when one feels that one represents a tiny minority, that one possesses no firm support in the people itself.
"At that time our party was still in a period of development. We were placed before the most serious test, at a time when we did not yet possess the organization necessary to meet it. When the anti-socialist movement came in the year of shame of our enemies, in the year of honor for the Social-Democracy, then we had already a strong, widespread organization, Each and every one of us was strengthened by the feeling that he possessed a mighty support in the organized movement that stood behind him, and no sane person could conceive of the downfall of the party.
"So it was no small thing at that time to swim against the current. But what is to be done, must be done. And so we gritted our teeth in the face of the inevitable. There was no time for fear … Certainly Bebel and I … never for a moment thought of the warning. We did not retreat. We had to hold our posts, come what might!"
They stuck to their posts, and for forty years the Social-Democracy lived upon the moral strength with which it had opposed a world of enemies.
The same thing would have happened now. At first we would perhaps have accomplished nothing but to save the honor of the proletariat and thousands upon thousands of proletarians who are dying in the trenches in mental darkness, would not have died in spiritual confusion, but with the one certainty that that which has been everything in their lives, the international, liberating Social-Democracy, is more than the figment of a dream.
The voice of our party would have acted as a wet blanket upon the chauvinistic intoxication of the masses. It would have preserved the intelligent proletariat from delirium, would have made it more difficult for Imperialism to poison and to stupefy the minds of the people. The crusade against the Social-Democracy would have awakened the masses in an incredible short time.
