Part 4 (2/2)
The military reverses of this summer thus found a soldiery hungry and ill-clad, dispirited by complaints from their home-folk of increasing privations, and, as we shall see in the following chapter, subjected to a revolutionary propaganda of enormous extent by radical German Socialists and by the enemy.
CHAPTER V.
Internationalism at Work.
No people ever entered upon a war with more enthusiasm or a firmer conviction of the justice of their cause than did the Germans. Beset for generations on all sides by potential enemies, they had lived under the constant threat of impending war, and the events of the first days of August, 1914, were hailed as that ”end of terror” (_ein Ende mit Schrecken_) which, according to an old proverb, was preferable to ”terror without end” (_Schrecken ohne Ende_). The teachings of internationalism were forgotten for the moment even by the Socialists.
The veteran August Bebel, one of the founders of German Socialism, had never been able entirely to overcome an inborn feeling of nationalism, and had said in one famous speech in the Reichstag that it was conceivable that a situation could arise where even he would shoulder _die alte Buchse_ (the old musket) and go to the front to defend the Fatherland.
Such a situation seemed even to the extremest internationalists to have arisen. At the memorable meeting in the White Hall of the royal palace in Berlin on August 4, 1914, the Socialist members of the Reichstag were present and joined the members of the _bourgeois_ parties in swearing to support the Fatherland. The Kaiser retracted his reference to _vaterlandslose Gesellen_. ”I no longer know any parties,” he said. ”I know only Germans.” Hugo Haase, one of the Socialist leaders and one of the small group of men whose efforts later brought about the German revolution and the downfall of the empire and dynasty, was carried away like his colleagues by the enthusiasm of the moment. He promised in advance the support of his party to the empire's war measures, and when, a few hours later, the first war-appropriation measure, carrying five billion marks, was laid before the deputies, the Socialists voted for it without a dissenting voice, and later joined for the first time in their history in the _Kaiserhoch_, the expression of loyalty to monarch and country with which sessions of the Reichstag were always closed.
Nothing could testify more strongly to the universal belief that Germany was called upon to fight a defensive and just war. For not only had the Socialist teachings, as we have seen, denounced all warfare as in the interests of capital alone, but their party in the Reichstag included one man whose anti-war convictions had already resulted in his being punished for their expression. This was Dr. Karl Liebknecht, who had been tried at the Supreme Court in Leipsic in 1907 on a charge of high treason for publis.h.i.+ng an anti-military pamphlet, convicted of a lesser degree of treason and sentenced to eighteen months' imprisonment. Haase himself had bitterly attacked militarism and war in a speech in the Reichstag in April, 1913, in opposition to the government's military bills, and only his parliamentary immunity protected him from sharing Liebknecht's fate. One of the strongest defenders of the war in Bavaria was Kurt Eisner, already an intellectual Bolshevist and Communist, who had been compelled earlier to leave the editorial staff of the _Vorwarts_ because of his far-going radicalism and dreamy impracticality.
All these men were subsequently bitterly attacked by Socialists of enemy lands for their surrender of principles. The feeling that dictated these attacks is comprehensible, but adherents of the my-country-right-or-wrong brand of patriotism are precluded from making such attacks. It cannot be permitted to any one to blow hot and cold at the same time. He may not say: ”I shall defend my country right or wrong, but you may defend yours only if it is right.” To state the proposition thus baldly is to destroy it. Unquestioning patriotism is applicable everywhere or nowhere, and its supporters cannot logically condemn its manifestation by the German Socialists in the opening months of the World War.
The first defection in the ranks of the Socialists came in the second war session of the Reichstag in December, 1914, when Liebknecht, alone among all the members of the house, refused to vote for the government's war-credit of five billion marks. Amid scenes of indignant excitement he tried to denounce the war as imperialistic and capitalistic, but was not permitted to finish his remarks.
There has been observable throughout the allied countries and particularly in America a distinct tendency to regard Liebknecht as a hero and a man of great ability and moral courage. But he was neither the one nor the other. He was a man of great energy which was exclusively devoted to destroying, and without any constructive ability whatever, and what was regarded as moral courage in him was rather the indifferent recklessness of fanaticism combined with great egotism and personal vanity. Liebknecht's career was in a great degree determined by his feeling that he was destined to carry on the work and fulfil the mission of his father, Wilhelm Liebknecht, the friend of Marx, Bebel and Engels, and one of the founders of the Socialist party in Germany. But he lacked his father's mental ability, commonsense and balance, and the result was that he became the _enfant terrible_ of his party at an age when the designation applied almost literally.
Educated as a lawyer, the younger Liebknecht devoted himself almost exclusively to politics and to writing on political subjects. Last elected to the Reichstag from the Potsdam district in 1912, he distinguished himself in April, 1913, by a speech in which he charged the Krupp directors with corrupting officials and military officers. He also named the Kaiser and Crown Prince in his speech. The result was an investigation and trial of the army officers involved. In making these charges Liebknecht performed a patriotic service, but even here his personal vanity a.s.serted itself. Before making the speech he sent word to the newspapers that he would have something interesting to say, and requested a full attendance of reporters. He delayed his speech after the announced time because the press-gallery was not yet full.
A consistent enemy of war, he attacked the international armament industry in a speech in the Reichstag on May 10, 1914. In the following month he charged the Prussian authorities with trafficking in t.i.tles.
But in all the record of his public activities--and he was forty-three years old when the war broke out--one will search in vain for any constructive work or for any evidence of statesmanlike qualities.
Liebknecht visited America in 1910. When he returned to Germany he attacked America in both speeches and writings as the most imperialistic and capitalistic of all countries. He declared that in no European country would the police dare handle citizens as they did in America, and a.s.serted that the American Const.i.tution is ”not worth the paper it is written upon.” In Berlin on December 17, 1918, he said to the writer:
”The war has proved that your const.i.tution is no better today than it was when I expressed my opinion of it nine years ago.
Your people have been helpless in the face of it and were drawn into war just like the other belligerents. The National a.s.sembly (Weimar) now planned will bequeath to us a charter equally as worthless. The workingmen are opposed to the perpetuation of private owners.h.i.+p.”
In the face of this, it must be a.s.sumed that American glorification of Liebknecht rests upon ignorance of the man and of what principles he supported.
For a few months after the beginning of the war Liebknecht stood almost alone in his opposition. As late as September, 1914, we see Haase heading a mission of Socialists to Italy to induce her to be faithful to her pledges under the Triple Alliance and to come into the war on Germany's side, or, failing that, at least to remain neutral. Haase, who was a middle-aged Konigsberg (East Prussia) lawyer, had for some years been one of the prominent leaders of the Social-Democratic party and was at this time one of the chairmen of the party's executive committee. He was later to play one of the chief roles in bringing about the revolution, but even in December, 1914, he was still a defender of the war, although already insistent that it must not end in annexations or the oppression of other peoples. It was not until a whole year had pa.s.sed that he finally definitely threw in his lot with those seeking to weaken the government at home and eventually destroy it.
The real undermining work, however, had begun earlier. Several men and at least two women were responsible for it at this stage. The men included Liebknecht, Otto Ruhle, a former school teacher from Pirna (Saxony), and now a member of the Reichstag, and Franz Mehring. Ruhle, a personal friend of Liebknecht, broke with his party at the end of 1914 and devoted himself to underground propaganda with an openly revolutionary aim, chiefly among the sailors of the High Seas fleet.
Mehring was a venerable Socialist author of the common idealistic, non-practical variety, with extreme communistic and international views, and enjoyed great respect in his party and even among non-Socialist economists. The two women referred to were Clara Zetkin, a radical suffragette of familiar type, and Rosa Luxemburg.
The Luxemburg woman was, like so many others directly concerned in the German revolution, of Jewish blood. By birth in Russian Poland a Russian subject, she secured German citizens.h.i.+p in 1870 by marrying a _Genosse_, a certain Dr. Lubeck, at Dresden. She left him on the same day. Frau Luxemburg had been trained in the school of Russian Socialism of the type that produced Lenin and Trotzky. She was a woman of unusual ability--perhaps the brainiest member of the revolutionary group in Germany, male or female--and possessed marked oratorical talent and great personal magnetism. Like all internationalists and especially the Jewish internationalists, she regarded war against capitalistic and imperialistic governments, that is to say, against all _bourgeois_ governments, as a holy war. Speaking Russian, Polish and German equally well and inflamed by what she considered a holy mission, she was a source of danger to any government whose hospitality she was enjoying.
She became early an intimate of Liebknecht and the little group of radicals that gathered around him, and her contribution to the overthrow of the German Empire can hardly be overestimated.
The first of the anti-war propaganda articles whose surrept.i.tious circulation later became so common were the so-called ”Spartacus Letters,” which began appearing in the summer of 1915. There had been formed during the revolution of 1848 a democratic organization calling itself the ”Spartacus Union.” The name came from that Roman gladiator who led a slave uprising in the last century of the pre-Christian era.
This name was adopted by the authors of these letters to characterize the movement as a revolt of slaves against imperialism. The authors.h.i.+p of the letters was clearly composite and is not definitely known, but they were popularly ascribed to Liebknecht. His style marks some of them, but others point to Frau Luxemburg, and it is probable that at least these two and possibly other persons collaborated in them. They opposed the war, which they termed an imperialistic war of aggression, and summoned their readers to employ all possible obstructive tactics against it. Revolution was not mentioned in so many words, but the tendency was naturally revolutionary.
Despite all efforts of the authorities, these letters and other anti-war literature continued to circulate secretly. In November, 1915, Liebknecht, Frau Luxemburg, Mehring and Frau Zetkin gave out a manifesto, which was published in Switzerland, in which they declared that their views regarding the war differed from those of the rest of the Socialists, but could not be expressed in Germany under martial law.
The manifesto was so worded that prosecution thereon could hardly have been sustained. The Swiss newspapers circulated freely in Germany, and the manifesto was not without its effect. The Socialist party saw itself compelled on February 2, 1915, to expel Liebknecht from the party. This step, although doubtless unavoidable, proved to be the first move toward the eventual split in the party. There were already many Socialists who, although out of sympathy with the att.i.tude of their party, had nevertheless hesitated to break with it. Many of these, including most of Liebknecht's personal followers, soon followed him voluntarily, and the allegiance of thousands of others to the old party was seriously weakened.
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