Page:Rosa Luxemburg - The Crisis in the German Social-Democracy (The "Junius" Pamplhet) - 1918.pdf/26

 24 the Social-Democracy before the war. Where the crown speech denies all aims of conquest, the Reichstag group repudiates a war of conquest by standing upon its Socialism. And when the Emperor and the Chancellor cry out, "We are fighting for the highest principles. We know no parties, we know only Germans," the social-democratic declaration echoes: "Our people risks everything. In this hour of danger we will not desert our Fatherland." Only in one point does the social-democratic declaration differ from its government model, it placed the danger of Russian despotism in the foreground of its orientation, as a danger to German freedom. The crown speech says, regarding Russia: "With a heavy heart I have been forced to mobilize against a neighbor with whom I have fought upon so many battle fields. With honest sorrow I have seen a friendship faithfully kept by Germany, fall to pieces." The social-democratic group changed, this sorrowful rupture of a true friendship with the Russian Tsar into a fanfare for liberty against despotism, used the revolutionary heritage of Socialism to give to the war a democratic mantle, a popular halo. Here alone the social-democratic declaration gives evidence of independent thought on the part of our Social-Democrats.

As we have said, all these things came to the Social Democracy as a sudden inspiration on the fourth of August. All that they had said up to this day, every declaration that they had made, down to the very eve of the war, was in diametrical opposition to the declaration of the Reichstag group. The "Vorwaerts" wrote on July 25th, when the Austrian ultimatum to Servia was published:

"They want the war, the unscrupulous elements that influence and determine the Wiener Hofburg. They want the war—it has been ringing out of the wild cries of the black-yellow press for weeks. They want the war—the Austrian ultimatum to Servia makes it plain and clear to the world.

"Because the blood of Franz Ferdinand and his wife flowed under the shots of an insane fanatic, shall the blood of thousands of workers