A Send-Off

One Wilhelm Dreyer, a German, dynamited a train in the Ruhr. He was sentenced to death by a French court-martial. The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and he died at the French prison of St. Martin.

The French authorities returned the body to Germany, where the funeral of the saboteur was made an occasion for a wild nationalist outbreak. The coffin was transhipped in solemn state across Berlin. It was stored in the room at the Anhalter railway station reserved for visitors of royal rank. After speeches by members of the Cabinet, Nationalist throngs sang Deutschland Ober Alles. A forest of flags surrounded the cortege, and bore the anti-Jewish swastika cross, old Monarchist and Prussian flags, death's head flags with the motto Mit Gott fuer Kaiser und der Vaterland. As the royalist hymns arose, adjacent factories and warehouses were lined with workers, stenographers and pale-faced girls who struck up the Communist Internationale in competition with the blare of the Reischswehr bands..

At the station of departure, Willy Dreyer was given a rousing send-off on his last journey. Dr. Karl Jarres, the Vice Chancellor delivered a funeral oration, picturing the fate of the 1,500 Germans sentenced for sabotage in the Ruhr. Crying "Down with the Republic! Down with the Jews!" the howling mass of monarchists seized republican flags and tore them up. Cavalry squadrons of Reichswehr charged the monarchists and ended their assault on the flag of the Reich. Their cheers for Hitler and Ludendorff broke up the marching order of 30 nationalist organizations and destroyed their treasonable emblems. Scores were hurt in the fighting.