94 THE CLASS STRUGGLE 95 EDITORIALS control, and then the government, would mean to begin building the house at the roof. We were prevented from establishing a modern uniform government under capitalist rule, because of the maintenance of our two dozen kings and princes and the slavish servility of our bourgeoisie toward them. To build up the state, we must first clear away this mass of feudal rubbish, which hinders us from immediately undertaking the socialization of society with all our strength before calling together the National Constituent Assembly.
Naturally, much can be done and must be done immediately.
But for the speedy establishment of truly thoroughgoing measures, the machinery of state must first be changed. The transformation of Germany into a democratic republic must not be confined to the disappearance of a few dynasties. It must penetrate the entire spirit of the government in all its details. And only a National Constituent Assembly can do this.
The name of Eugene Debs appears for the first time this month as one of our Editors.
Comrade Debs has accepted the invitation of The Socialist Publication Society to serve in this capacity, as he feels that he is in full accord with the policy of The Class Struggle. World Safe for Democracy It is characteristic of the thoughtless carelessness with which political catchwords are accepted in this country that a people that went war mad for democracy finds nothing to cayil in the fact that the issues of the war, and the peace terms that will decide the future history of the world, are being decided by three men, Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau. Aside from the fact that not one of these gentlemen can even pretend to represent the people of the nation that sent them.
Woodrow Wilson was elected because he kept us out of war, against a Republican Preparedness candidate. In the recent Congressional elections the Democratic candidates for election and re election to Congress met with unqualified defeat, in spite of the fact that the President pleaded for the return of a Democratic majority to Congress as a vote of confidence before the eyes of the world. The peace commission was appointed by the President without advice or ratification from any legally constituted body in the government of the country. The President left the United States with the peace commission without consulting with either of the two legislative bodies in Washington as to the peace terms to be demanded in the name of the people of the United States, aye, without even indicating the position that he, the representative of the great American democracy, would take at the Peace Conference.
To be sure, the Constitution provides that all terms of peace must receive the ratification of the Senate before they can be finally adopted. But not even the wildest flight of imagination