cratic Reichstag group. When it announced on the 4th of August, "in this hour of danger, we will not desert our fatherland," it denied its own words in the same breath. For truly it has deserted its fatherland in its hour of greatest danger. The highest duty of the Social-Democracy toward its fatherland demanded that it expose the real background of this imperialistic war, that it rend the net of imperialistic and diplomatic lies that covers the eyes of the people. It was their duty to speak loudly and clearly, to proclaim to the people of Germany that in this war victory and defeat would be equally fatal, to oppose the gagging of the fatherland by a state of siege, to demand that the people alone decide on war and peace, to demand a permanent session of Parliament for the period of the war, to assume a watchful control over the government by parliament, and over parliament by the people, to demand the immediate removal of all political inequalities, since only a free people can adequately govern its country, and finally, to oppose to the imperialist war, based as it was upon the most reactionary forces in Europe, the program of Marx, of Engels, and Lassalle.
That was the flag that should have waved over the country. That would have been truly national, truly free, in harmony with the best traditions of Germany and the International class policy of the proletariat.
The great historical hour of the world war obviously demanded a unanimous political accomplishment, a broadminded, comprehensive attitude that only the Social-Democracy is destined to give. Instead, there followed, on the part of the parliamentary representatives of the working class, a miserable collapse. The Social-Democracy did not adopt the wrong policy—it had no policy whatsoever. It has wiped itself out completely as a class party with a world-conception of its own, has delivered the country, without a word of protest, to the fate of imperialistic war without, to the dictatorship of the sword within. Nay more, it has taken the responsibility for the war upon its own shoulders.
