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 Buechse_ (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 publishing 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 _Vorwaerts_ 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 asserted 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 titles. 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 asserted that the American Constitution 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 constitution 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 Assembly (Weimar) now planned will bequeath to us a charter equally as worthless. The workingmen are opposed to the perpetuation of private ownership."

In the face of this, it must be assumed 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 Koenigsberg (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 passed 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 Ruehle, a former school teacher from Pirna (Saxony), and now a member of the Reichstag, and Franz Mehring. Ruehle, 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 citizenship in 1870 by marrying a _Genosse_, a certain Dr. Luebeck, 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 surreptitious 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 authorship 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 attitude 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.

Outwardly, however, what was eventually to become a revolutionary movement made no headway during the spring and summer of 1915. The shortage of food, although making itself felt, had not yet brought general suffering. The German armies had won many brilliant victories and suffered no marked reverse. Mackensen's invasion of Galicia in May and June revived the spirits of the whole nation, in which, as among all other belligerent nations, a certain war-weariness had already begun to manifest itself.

The open break in the Socialist party first became apparent at the session of the Reichstag on December 21, 1915. The government had asked for a further war-credit of ten billion marks. Haase had a week earlier drawn up a manifesto against the war, but the newspapers had been forbidden to print it. At this Reichstag session he employed his parliamentary prerogatives to get this manifesto before the people in the form of a speech attacking the war as one of aggression, and announced that he would vote against the credit asked. Fourteen other members of his party voted with him. The German people's solid war-front had been broken.

The motives of most of those who thus began the revolt against the government and who were later responsible for the revolution are easy to determine. Many were honest fanatics, and some of these, chief among them Liebknecht, carried their fanaticism to a degree calling for the serious consideration of alienists. Others again were moved by purely selfish considerations, and some of them had criminal records. Haase presented and still presents a riddle even for those who know him well. Judged by his speeches alone, he appears in the light of an honest internationalist, striving to further the welfare of his own and all other peoples. Judged by his conduct, and particularly his conduct in the months following the revolution, he appears in the light of a political desperado whose acts are dictated by narrow personal considerations. He was particularly fitted for leadership of the government's opponents by the absence from his makeup of the blind fanaticism that characterized the majority of these, and by an utter unscrupulousness in his methods. He was free also from that fear of inconsistency which has been called the vice of small minds.

The questions growing out of the manner of conducting the submarine warfare became acute in the first months of 1916. The government was determined to prevent any open debate on this subject in the Reichstag, and the deputies of all parties bowed to the government's will. Haase and his little group of malcontents, however, refused to submit. They carried their opposition to the authority of their own party to such an extent that a party caucus decided upon their exclusion. The caucus vote was followed on the same day--March 24, 1916--by the formal secession from the party of Haase and seventeen other members, who constituted themselves as a separate party under the designation of "Socialist Working Society" (_Arbeitsgemeinschaft_). The seceders included, among others, Georg Ledebour, Wilhelm Dittmann, Dr. Oskar Cohn, Emil Barth, Ernst Daeumig and Eduard Bernstein. Liebknecht, who had been excluded from the party a year earlier, allied himself to the new group. All its members were internationalists.

The formation of the new party furnished a rallying point for all radical Socialists and also for the discontented generally, and the numbers of these were increasing daily. Under the protection of their parliamentary immunity these members were able to carry on a more outspoken and effective agitation against the war. Haase, Ledebour and other members of the group issued a manifesto in June, 1916, wherein it was declared that the people were starving and that the only replies made by the government to their protests took the form of a severe application of martial law. "The blockade should have been foreseen," said the manifesto. "It is not the blockade that is a crime; the war is a crime. The consolation that the harvest will be good is a deliberate deception. All the food in the occupied territories has been requisitioned, and people are dying of starvation in Poland and Serbia." The manifesto concluded with an appeal to the men and women of the laboring-classes to raise their voices against the continuance of the war.

The underground propaganda against the war and the government assumed greater proportions, and encouraged the revolutionaries in the Reichstag. Grown bold, Haase announced that a pacifist meeting would be held in Berlin on August 30. It was prohibited by the police. Sporadic strikes began. Ruehle had staged the first avowedly political strike at Leipsic on May Day. It failed, but set an example which was followed in other parts of the empire.

Liebknecht, who had been mustered into the army and was hence subject to military regulations, was arrested on May Day in Berlin for carrying on an anti-war and anti-government agitation among the workingmen. On trial he was sentenced to thirty months' imprisonment and to dishonorable dismissal from the army. This was the signal for widespread strikes of protest in various cities. There was serious rioting in Berlin on July 1st, and grave disorders also occurred at Stuttgart, Leipsic and other cities. Liebknecht appealed from the conviction and the appellate court raised the sentence to four years and one month, with loss of civil rights for six years. This caused a recrudescence of July's demonstrations, for a sentence of this severity was most unusual in Germany. Liebknecht's personal followers and party friends swore vengeance, and many others who had theretofore kept themselves apart from a movement with which they secretly sympathized were rendered more susceptible to radical anti-war propaganda.

The autumn of 1916 brought the government's so-called _Hilfsdienstgesetz_, or Auxiliary Service Law, intended to apply military rules of enrollment and discipline to the carrying out of necessary work at home, such as wood-cutting, railway-building, etc. This law produced widespread dissatisfaction, and Haase, by attacking it in the Reichstag, increased his popularity and poured more oil upon the flames of discontent. In March, 1917, he declared openly in the Reichstag that Germany could not win the war and that peace must be made at once.

The Russian revolution of this month was a factor whose influence and consequences in Germany can hardly be exaggerated. Not even the wildest dreamer had dared to believe that a revolution could be successfully carried through in war-time while the government had millions of loyal troops at its disposal. That it not only did succeed, but that many of the Tsar's formerly most loyal officers, as, for example, Brussiloff, immediately joined the revolutionaries, exerted a powerful effect. And thus, while Germans loyal to their government hailed the revolution as the downfall of a powerful enemy, the masses, starving through this terrible _Kohlruebenwinter_, cold, miserable, dispirited by the bloody sacrifices from which few families had been exempt, infected unconsciously by the doctrines of international Socialism and skillfully propagandized by radical agitators, began to wonder whether, after all, their salvation did not lie along the route taken by the Russians.

The radical Socialists who had left the old party in 1916 organized as the Independent Socialist Party of Germany at a convention held in Gotha in April, 1917. Eighteen men had left the party a year earlier, but one hundred and forty-eight delegates, including fifteen Reichstag deputies, attended the convention. Haase and Ledebour were chosen chairmen of the executive committee, and a plan of opposition to the further conduct of the war was worked out. Party newspaper organs were established, and some existing Socialist publications espoused the cause of the new party. Revolution could naturally be no part of their open policy, and there may have been many members of the party who did not realize what the logical and inevitable consequences of their actions were. The leaders, however, were by this time definitely and deliberately working for the overthrow of the government, although it may be doubted whether even they realized what would be the extent of the _debacle_ when it should come.

Reference has already been made to strikes in various parts of the empire. These had been, up to 1918, chiefly due to dissatisfaction over material things--hunger (the strong undercurrent of all dissatisfaction), inadequate clothing, low wages, long hours, etc. They were encouraged and often manipulated by radical Socialists who perceived their importance as a weapon against the government, and were to that extent political, but the first great strike with revolution as its definite aim was staged in Berlin and Essen at the end of January, 1918. The strength of the Independent Socialists and of the more radical adherents of Liebknecht, Ledebour, Rosa Luxemburg and others of the same stamp, while it had increased but slowly in the rural districts and the small towns, had by this time reached great proportions in the capital and generally in the industrial sections of Westphalia. Two great munition plants in Berlin employing nearly a hundred thousand workers were almost solidly Independent Socialist in profession and Bolshevist in fact. The infection had reached the great plants in and around Essen in almost equal degree. A great part of these malcontents was made up of youths who, in their early teens when the war broke out, had for more than three years been released from parental restraint owing to the absence of their soldier-fathers and who had at the same time been earning wages that were a temptation to lead a disordered life. They were fertile ground for the seeds of propaganda whose sowing the authorities were unable to stop, or even materially to check. Even Liebknecht, from his cell, had been able to get revolutionary communications sent out to his followers.

The January strike assumed large proportions, and so confident were the Berlin strikers of the strength of their position that they addressed an "ultimatum" to the government. This ultimatum demanded a speedy peace without annexations or indemnities; the participation of workingmen's delegates of all countries in the peace negotiations; reorganization of the food-rationing system; abolishing of the state of siege, and freedom of assembly and of the press; the release of all political prisoners; the democratization of state institutions, and equal suffrage for women. The strikers appointed a workmen's council to direct their campaign, and this council chose an "action commission," of which Haase was a member.

The authorities, in part unable and in part unwilling to make the concessions demanded, took determined steps to put down the strike. Their chief weapon was one that had been used repeatedly, and, as events proved, too often and too freely. This weapon was the so-called _Strafversetzungen_, or punitive transfers into the front-army. The great part of the strikers were men subject to military duty who had been especially reclaimed and kept at work in indispensable industries at home. They were, however, subject to military law and discipline, and the imminent threat of being sent to the front in case of insubordination had prevented many strikes that would otherwise have come, and the carrying into effect of this threat had broken many revolts in factories. Thousands of these men, who had been drawing high wages and receiving extra allowances of food, were promptly sent into the trenches.

Every such _Strafversetzung_ was worse than a lost battle in its effect. The victims became missionaries of revolution, filled with a burning hatred for the government that had pulled them from their comfortable beds and safe occupations and thrown them into the hail of death and the hardships of the front. They carried the gospel of discontent, rebellion and internationalism among men who had theretofore been as sedulously guarded against such propaganda as possible. The morale of the soldiery was for a time restored by the successes following the offensive of March, 1918, and it never broke entirely, even during the terrible days of the long retreat before the victorious Allied armies, but it was badly shaken, and the wild looting that followed the armistice was chiefly due to the fellows of baser sort who were at the front because they had been sent thither for punishment.

Yet another factor played an important part in increasing discontent at the front. One can say, without fear of intelligent contradiction, that no other country ever possessed as highly trained and efficient officers as Germany at the outbreak of the war. There were martinets among them, and the discipline was at best strict, but the first article of their creed was to look after the welfare of the men committed to their charge. Drawn from the best families and with generations of officer-ancestors behind them, they were inspired by both family and class pride which forbade them to spare themselves in the service of the Fatherland. The mortality in the officer-corps was enormous. About forty per cent of the original officers of career were killed, and a majority of the rest incapacitated. The result was a shortage of trained men which made itself severely felt in the last year of the war. Youths of eighteen and nineteen, fresh from the schools and hastily trained, were made lieutenants and placed in command of men old enough to be their fathers. The wine of authority mounted to boyish heads. Scores of elderly German soldiers have declared to the writer independently of each other that the overbearing manners, arbitrary orders and arrogance of these youths aroused the resentment of even the most loyal men and increased inestimably the discontent already prevailing at the front.