Only this much has penetrated to us, that
our comrades in all of the countries under consideration have come to
the same conclusion as we in Germany. The French have approved the war
credits, the Belgians have admitted Vandervelde to the Ministry for
Defense. That our comrades in England have come out for the strictest
neutrality is easily understood. Any other attitude on their part would
be a crime against socialism. No one would be so ignorant as to find
analogies between the situation of the German and the English
Socialists. We in Germany had to perform the duty of protecting
ourselves against Czarism, we had to accomplish the task of saving the
country in which Social Democracy has reached its highest point of
development, from impending subjection to Russia. In England the
decision had to be made only as to whether sides should be taken in the
conflict between Russia and Germany, or whether neutrality should be
preserved.
A Germany under the yoke of the Czar would have set back a century the
Socialist movement not only of Germany itself but of the whole world.
Moreover, we Social Democrats have never ceased to be Germans, because
we belong to the Socialist International. And if we in the Reichstag
have unanimously approved the war credit, we have done no more after all
than to carry out what has often been repeated by our greatest
Socialists from the Reichstag platform.
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