SOCIALISTS AND WAR 173 72 THE CLASS STRUGGLE were admonished not to disapprove of it on the plea of neutrality. When Germany inaugurated a peace propaganda in this country our party entered upon a peace agitation which was not essentially different in character from that of Germany official and unofficial representatives. We not only waited with the launching of our peace agitation until the official and semi official German propaganda in this country was ready for it, but the nature of our demands was largely a replica of that propaganda. The Socialist Party even entered into official relations with that propaganda, carried on in behalf of the governing classes of Germany, participating officially in peace demonstrations organized in its behalf.
The Cologne Gazette the other day said: The Kaiser best allies are the German Americans. Why was not our Party included? It has surely been faithful enough. By its treason to the United States, its shameless betrayal of the cause of democracy and political liberty it has become a stench in the nostrils of all forward looking men and women, and it has not even won the guerdon of a kindly word from the Kaiser sycophantic press.
It would hardly appear necessary to say that in my humble judgment the proper course for such American Socialists as are still affiliated with the Socialist party is to get out of it as quickly as may be and give their whole hearted support to the Government of these United States in its splendid fight to make the world safe for democracy. For myself am proud to say have not paid one cent of dues to the Socialist Party since the German Socialists voted for the war budget on August 4th, 1914; voted for Woodrow Wilson for President in the election of 1916; resigned from the Union Against Militarism when it began to attempt to hamper our government by a peace agitation after we had broken off diplomatic relations with the Kaiser government; promptly on its organization enlisted as a private soldier in the Connecticut Home Guard, the only military organization in which my age permitted me to enlist, and am now serving as a sergeant in the Home Guard, doing my part to protect my neighbors froni the violence of well meaning if feeble minded pacifists, and releasing the regular militia for service against the enemy that our Party has been so zealously aiding. further confess that have so far given way to what this magazine stigmatizes as vulgar patriotism as to buy a Liberty Bond; and should there be further loan issues have every intention of being vulgar again. note on page of your first number that your editors appear to grieve because the bulk of the Socialists of American stock are steeped in the vulgar pro allyism, etc. etc. hope that they are so steeped. am tempted to add that the great need of the American Socialist Movement is to become vital and vulgar. Vulgus is a good old Latin word; it means the mob, the fellows whom Lincoln used to call the common people. The trouble with the Socialist party has been and is that it is so immersed in the obscurantism and romanticism of Marxist and neo Marxist theory that it has never gotten into touch with and rubbed the elbows of the vulgar redblooded mob of the common people who mean to see this war through until the world is made safe for democracy. The American Socialist Movement can take its choice: It can become vulgar and live; or it can remain refined and become a cadaver.
Lest anyone fancy that Veblen has exaggerated the servile alacrity, the docile subservience of the German people, want to add my testimony. spent the winter of 1910 11 in Munich among the kindly Bavarian Socialists. questioned all with whom talked about the possibility of its becoming a duty to oppose the Kaiser in case of war. found just one comrade (a woman) to whom the idea was not absolutely inconceivable. Insubordination was to them simply unthinkable.
At a Congress of Bavarian Socialists to decide on tactics in the then approaching Reichstag elections, attended by several hundred Socialists, there was an official speaker who made a speech of about an hour length confined mainly to warning them not to offend the Catholicism of the Bavarian peasants.
At the conclusion of his rather weak address there was not