Page:Rosa Luxemburg - The Crisis in the German Social-Democracy (The "Junius" Pamplhet) - 1918.pdf/87

 Rh completely vanished, nowhere has it been so completely superseded by official opinion, by the order of the government, as in Germany. Even in Russia there is only the destructive work of a public censor who effectively wipes out opposition of opinion. But not even there have they descended to the custom of providing articles ready for the press to the opposition papers. In no other country has the government forced the opposition press to express in its columns the politics that have been dictated and ordered by the government in "Confidential Conferences." Such measures were unknown even in Germany during the war of 1870. At that time the press enjoyed unlimited freedom, and accompanied the events of the war, to Bismarck's active resentment, with criticism that was often exceedingly sharp. The newspapers were full of active discussion on war aims, on questions of annexation, and constitutionality. When Johann Jacobi was arrested, a storm of indignation swept over Germany, so that even Bismarck felt obliged to disavow all responsibility for this "mistake" of the powers of reaction. Such was the situation in Germany at a time when Bebel and Liebknecht, in the name of the German working class, had declined all community of interests with the ruling jingoes. It took a Soctal-Democracy with four and one-half million votes to conceive of the touching "Burgfrieden," to assent to war credits, to bring upon us the worst military dictatorship that was ever suffered to exist. That such a thing is possible in Germany to-day, that not only the bourgeois press, but the highly developed and influential socialist press as well permits these things without even the pretence of opposition bears a fatal significance for the future of Germany liberty. It proves that society in Germany to-day has within itself no foundation for political freedom, since it allows itself to be thus lightly deprived of its most sacred rights. Let us not forget that the political rights that existed in Germany before the war were not won, as: were those of France and England, in great and