Some ten or twenty of them sat at a long table. To one side in a little raised alcove the top men of the staff were sitting on benches at a round oak table. Above them hung a painting giving a bird's eye view of the Baden Aniline Soda and Ammonia Works at Merseburg, with a peasant plowing in the foreground on the right, and a soldier in a steel helmet in the foreground on the left. One of the men present said: "The bosses— the superintendents-used to sit here. Now we're here. The works belong to us.'

I went over to the leaders' table. Five untidy and unwashed men in rather dilapidated workingmen's clothes were seated there under the picture, and eating-without much appetite, as it seemed to me,-goulash with noodles and baked apples. They

did not have bad faces. They received me with wrinkled foreheads, without introducing themselves, and kept on eating while they regarded me suspiciously.

A fellow of medium size with reddish brown hair, already slightly bald, pale, evidently worn out, unshaven, and eating absent mindedly, appeared to be the leader. He did not receive me graciously at first. 'How did this fellow get in here?' and he slapped the table with his open hand. 'Have I not ordered-just wait!'

I requested him to tell me something of the situation.

'I'll not say a word! People of your kind who come in here are all spies!'

I sat down by him and offered him a cigarette. He refused it and took one from one of his comrades.

'I suspect you,' he said. Finally, however, he became more friendly, laughed, and later gave me his name.

He is no university graduate, as

we have been told; not a man with a disappointed ambition. He said to me: 'We've no intention of blowing up these works. We employees regard the works as our property. We are now performing all the labor that is urgently required. There are a thousand men working in three shifts and we shall keep on working. However, the moment the first security policeman gets in here we shall knock off work and the whole establishment will go into the air. All we have to do is to open the cocks of the ammonia gas reservoirs and our whole town will be wiped out-and with a favorable wind Merseburg will go too.' Then he dismissed me. The orderly took me through the works. Great clusters of pipes ran here and there over my head, cascades of water were rippling over the gigantic coolers; the smell of ammonia burned my throat, the odor of sulphuric acid was everywhere. But the works were in perfect repair and order.

"Take the crossroads through the fields, and don't go along the railway embankment, or you'll be fired on by the security police,' said the guard, as I left. So I took my way crosswise over the young wheat fields toward the languidly revolving wings of a distant windmill.

****

Two days after the capture of the Leuna Works I was walking among the mounds of slack and cinders which the fresh spring wind blew in my face and slipping occasionally on powder blackened cartridges left from the fighting of the previous day, when I came to Barracks No. 24. A group of young people was standing outside. A surgeon in a white jacket who had remained with the works during Communist control was among

them. A movie man and his camera completed the party.

What was going on over there? I pushed through the crowd to be greeted by a more horrifying sight than one usually saw even in the cruel and bloody days of the war. Dead men in working clothes were being carried out of the barracks, as if one were packing up the dolls of a puppet show. They were laid out in rows side by side with their dishevelled blood-clotted hair. To each was attached a wooden tag bearing his name. I counted them-twentyseven from this one building. How shall I describe it? Mere Communist driftwood from the wreckage of the fight? No, not that; they are dead men. And a little illogically, perhaps, this fearful sight moved me profoundly more than the greater slaughter I so often witnessed in our trenches during the war. Why is this?

I read on the tags: Hans L., laborer, eighteen years old. Karl F., laborer, sixteen years old...My God! These are fair, fresh boys' faces; lads who know nothing yet of life, mere children, children who stuck red rosettes in their buttonholes and

pinned Soviet stars on their caps in much the same way that they pinned artificial oak leaves and starched bunting rosettes and tiny beermugs with Haut den Luckas! on their coat

lapels when they went a-fairing. They had taken up arms as they would have gone to a football game.

I recalled the brief visit which I had made to the Communists at the Leuna Works on Easter Sunday. There was 'Comrade Kempin' and there was 'Paul', who could sign in order to avoid identification. He is only his given name to my credentials the man charged with blowing up the bridge at Ammendorf, and with other high crimes and misdemeanors. I had sat with these gentlemen at vanished. their headquarters. Now they have

danger, as soon as the security police As soon as they smelled advanced against the works they slipped away. They are the men who hounded on these boys, these children to their Red adventure. They are the men who dug their graves, but when the crisis came they deserted. They left the young lads whom they had beguiled to take the punishment, to die. What contemptible cowards!

WHEN I said good-bye to Max Hölz at Falkenstein in the Vogtland a year ago to-day I was sure that he only had a few more weeks to live. He still had a "Red Army" several 'hundred strong, and his authority over the entire Vogtland, a mountainous region up against the CzechoSlovak frontier, was undisputed. But

soon he, like all the other "Red" leaders who fought against the counterrevolution, was bound to be defeated by the Reichswehr with their discipline and their artillery. He, like the others, would be hunted down, would be tried, would be found guilty, would be shot. There would be no mercy for him.

He was caught by the Czecho-slovak police and imprisoned. The German Government demanded his extradition. He was tried and declared to be a political offender, not an ordinary an ordinary criminal. Extradition was therefore refused. He was released. He recrossed the frontier to live as a fugitive in Germany.

He lived in hiding for nearly a year. Sometimes the press reported that he had shown himself in some remote. village, but such reports never received confirmation. Amongst the poorer workmen of the Vogtland, a region of famine and destitution, he became a revered and almost legendary figure, a kind of Robin Hood. No one who addresses meeting of workmen in the Vogtland to-day dare say a word against Max 1 Hölz.

a

And now Max Hölz has reappeared, and his coming has fired the futile Communist insurrection into a last desperate effort.

At the Leuna Chemical Works, ⚫ near Merseburg, I met a workman whom I had seen with the Red Army at Falkenstein a year ago. He told me how to find Max Hölz.

On Saturday afternoon two motorcars, holding about a dozen men, drove rapidly along the road from Eisleben to Sangerhausen, in the province of Saxony. Three lorries, packed with armed men, followed on several hundred yards behind: Max Hölz and his Red Army.

He stopped his car and asked me to come along and see him occupy Sangerhausen. We careered into the square of the town. The Reds scrambled out of the lorries and surrounded the Town Hall. They stood with raised rifles, ready to hold up anyone who might try to

anyone who might shoot from the windows. Half a dozen men went in with loaded revolvers. They came out in a few minutes with three policemen in sky-blue uniforms, who looked rather pale but did not lose their stately bearing. They had to get into a lorry, and were driven off under armed escort.

Hölz had gone ahead to the "Schützenhaus," a big inn and bar-room built on an open space overlooking the wide valley. Here he made his headquarters. A small table, a chair, and a big map were brought out for him. He sat down, crossed his legs, and studied the strategic possibilities of the district.

Hölz had sent a few of his men out to take hostages. They returned. with the Mayor of Sangerhausen, the parson, and several other gentlemen, all looking pale and frightened.

Hölz had several bundles of proclamations in his car. They were untied and three or four men were sent out to post them up. In a short time there was a red placard at every

street corner:

DICTATORSHIP OF THE

PROLETARIAT!

I have occupied this town with my troops and herewith proclaim proletarian martial law. That is to say, every bourgeois who does not obey the orders of the Supreme Military Command will be shot. The moment I hear that Security Police or Reichswehr are on the march, I shall at once set the whole town alight and slaughter the bourgeoisie without regard for age or sex. As long as no Security Police or Reichswehr come near I shall spare the lives and the houses of the bourgeoisie.

All arms must be handed in to the

Two civilians, evidently scared by the proclamation, arrived under armed escort to hand in two revolvers. Hölz glared at them:

"Who are you, where are you going, what d'you want?"-he fired off the questions like a machine-gun. The civilians laid their pistols on the table. Hölz bent over his map once again and ignored them completely. They turned to go. He looked up, glared, and snapped "Stay here." Perhaps ten or twenty minutes had passed when Hölz looked up again and saw them still standing before him. He glared and spat out the words, "What d'you want?" They mumbled something incoherent. "Weg!" (pronounced "veck," and meaning "Go away!"), he shouted. They turned and walked off slowly, trying to keep up some show of dignity. Hölz jumped up, his eyes blazing with anger, and shouted "Weg, weg, weg!" The two men continued to walk with affected leisureliness.

Hölz drew his revolver and fired into the ground just behind their heels. The detonation accelerated their pace quite appreciably.

Towards four o'clock an engine with several goods wagons moved along the railway line down in the valley. A little later a Communist came running up, hot and breathless, shouting "Noske 'st ausgeschwarmt!" ("Noske has swarmed out"), meaning that Reichswehr soldiers, who are still called Noskes just as they were a year ago, had detrained and had spread over the country.

Hölz jumped up and shouted "Company leaders!" The company leaders paraded before him within half a minute. With a few sharp words and a few curt gestures he told each one where to go. They dismissed at the double, their companies, each about a dozen strong, following on behind. One company spread along the main street of Sangerhausen. At the corner of each street that ran down into the valley stood Communist ready to fire at any Reichswehr who might try to enter the town. The other companies were distributed along a vast semi-circle of which the train was the centre. A few rifle shots rang out, and soon the irregular rattle of rifle fire mingled with the regular tapping of machineguns. The fight lasted until nightfall. Three Communists were killed and several wounded.

one

Hölz sent for his dynamiters. Three men came with big tin boxes filled with some explosive. Two of them were sent in opposite directions to blow up the rails several hundred yards either side the train, the third was sent to blow up the post office. A loud detonation about ten minutes later showed that he had done his work.

Towards five o'clock Hölz sent for

the innkeeper, a small fat man, who looked very pale and scared.

"How much wine have you got in your cellars?"

"Only one or two cases."

"Fetch them out!"

The innkeeper went back under armed escort. A little later several Communists returned with bottles of wine in their arms.

The men re-entered the building once again and returned with more bottles. "I thought so," said Hölz, and gave them a contemptuous look. The innkeeper was allowed to go to his wife, who was wailing and wringing her hands over their lost property.

Amongst the bottles of wine were three bottles of brandy. Hölz sent them back. There was to be no drunkenness in his army. All the

the

"That's all we could find." "Send for the innkeeper!" The Communists re-entered building and came out again with the little fat man, who looked utterly miserable. Hölz glared at him silently for a while and then spat out the words "We want more than that!" "I haven't got any more; really I haven't." "Liar!"

"I don't think he's got any more," said a Communist standing near by. Hölz jumped up from his chair. Every muscle in his body seemed to contract. He raised his hands to the level of his chest, he curled his fingers so that his knuckles whitened. He thrust his livid face forward right into the face of the man who had spoken, his eyes dilating with venomous fury. The words "Shut up!" exploded at the back of his throat with a kind of guttural rasp. The Communist shuffled backwards, abashed and sheepish. Hölz turned to the innkeeper and yelled:

"We want more than that!" "I haven't got any more." "Stand him up against the wall and shoot him."

The innkeeper turned white. Drops of perspiration ran down his forehead. "Go and smash every door and search every room."

no one else was to uncork a single bottle. One of the men began to grumble. He felt thirsty, and said to Hölz, "Can't we

Hölz jumped up with clenched hands and gave him a look-if looks could kill, the the man would have dropped dead on the spot.

The cracking of rifles and the tac-tac-tac of machine-gun fire continued to sound from the valley. A wounded Communist came lurching along supported by two comrades. In the distance, near the entrance to a big factory building, a fallen Communist lay stretched out on his back. The innkeeper's wife was still lamenting wailfully in the bar-room. few scared faces were peering through the windows along the main street of the town. Communists were standing at each corner, occasionally kneeling down and firing into the valley.

A

Hölz asked me to come into the bar-room, where he introduced mè to his "Press Chief," a little fat man with a thick voice and a piece of lint clapped over a slight bullet wound on the top of his head. He sat by a big window, writing his official bulletin. He greeted me cordially as a fellow-journalist and gave me his view of the situation:

"Everything is in our favour. The Poles are on the point of invading Upper Silesia. They will keep the