The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-08-15
From the First World War to the Second
By Burck

will find us by their side" And in vorwaerts March
H. 1881 one could read:
AT the conclusion of yesterdays session,
Schoepfin Social Democrat) once again vigor-
ousIy attacked the Communists declaring that
since 1919 he had stood in the National Assembly
for the creation of defense force. Social
Democracy had always aSsented to the Reichswehr
and in every year had voted the defense budget.
That they had moved the reduction of single items
made difference to their basic attitude. On
the basis of their positive state outlook, Social
Democracy had always given assent to the de-
Tense of the fatherIand, even during the period
of the Kaiser. He not only Social Democrat
but German, and if he was reproached with
having complied with orders Of the Minister of the
Reichswehr, then he would have to answer the
Communists that if it question of the Ger
man people and the German fatherland he would
rather go ten times with the Reichswehr Minister
Groner than with the Communist Stocker."
Can there still be any doubt that the armored-
cruiser policy of the Social Democratic Hermann
Mueller government forms the basis for the present.
day armament policy of the Hitler regime? Can
one forget that a Social-Democratic government
threw hundreds of millions into the nav of the
Hohenzolerns and prince of the church, while it
let the people go hungry? At the time when Paul
Boncour drafted the law of the armed nation,
he not an ornament Of the Second International?
ment convert Singapore into a naval base and
institute bloody massacres in India and Palestine?
Did not Henderson cover with his name the Geneva
disarmament deception, and did not the leader of
the British fascists, Mosley, come from the ranks
of the Labor Party?
August l, 1884 with its danger of and in
tervention, which has been intensified to the ut
most, more sees the Second International split
up and divided among the mperialist war camps.
rti of tha nj
in Germany and Austria are completely bankrupt.
In France part of the Socialists have openly gone
over to fascsm and in other countries also the same
process of the decomposition of SocialD is
being prepared In England, Bromley, the Secretary
of the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers
and Firemen, declared that situation was pos
sibe in which trade union members would have
to agree to war and one should not "prematurely
proclaim oneself against war. Under the demagogic
banner of the struggle of democracy against dicta
torship" the parties of the Second International
are attempting to drag the wide masses into new
world slaughter The Social-Democratic parties of
the victor countries, side by side with French i'm
perialism and in alliance with the fascist military
relationships of Eastern and Southern Europe, want
to win the masses for the preservation of the YER
sailes system. German Social Democracy, on the
other hand. already May II, 1888, voted for the
Hitler foreign policy Of ornaments and war.
The Second International has proved itself the
most important tool for the preparation of world
war and of intervention. On the eve of the second
world war there remains nothing more to be done
by the Second International whole 1t split
up into its national component parts and as in
1914 openly betake itself to the headquarters of i'm
perialist war But, branded with the mark of Cain
of August l. 1914, and with the criminal social
fascist history of the postwar period, the Second
International will not be successful again in shat
tering the international working class on the out
break of and leading it into the imperalist war
camp The toilng masses must recognize that the
struggle against the imperialist is inseparably
bound up with the struggle against the social pa
triots of the Second International.
ITO Be Continued)