David, Frank, Göhre, Liebknecht, Scheidemann, Südekum, Weill, and Wendel, and the minority counting Geyer, Ledebour, Rosa Luxemburg, Stadthagen, and Klara Zetkin.[1]
The German Social Democrats, especially the radical minority, did their best to convince their foreign comrades that the action of the Jena Congress in approving the stand of the Reichstag group on the question of the military budget could not be construed as an endorsement of militarism. Karl Liebknecht's celebrated Krupp "revelations" of 1913 were continued and enlarged in May, 1914. The "Zabern affair" was repeatedly exploited in the Reichstag,[2] Wendel going so far in May, 1914, as to conclude a speech with the words, Vive la France. Similarly exploited was the prosecution of Rosa Luxemburg on the charge of libelling the army.[3] And when the Great War actually threatened, Vorwärts fairly fulminated against the impending disaster. In an extra edition published on July 25, 1914, a proclamation of the party executive in bold blackfaced type denounced "Austrian imperialism bringing death and destruction to all Europe". "However much we condemn the deeds of the Pan-Serb nationalists", it went on to say,
the frivolous war-provocation of the Austro-Hungarian government demands at any rate our sharpest protest. … No drop of blood of a single German soldier may be sacrificed to the ambition of an Austrian potentate in the interest of imperialistic gains. … The governing classes who in peace gag, despise, and exploit you, will use you as cannonfodder. Everywhere must sound in the ears of the potentates: We wish no war! Down with war! Long live the international brotherhood of the peoples!
In the din of the clash of arms, the voice of protest, of "international brotherhood", was swiftly silenced. Indeed the party executive hardly awaited the outbreak of war to sound a different note in another proclamation in Vorwärts.[4]
The frightful self-slaughter of the European nations is the cruelest confirmation of what we have long but vainly declared. … Yet not with fatalistic indifference shall we live through the coming events. We shall remain true to our cause, we shall hold firmly together, inspired by the greatness of our cultural mission. … The strenuous prohibitions of martial law affect with fearful force the workingmen's movement. Indiscretions, needless and foolish sacrifices, may disgrace at this moment not only the individual but likewise our cause.
- ↑ Protokoll (1913), pp. 171, 515–516.
- ↑ See the Stenographische Berichte of the sittings of November 28 and December 3–4, 1913, January 23–24, and May 14–15, 1914.
- ↑ This was just on the eve of the outbreak of the war. She was finally found guilty and sentenced to one year's imprisonment, beginning in March, 1915. See Walling, The Socialists and the War (1915).
- ↑ Vorwärts, August i, 1914.
