Page:Edward Aveling - Wilhelm Liebknecht and the Social-Democratic Movement in Germany (1896).djvu/7

 boundaries of nationality or religion—but only the one international people of the emancipators of labour, who know only one foe—capitalism, the exploiter, oppressor and debaser of the international people. Once again, thanks to my friends near and far away—my comrades in the fight in Germany, and my brethren in Prance, Austria, England, Switzerland, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Poland, Russia, Bulgaria, Roumelia, Belgium, Spain, Porgal, Australia and America. Thanks, a thousand time thanks, and Hurrah! for the International Social-Democracy. Charlottenburg, March 30th, 1896. Wilhelm Liebknecht."

As we have said, the Socialist party press everywhere had notices and congratulations about this seventieth birthday. Naturally, the middle class press indulged in their usual conspiracy of silence on such a great occasion. In the bourgeois papers almost no notice was taken of this great demonstration. English readers will have observed that the ordinary English newspapers were all silent about it. Nevertheless, we quote from one German paper belonging to the middle classes, the Berlin Volkszeitung, its tribute to Liebknecht. "So far as the personality of Liebknecht concerns us we hold it to be the first duty of a politician to be just to his political opponents, and to learn to consider him from the purely human standpoint. Thus considered it appears to us clear that during his long, active life, under the most difficult conditions, that have involved him in the heaviest personal sacrifices, he has been, and remains, faithful to his work for the masses of the people."

We quote next part of the beautiful article written by the Austrian, Doctor Adler, editor of the Socialist daily, the Vienna Arbeiter Zeitung. "In these testimonies of love and veneration for one of the most prominent representatives of Social-Democracy there is not a trace of that unpleasant deification of a personality which hides dehindbehind [sic] the glamour of a well known name the emptiness and selfishness of its own personal ends. The workers hold Liebknecht as worthy, not because he appears before them as an idol, but because they bear about within them the most living results of the deeds and the teachings of the man. Liebknecht's writings have led the workers into the way of knowledge. His name is bound up with the memory of the great successes and the most famous deeds of the fighting proletariat. The courageous self-sacrifice, the joy in battle.