, 1919, the Communist rabble of the Bavarian capital was finally overcome by the artillery fire of Noske's troops, and Hoffman was once more put in control.
The American Socialists look upon the ousted Communists of Bavaria as the upholders of the Marxian doctrine, and consider them, along with the Russian Bolsheviki and the Hungarian Communists, as Socialist brethren worthy of their respect and imitation.
In Hungary the "100 per cent" Socialists, the Communists, under the leadership of Bela Kun, came into power in the early part of the year 1919. Press despatches, at the end of March, stated that all villas, industries and building had been declared the property of the state; that