Page:Edward Aveling - Wilhelm Liebknecht and the Social-Democratic Movement in Germany (1896).djvu/14

 this hour that their arrest, which followed hard upon these their righteous denunciations, was prompted from the King and Bismarck, then at Versailles. Anyhow, they were arrested on the 17th of December, 1870, on the charge of preparation for high treason. With them was arrested Hepner, one of their fellow workers on the Volkstatt. The arrest and the trial both took place at Leipzig. The trial, however, not until three months after the arrest, i.e., on the 28th of March, 1871. Their sentence was two years, and the three and a half months that they had been lying under arrest was mercifully counted as part of the two years, but only as equivalent to two months. As Bebel has written of this trial: "The trial itself in which Liebknecht appeared as the chief accused, was, as far as the party was concerned the most splendid means of agitation we could have wished for, and the effect it produced was worth all that we had to undergo."

After his release Liebknecht was the chief instrument in bringing about the Congress of 1875 at Gotha, where the final and complete union between the Lassalleans and the Eisenachers, as the others have been called, took place. From that time forward there was only one Party in Germany, the Socialist Workers' Party, and the Volkstatt became the Vorwärts, with Liebknecht still its chief editor, although Hasenclever was associated with him. In 1878 Bismark made his celebrated attempt and his most ignominious failure; the anti-Socialist law. That lasted twelve years, up to 1890. During those twelve years Liebknecht was obliged to live at a little village called Borsdorf, separated from his wife and children. What a failure the anti-Socialist law was—how during the time of it and in consequence of it the strength of the party grew by leaps and bounds—all the world knows now. And it is admitted on all hands that one of the greatest causes of that failure, so ignominious and so complete, was Liebknecht. Hear again what Bebel says: "How this attempt (to break up the German Social-Democracy) failed, everyone knows. But that it failed to do this, Liebknecht has contributed to most efficiently."

Liebknecht's work during the last five or six years is so well known to every student of the movement and is, indeed, so well known to every ordinary reader of the newspapers, that nothing more need be said in this connection. But not everyone knows the real strength and significance