The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-08-04


(Of the Frneh and Begian socialists
we will speak tomorrow and pillory
them along with Scheidemann & CO..
NO departure from an accepted his
~ torical line, however great, occurs
without certain indications that
herald its approach. Within the in
ternational socialist movement there
were small groups in every country
that were sceptical of the calibre OF
the leadership of the undetermined
German social democracy. There had
been straws to indicate the direction
the gathering storm would hurl the
international and most Of these
straws blew from the camp of the
German social democracy which exer-
cised theoretical hegemony over the
second international.
AS early as 1900 August Bebel,
the parliamentary leader of the Ger
man social democracy, in a debate
defending the socialists against hos
1 tility to Germany, had said in con-
temptation of a war with Russia:
"You will find that in case of
war with Russia, the Social Demo-
cratic element, which you designate
as unpatriotic and hostile to the
Fatherland, will perform its full
duty. Indeed, if we were attacked
by Russia, whom we regard as an
arch-enemy to all Europe and to
Germany especially, since it is upon
Russia that the German reaction
rests, / myself, old as / am, would
be only too willing to shoulder a
gun against her"
This speech aroused a furore in the
international and as late as the Essen
congress of the German social demo-
cracy in 1907, Bebel defended it de-
claring that he spoke only in case of
a defensive war. When asked by
Kautsky-himself one of the most
loathsome renegades and who during
the world war covered his infamy
with most vile perversions of Marx
ism-how he could determine whether
a war was defensive or not Bebel re-
Piled
well, it would be sad if today,
when larger and larger circles of
people are interested in politics
from day to day, we could not
judge in each particular case
whether it was an aggressive war
or not. A deception in such a mat
ter might have been possible in the
seventies, but it is no longer pos
sible today"
4 Thus August Bebel, the battle
SCARED veteran of the second inter
national turned his back on his own
past, when, in the -Prussian
war of 1901, he and Wilhelm Lieb-
necht, abstained from voting the war
credits and went to prison for the
working class.
The low political trickster and
mountebank, Phillip Schneidemann
and his associate, Suedekum, Richard
Fischer and their companions in in
etfable infamy had indicated on other
occasions the fact that they placed
the "Fatherland" above the interests
OF the proletariat
TODAY, thirteen years after. when
new wars are being waged by the
imperialist victors of the last war.
and more gigantic wars threatened
there are still valuable lessons that
we must learn from August 4th. In
1act we can never exhaust the lessons
to be derived therefrom.
NO one expects the impossible and
no one today embraces the illusion
that revolutionary situation is likely
to develop simultaneously with the
outbreak of war, any more than i
existed in Germany or other countries
at the outbreak of the last war. But
tnae Is no reason why the fight
against war must be abandoned and
the shabby fiction of national defense
embraced. The imperialism of enemy
countries is not overcome bv +be
workers. supporting their own I'M
perlailst governments, but by the
workers OF each country waging the
revolutionary struggle against their
own master class. The socialists of
Germany, had they followed the patb
of the revolution, instead of becoming
renegades and servants of his males.
ty, Kaiser Wilhelm, would have voted
against and denounced the war cred
ITS. That act alone would have given
tremendous impetus to the develop
ment of revolutionary situation.
The enormity of the BETRAYAL of
August 4th is all the more evident
when we recall that every advanced
European country was faced with an
objective revolutionary situation be-
fore the war was two years old.
| Under the pitiful and lying pre-
text that governments are strong
est at the time they enter war the
workers We're betrayed by the heroes
OF the second International. This fic-
ton must be exploded because az
other wars approach we will hear the
same treacherous arguments. The
facts are that at the outbreak of war
! the government ic xyao1, TIL :