A Socialist colleague intervenes, Ledebour, a thin, grey-haired, actor-like person, of ascetic mien and resonant voice.  “Checking free speech is an evil custom of this House,” declares Ledebour.  “Papa” Kaempf clangs his big hand-bell.  He rules out “such improper expressions as ‘evil custom’ in this high House.”  Ledebour is the Reichstag’s master of repartee.  He rejoins smilingly:—­“Very well, not an ‘evil custom,’ but not altogether a pleasant custom.”  Now the House is howling Ledebour down.  He, too, has weathered such storms before.  He waits, impassive and undismayed, for a lull in the cyclone.  It comes.  “Wait, wait!” he thunders.  “My friend Liebknecht and I, and others like us, have a great following.  You grievously underestimate that following.  Some day you will realise that.  Wait——­” Ledebour, like Liebknecht, can no longer proceed.  The House is now boiling, an indistinguishable and most undignified pandemonium.  I can detect that there is considerable ironical laughter mixed with its indignation.  Members are not taking Ledebour’s threat seriously.

Liebknecht has temporarily returned to his seat under cover of the tornado provoked by Ledebour’s intervention, but now I see him stealthily crawling, dodging, almost panther-like, back to the steps of the tribune.  He is bent upon renewing the attempt to raise his voice above the hostile din.  The sight of him unchains the House’s fury afresh.  The racket is increased by the mad ding-donging of “Papa” Kaempf, trying hopelessly to restore a semblance of quiet.  It is useless.  The House will not subside until Liebknecht is driven from the speakers’ tribune.  He is not to have even the chance of the lull which enabled Ledebour to say a pertinent thing or two.  A score of embittered deputies advance toward the tribune, red-faced and gesticulating in the German way when excitement is the dominant passion.  Their fists are clenched.  I say to myself that Liebknecht will this time be beaten down, if he is not content to be shouted down.  He makes an unforgettable figure, alone there, assailed, barked and snarled at from every side, a private in the German Army bidding defiance to a hundred men, also in uniform, but superior officers.  Mere Kanonenfutter (cannon fodder) defying the majestic authority of its helmeted and epauletted overlords!  An unprecedented episode, as well as an unforgettable one. . .

Liebknecht insists upon tempting fate once more.  He is going to try to outshout the crazy chorus howling at him.  He succeeds, but only for an instant and to the extent of one biting phrase:—­“Such treatment,” I can hear him shrieking, “is unverschaemt (shameless) and unerhoert (unheard of)!  It could take place in no other legislative body in the world!”

With that the one German Social Democrat of conviction, courage, and consistency retires, baffled and discomfited.  Potsdam’s representative in the Reichstag is at last effectually muzzled, but in the muzzling I have seen the German Government at work on a task almost as prodigious as the one it now faces on the Somme—­the task of keeping the German people deaf, dumb, and blind.