106 THE CLASS STRUGGLE CURRENT AFFAIRS 107 tionary influence in the United States today than that of the average German voter.
The battle has been fought and won. new and a bigger fight is on, the fight, not for humanity and the people, as it was rather unfortunately expressed in our city campaign, but for Socialism and the working class.
Education along the lines of revolutionary Socialism, organization of the newly won forces to prepare them for the final aims of the Socialist movement, the emancipation of the working class throughout the world, now more than ever before must be our goal.
Act, Not Withdraw One of the interesting by products of the electoral campaign just closed is a complete change of front on the question of war on the part of Morris Hillquit, National Chairman and International Secretary of the Socialist Party, and that part of the latter organization which follows his leadership.
Like all strategic retreats this change of position was made under cover, and under the pretense that the old line is being maintained. But the retreat once made the change of position cannot be concerted, and the battle must be fought on the new battle line thereby established. Like all such retreats it was presumably undertaken because the old position was considered untenable and impossible to defend. The new line reached, the old one must necessarily be abandoned.
When the electoral campaign opened the battlefront ran along a line marked absolute opposition to the war and demand for immediate peace, but some time in the early part of October this line was abandoned and a general retirement ordered to a new position. Just what the new position is, is not quite clear as yet, but it has been sufficiently indicated to show that it does not mean absolute opposition to the war, nor a demand for immediate peace. The first announcement of the new position came in a letter from Hillquit to the New Republic, in which ke said. do not advocate an immediate separate peace, a withdrawal ty America. Nothing that have ever said or written could justify such a sweeping assertion. want America to act, not to withdraw.
Following this the Socialist Party organizations of Greater New York, through their Campaign Committee, issued a statement to the voters on the subject of War and Peace in which the position of the Socialist Party on this momentous question was stated to be as follows. The Socialist Party is an international party. do not favor a separate peace, a withdrawal by America to leave Europe to struggle alone to its ruin.
It is not our intention to discuss here the new question, either as to its correctness or as to all of its implications and consequences. All that we desire to do here is to call attention to the bare fact that a change has taken place, and point out how vast and important the change is.
When the famous majority resolution was adopted at St. Louis last April, the Socialist Party position with respect to America in the war was clear and unmistakable: America entry into the war was a crime, and we therefore demand it withdraw from the conflict immediately. The working class of the United States says the St. Louis Resolution has no quarrel with the working class of Germany or of any other country. The people of the United States have no quarrel with the people of Germany or of any other country.
The American people did not want and do not want this war.
They have not been consulted about the war and have had no part in declaring it. They have been plunged into this war by the trickery and treachery of the ruling class of this country through its representatives in the National Administration and National Congress, its demagogic agitators, its subsidized press, and other servile instruments of public expression.