Page:American Historical Review, Vol. 23.djvu/109

Rh Then came, on August fourth, the voting of the first war loan by the Reichstag. From what has already been indicated of the Socialist movement in Germany, no surprise should be evoked by the fact that the Social Democratic group voted "aye", nor by the statement which Chairman Haase read to the Reichstag in justification of the patriotism of his party:

Into the subsequent developments of German Social Democracy it is impossible to go with any degree of assurance. It seemed by 1917 as if the party was hopelessly split. One little group, headed by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, had maintained continuous and consistent opposition to the war, but Liebknecht in voting "no" on the second war loan (December 2, 1914) had committed a breach of party discipline and had accordingly been reprimanded by a vote of sixty-five to twenty-six; and this "willful" group had been pretty effectually silenced by the thickness of prison walls. A larger group—the so-called "Minority Socialists"—supported the government so long as the war was obviously defensive against Russia, but as soon as it appeared to them to be waged primarily against England and France, and for conquest, they refused further credits in the Reichstag and became apostles of peace in the country: this group, though it included some of the most eminent Socialists in Germany, such as the great theorist Kautsky, the Revisionist leader Bernstein, Haase, the successor of Bebel, Franz Mehring, the historian of the party, and Ledebour, was unable to control more than a fifth of the Socialist members of the Reichstag; claiming to be the true custodians of the gospel according to Marx and of the epistles of Lassalle, its members at length in 191 6 broke with the Social Democratic Party and formed