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50 THE CLASS STRUGGLE KARL LIEBKNECHT AND ROSA LUXEMBURG 51 military service, against war. He was among the first to recognize that militarism in Germany was more than the tool of the capitalist class, that it was becoming the spirit that dominated and controlled the very destinies of the nation. Since we are not in a position, he said at the National Party Convention at Bremen, in 1904, to carry on our agitation in the barracks, as is being done in other countries, let us then carry on our agitation while we can still do so within the law.
Let us systematically spread our ideas among the young people of the proletariat, laying particular emphasis upon the character of militarism; social democratic recruits will know what to do when once they are drafted into military service.
But we must see to it that the powers that be, when once they come into actual conflict with the organized proletariat, cannot feel itself as invincible as it does at the present time, that it will no longer be able to rely absolutely upon the obedience of its army, even for illegal purposes.
The persistent anti militaristic propaganda that was carried on under the direction and influence of Liebknecht and his followers was not without its effect. It is a fact that at the outbreak of the war the Young People Organizations in many parts of Germany were in open revolt against the position adopted by the party, and that in Hamburg and other localities, their organizations were summarily dissolved by the official party organization. The same radical anti war position was adopted by the Young People International, which was founded chiefly by Liebknecht efforts, and which, in the early part of the war, actually furnished the only channel for international communication at the disposal of the radical anti war minorities in the belligerent countries.
Liebknecht Becomes More and More Unpopular with the Official Party Leaders Karl Liebknecht soon enjoyed the whole hearted dislike of the party officials of the German Socialist Party movement.
They attributed his radical speeches and actions to a natural desire to be something more than simply the son of a famous father and refused to take him seriously. Their bureaucratic souls were completely out of sympathy with the wholehearted disregard for petty considerations that characterized liis every action, and regarded him with ill concealed contempt. Even in later years, after he had served a four year sentence in a military prison for his anti militarist agitation, even after he had won international fame in 1913 1914 by his celebrated Krupp revelations, he was looked upon as an irresponsible troublemaker by the more solid elements in the party. He makes himself absolutely ridiculous, said Scheidemann of Liebknecht during his American visit. Whenever you see him he is in a tremendous hurry, with a package of books and notes under his arm. He rushes from one meeting to another; in the morning he speaks in the Landtag, in the afternoon he has an important commission meeting. Then he runs into the Reichstag to deliver a speech there before the session closes.
It is impossible to get him to attend to his law business. If it were not for his brother William, he would not earn the salt for his bread.
The first Russian Revolution in 1905 and the period of black reaction that followed made a deep impression on the intense personality of Karl Liebknecht. He threw himself heart and soul into the propagation of revolutionary tactics in Germany, and, together with Rosa Luxemburg, launched a campaign against the pacific, purely political tendency that was taking root in the Social Democracy. At the National Convention of Magdeburg (1910) he bitterly assailed the party authorities for failing to arouse the whole country to a determined protest against the visit of the Bloody Czar to Germany. The Czar has dared to appear openly, as if he were a citizen, before the public in a number of German cities. He is moving through Germany at the present time more freely than he has ever dared to move in Russia. The thought is unbearable that he may dare to do in Germany what he could not think of doing in Italy or in France, or anywhere else, that Germany, of all nations should have been the one to give this man, who must flee from place to place in his own country, who must hide everywhere, like a robber, can appear before the German people like one who has a right to command the respect of his fellow men.
Rosa Luxemburg Liebknecht was by no means alone in his demands for a spiritual and revolutionary revival in the party. For years he fought for the realization of these ideas side by side with some of the finest men and women that the International has produced. Klara Zetkin, Franz Mehring and the heroic Rosa