132 THE CLASS STRUGGLE CURRENT AFFAIRS 133 should we on that account neglect to give to the affairs and occurrences within the movement the necessary attention. Distrust is one of the greatest of democratic virtues; serious and honest criticism are indispensable conditions for the healthy growth of a mass movement. The details surrounding the appointment of the American delegation to Stockholm emphasize the necessity of such criticism at all times.
The plan to arouse the masses by sacrificing himself had long ago matured within him. Now, when all other means had failed, he made his last desperate attempt. There was no hatred for his victim in the act. On the contrary, he admired the strong personality of this representative of reactionary brutal Austrian bureaucracy. The deed was done simply as a last appeal to the masses, as an outcry of protest against the government and against the Party. In Karl Liebknecht, whose whole conception of political working class life translated revolutionary sentiment into organized mass action, this development would have been impossible.
Soon afterward the Austrian Parliament was convoked. But the system of Stuergkh lives on, and with it the system of the great triumvirate Victor Adler, Renner and Pernerstorfer.
Whether the noble sacrifice of Friedrich Adler, one of the best men of the whole International, has borne fruit and in what measure the European censorship makes it impossible to judge.
But Adler speech before the court, which appears in this issue for the first time in the English language, bares to us a great and beautiful human soul.
The Socialist Party and Stockholm We are living in serious times. The government is advancing its heavy artillery upon the Socialist movement, refuses passports to its delegates to the Stockholm Conference, suppresses the Socialist press and indicates in a hundred other ways that, in its eyes, the Socialist Party is little more than a part of the German war machine.
It is only natural that, under such circumstances, an increased feeling of solidarity to the party should make itself strongly felt within our ranks. Every one of us, no matter how decidedly we may differ on questions of principle and tactics, feels the need of a firmer union in order to face the enemy with a solid, impenetrable phalanx.
But, necessary as solidarity to the party is in this hour of danger, it would be as great a sin against the welfare of the party It was a cable sent by our National Executive Committee to the Socialist parties of the European nations, urging them to arrange for an international conference as soon as possible, that gave the first impetus to the calling of the Stockholm conference. That was in December, 1916. In April, 1917, the National Emergency Convention was held in St. Louis, but nothing in the order of business prepared and submitted by the Executive Committee provided for the election of delegates or the discussion of peace terms or instructions to delegates of the international conference that was sure to come. It may be argued that the slogan No Annexations, No Indemnities fully covers all instructions that might have been given. And yet this is not sv. Already a number of influential comrades in the Socialist International strongly advocate the insertion of the word punitive before indemnities. What does punitive mean? Comrade Hillquit in a letter to the Times opposed the payment of an indemnity to Belgium. The delegates of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany, the revolutionary minority party, on the other hand, have published a peace program in which they demand an indemnity for Belgium, in our opinion an absolutely justifiable demand. Our delegates should express, not their own personal opinions, but those of the American Socialist Party. To determine where the party stands, a thorough discussion of the whole question in the St. Louis Convention was necessary.
But not only was every opportunity of ascertaining the views of the party membership on the question of peace terms carefully avoided, the membership of the party was not even called upon for its opinion when the time came for the election of delegates as to who should represent it at the conference.