Page:The Bohemian Review, vol2, 1918.djvu/48

 by the most influential men of our party. It is but a sort of reaction which is preventing our party from taking the new course. It will be an honorable act of courage if the Socialist Party of America will declare its new standpoint openly and in a way which will quite correspond to its interests, the interests of socialism, the interests of the democratic world in general.

We demand with the full weight of our socialist vote that the Socialist Party of America declare in favor of the war against the Central Powers; that it offer this Republic all its loyal assistance and support against the outer and inner enemy everywhere, where the social and democratic in terests of this country suffer in any way whatsoever.

Bohemian socialist workers always did and always shall stand firmly upon this principle. In the war of nations which was transformed into the greatest revolution of the suffering masses of humanity, we march on with our American nation toward the great goal of a better future.

German militarism must be crushed because—“The world must be made safe for socialism and democracy.”

Chicago, Ill., Feb. 25th, 1918. (Signed)

Francis Joseph found himself in the early decades of his reign in the midst of two Liberal movements—the movement for Italian unity and the movement for German unity. Had he and his counsellors been capable of understanding the significance of these movements, had they not be dominated by the Metternichian fear of “the Revolution” which was held to be identical with the principal of Nationality, they might have led and have drawn strength from both movements. An enlightened view of the Italian Risorgimento would have enabled Austria to secure, by the sacrifice of direct political domination, a strong backing in the Italian peninsula; while the leadership of the German unitary movement would have made of Austria the acknowledged leader of the German race, and would have kept Prussia in a relatively subordinate position. Instead, Francis Joseph followed a policy of brutal resistance and repression in Italy, while in Germany he struggled only to maintain his presidency of the German League of Princes. Consequently, when there arose in Prussia a statesman of strong character and keen, almost infernal in telligence, he found himself utterly worsted. Bismarck first defeated Francis Joseph’s attempt to assert his leadership of German Princes at the Frankfurt Diet of Princes by preventing the King of Prussia from attending it. Then he enticed Austria into the joint Austro-Prussian attack upon Denmark in 1864, tore from Denmark the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, and established an Austro-Prussian condominium, or joint rule, in them, with the deliberate purpose of making that condominium a pretext for picking a quarrel with Austria at convenient season. The Liberal German movement for unity Bismarck had ridiculed and opposed, but he skilfully turned it into a Conservative and Chauvinistic movement against Austria, under Prussian guidance and for Prussian purposes. At the same time he allied himself with the anti-Austrian parties in Hungary and in Italy. The Italian Radical “Party of Action” was largely guided by Bismarck’s clandestine agents. The Hungarian Independence Party was similarly guided. Thus when the moment came, in 1866, to pick his quarrel, Bismarck was able to make an alliance with Italy against Austria, so as to compel her to fight on two fronts and at the same time to sap her strength by fomenting Magyar discontent and opposition to her.

Thus, in a sudden campaign of six weeks’ duration, the Austrian Army was overthrown at Sadowa and compelled to make peace. Prussia formed the North-German Confederation, suppressed Hanover and other German States, and dictated to Austria a peace which, while shrewdly sparing her susceptibilities in the matter of territory, left her in a position in which there could be no escape from Prussian tutelage. "Reprinted from The New Europe, Jan. 10, 1918.