Then came, on August fourth, the voting of the first war loan by the Reichstag. From what has already been indicated of the Socialist movement in Germany, no surprise should be evoked by the fact that the Social Democratic group voted "aye", nor by the statement which Chairman Haase read to the Reichstag in justification of the patriotism of his party:
Now we are only too surely confronted by the fact that war is upon us and that we are menaced by the terror of foreign invasion. The problem before us now is not the relative advisability of war or peace, but a consideration of just what steps must be taken for the protection of our country. ... As far as our people and their independence are concerned, much, if not everything, would be endangered by a triumph of autocratic Russia, already weltering in the blood of her own noblest sons. It devolves upon us, therefore, to avert this danger, to defend the civilization and independence of our native land. Therefore we must to-day justify what we have always said. In its hour of danger Germany may ever rely upon us.[1]
Into the subsequent developments of German Social Democracy it is impossible to go with any degree of assurance. It seemed by 1917 as if the party was hopelessly split. One little group, headed by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, had maintained continuous and consistent opposition to the war, but Liebknecht in voting "no" on the second war loan (December 2, 1914) had committed a breach of party discipline and had accordingly been reprimanded by a vote of sixty-five to twenty-six; and this "willful" group had been pretty effectually silenced by the thickness of prison walls. A larger group—the so-called "Minority Socialists"—supported the government so long as the war was obviously defensive against Russia, but as soon as it appeared to them to be waged primarily against England and France, and for conquest, they refused further credits in the Reichstag and became apostles of peace in the country: this group, though it included some of the most eminent Socialists in Germany, such as the great theorist Kautsky, the Revisionist leader Bernstein,[2] Haase, the successor of Bebel, Franz Mehring, the historian of the party, and Ledebour, was unable to control more than a fifth of the Socialist members of the Reichstag; claiming to be the true custodians of the gospel according to Marx and of the epistles of Lassalle, its members at length in 191 6 broke with the Social Democratic Party and formed
- ↑ Walling, The Socialists and the War, pp. 143–144; cf. La Chesnais, Le Groupe Socialiste du Reichstag et la Declaration de Guerre (1915).
- ↑ Bernstein was the only Revisionist of note who joined the "Minority Socialists". His attitude was no doubt determined in large part by his great admiration for England.
