Time and Time Again

34

IMMEDIATELY INSIDE THE building was a large reception area hung with trade union banners featuring trades long forgotten in Stanton’s century: wheel-tappers, lamp-lighters, panel-beaters, leather-tanners, boiler-makers, glass-blowers, riveters and woodturners. On another occasion, Stanton would have liked to look at those beautiful murals, those heroic frescoes, embroidered in an age when worker solidarity had been a noble and inspiring crusade.

This particular evening, however, was rather too fraught for sightseeing.

In the middle of the room stood the group of bearded men who had been on the platform. They were fussing over Rosa Luxemburg, who appeared to be a great deal calmer than they were.

One of the men noticed Stanton and stepped forward to introduce himself. He was handsome if a bit frayed at the edges, with a high forehead, a thick shock of wiry black hair and a moustache that was badly in need of a trim. The eyes that shone behind his wire pince-nez were forceful but they were not unkind.

‘Good evening, officer,’ he said. ‘My name is Karl Liebknecht.’

Stanton knew the name. It was one that was almost as familiar as Luxemburg’s to any student of modern history. In the century now lost this man would be the only member of the entire Reichstag to vote against Germany going to war. And a few years later he would die alongside Rosa Luxemburg, beaten to death in a Berlin street.

‘Hugh Stanton,’ Stanton replied, ‘and I’m afraid I’m not an officer. That was a ruse.’

‘A ruse? How very surprising,’ Liebknecht said. ‘Although perhaps not entirely so. If you had been a policeman it would have been the first time they’ve ever done us a favour. I don’t think you’re even German.’

‘No, I’m British. On holiday. Just thought I’d … well, lend a hand.’

‘I must say that really is most extraordinary. You have done a very great and noble thing, sir.’

There was a chorus of agreement at this, half a dozen grey and heavily bearded heads nodding their approval.

‘And how like an English gentleman,’ a female voice interjected. ‘You came to the aid of a damsel in distress.’ Rosa Luxemburg came forward and took his hands. ‘I rather think I owe you my life.’

She was even smaller than he’d thought; the top of her head came barely up to his ribs. But for all her diminutive size there was no doubt she had stature. Her face was so strong, with deep dark eyes and a long thin nose, the bridge perfectly straight, good skin and fullish lips. She was in her early forties and there were strands of grey in her hair but she still seemed youthful. For some reason Stanton found he liked her instantly.

‘Just doing my duty, uhm, ma’am,’ Stanton heard himself replying. He didn’t know why he said it, although he supposed he had to say something.

‘Your duty? Is it your duty to rescue Socialists? We could do with a few more of you about.’

‘Well, you know. I think it’s everybody’s duty to come to the aid of people in trouble … besides, I was happy to do it because’ – for some reason Stanton felt obliged to offer further explanation – ‘I have a friend who admires you.’

‘Really? Do I know him?’

‘It’s a she, an Irish Suffragette, and no, you don’t know her, she just thinks you’re important, that’s all.’

‘Well, when you see her please thank her for sending you to me. Will you take something? Tea, perhaps, as you’re English.’

‘Or we have whisky,’ Liebknecht interjected eagerly. ‘I could certainly do with one.’

‘You could always do with a whisky,’ Luxemburg replied with a smile. Stanton thought they seemed like quite a jolly bunch, despite the ordeal they’d just gone through. Interesting. If he ever imagined International Socialists at all, he probably thought of them as pretty grim. Maybe they went sour when they got into power; that seemed to be the way things usually went.

Stanton accepted a small whisky. He was a student of history, after all, and this was a pretty fascinating encounter: sipping Scotch right at the epicentre of radical politics at what was fast becoming its greatest crisis. It occurred to him that he might just be sharing drinks with the future rulers of Germany. Not a bad story to tell Bernadette!

He had definitely decided he would see Bernadette again.

The drinks were served in a small committee room. There were no servants. Liebknecht poured with enthusiasm and proposed a toast to ‘the man who saved our Rosa’.

There was an enthusiastic ‘Prost’ and Stanton’s back was slapped many times. Luxemburg herself, however, shook her head sadly.

‘I’m grateful to you, Mr Stanton, of course,’ she said, ‘but I fear you may have merely provided me with a stay of execution. You won’t be there the next time.’

‘You think the mob will return?’ Stanton asked.

‘They may not be back tonight,’ she said quietly, ‘but I can assure you that they will return.’

‘Well, yes, I admit it’s probably going to be rough for a while and you lot will certainly need to watch your backs but surely it’ll calm down in the end, won’t it? I have a lot of respect for the German authorities. I’m sure they’ll make sure order is restored.’

Luxemburg smiled at Stanton but it was a smile edged with fear and sadness.

‘They don’t want order restored, Mr Stanton,’ Luxemburg replied quietly. ‘They did this.’

Stanton was completely taken aback.

‘What? Organized a mob to attack you?’ he asked. ‘I really don’t think so. I was in among them and—’

‘They didn’t need to organize the mob,’ she said. ‘The mob organized itself after they killed the Kaiser.’

Stanton glanced at the circle of grim faces around him, some nodding in agreement, others with eyes cast down. He was astonished.

‘You can’t be serious?’ he asked.

He was incredulous. He’d thought that crazy conspiracies were a symptom of the internet age, an age when any paranoid lunacy could gain credibility simply through instant mass distribution. He had plenty of experience of deeply serious-looking idiots assuring him that princesses had been murdered by their exhusbands to stop them marrying Muslims, and presidents had been murdered by their own Secret Services. But he wasn’t expecting that kind of deluded paranoia from Rosa Luxemburg, one of the most celebrated and sophisticated intellects of the century.

‘Oh, come on,’ he said, ‘are you seriously suggesting that the German establishment murdered its own emperor? In order to get you lot? Come on. With respect, I don’t think you’re quite that important.’

‘Don’t you?’ Luxemburg asked. ‘I think perhaps they do. But it’s of no matter, what will be will be. One thing I can tell you, sir, is that His Imperial Majesty was not killed by a Socialist. We have been organizing in this city for thirty years. We know our people.’

‘Yes, but you don’t know every lunatic, do you? It was probably a lone gunman … a mad man who imagines himself a Socialist.’

‘With access to a printing press? Excuse me, but creating a leaflet of high quality which announces the death of the Emperor and calls for revolution is not something that one can have printed legitimately.’ She produced from her pocket one of Stanton’s own leaflets. ‘Whoever created this had access to a secret press, not an item that lone mad men tend to have cluttering up their garret rooms. Printing presses are large and noisy things, Mr Stanton.’

Not the one that had created that leaflet, Stanton thought, while conceding to himself that Miss Luxemburg was not in a position to factor desktop laser printers into her equations.

‘Look,’ Luxemburg went on, ‘I know it seems an incredible and rather appalling thought, but the only two groups who could possibly print something like this in secret are the revolutionaries, which is us, and the establishment. We know that none of our presses were used, so whose was?’

‘Well, it might have been done abroad … or anything,’ Stanton tried to protest.

‘Really? Why would any foreign group of Socialists possibly want to do this? To kill the Kaiser virtually anonymously, and to leave a message that could only create a massive and brutal backlash against Socialists. Why? The people who killed the Kaiser were sophisticated enough to produce this high quality leaflet and skilled enough to carry out a single-shot assassination at long range in a crowded city. And yet they left a message so utterly purposeless and vague that it could only have been designed to stir up trouble.’

‘Yes, but … killing their own king?’

‘Like you I find the cynical brutality of it quite incredible. I have lived all my life aghast at the complete moral vacuum that exists within the so-called Christian ruling class, and I never would have credited them with this. And yet I just can’t think of a more likely explanation.’

Stanton didn’t know what to say. Because she was right. In fact, what she was describing was exactly what had happened. A sophisticated group operating from within the elite establishment had killed the Kaiser and cynically framed the Left. The fact that the group had been formed in Cambridge in 2024 and not on the Wilhelmstrasse in 1914 was something Rosa Luxemburg could not possibly imagine. Apart from that, she was spot on.

‘Clearly you can see my point,’ she went on. ‘It seems we must accept that some part of the military establishment has declared war on us, and that they are ruthless enough to sacrifice their own king to the cause. The times ahead are going to be truly terrible. There will be a repression which will be medieval in its brutality. The net will be thrown wide and all but the most ultraconservative leaders and most obsequious and subservient peasantry will be considered fair game. The likes of us must go underground immediately or face arrest and disappearance. As I said, Mr Stanton, this is a war and there can be no doubt that we will lose all the early battles. But he who sows the wind may yet reap the whirlwind. They have raised the stakes. We must raise them too and fight fire with fire. Who can tell what the future may bring?’

Stanton looked around the group. The smiles had disappeared. They were all grim-faced and in deadly earnest. They were anticipating nothing less than civil war, followed by revolution if they had their way.

‘And so, Mr Stanton,’ Luxemburg went on, ‘I suggest that perhaps it’s time you left us to our troubles. I don’t think you can defend us from the entire German state.’