NICOLAI LENIN
also to compel us to go against the International." Alas, it was not so. It turned out that the Social Patriots really had voted the war credits. When Lenin saw it, his first word was: "The Second international is dead."
At that time those words had the effect of a bursting bomb. At present we all see clearly that this is so, the Second International was dead. It is now as obvious to us as the A B C; but think only how great the prestige of this International had been before the war. It, at least, on paper, had counted several million members and contained in its ranks such authorities as Kautsky, Vandervelde, Valliant, Guesde, Plekhanoff. And all of a sudden a Russian Marxist gets up and announces to all the world, "The Second International is dead, and let it rest in peace." The howling and the protests of the acknowledged "leaders" of the Second International against the impertinent Bolsheviks knew no bounds. It was monstrous, they declared, that Lenin should so insult the entire Socialist world. Herr Scheidemann says so even now. Recently at Berlin the Imperial Chancellor met the leaders of the parties with reference to the supplementary treaty between Russia and Germany. Herr Ebert, Scheidemann's henchman, was the only one to vote against this treaty, because, forsooth, Lenin and his friends were disgracing the banner of Socialism in Russia. Scheidemann knows very well that he has a serious enemy in the person of Lenin. He knows well that if he is one day to hang on a lamppost—it will come to this, I can guarantee you (Applause)—he will be owing it, to a very large extent,among others, to Comrade Lenin.
Lenin was one of the authors of the main thesis of the resolution of the Stuttgart International Congress of 1907. Jointly with Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin invited the Stuttgart Congress to proclaim that should an imperialist war begin, our business would be to raise a
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