CHAPTER VI.
Of equal importance in the attitude of the Social-Democracy was the official adoption of a program of civil peace, i. e. the cessation of the class struggle for the duration of the war. The declaration that was read by the Social-Democratic group in the Reichstag on the fourth of August had been agreed upon in advance with representatives of the government and the capitalist parties. It was little more than a patriotic grand-stand play, prepared behind the scenes and delivered for the benefit of the people at home and in other nations.
To the leading elements in the labor movement, the vote in favor of the war credits by the Reichstag group was a cue for the immediate settlement of all labor controversies, Nay more, they announced this to the manufacturers as a patriotic duty incurred by labor when it agreed to observe a civil peace. These same labor leaders undertook to supply city labor to farmers in order to assure a prompt harvest. The leaders of the Social-Democratic women's movement united with capitalist women for "National service" and placed the most important elements that remained after the mobilization at the disposal of national Samaritan work. Socialist women worked in soup kitchens and on advisory commissions instead of carrying on agitation work for the party. Under the socialist exception laws the party had utilized parliamentary elections to spread its agitation and to keep a firm hold upon the population in spite of the state of siege that had been declared against the party and the persecution of the socialist press. In this crisis the social-democratic movement has voluntarily relinquished all propaganda and education in the interest of the proletarian class struggle, during Reichstag and Landtag elections. Parliamentary elections have everywhere been reduced to the simple bourgeois formula; the catching of
