"Workers, comrades, and you, women of the people, let not this festival of May, the second during the war, pass without protest against the Imperialist Slaughter. On the first of May let millions of voices cry, 'Down with the shameful crime of the extermination of peoples!' 'Down with those responsible for the War!'"
LIEBKNECHT'S MAY DAY, 1916, SPEECH
Delivered at the Potsdamerplatz, Berlin, May 1, 1916
(Report by one present at the demonstration)
Berlin, May 1. Very early in the morning, with three other comrades, I reached Hortensienstrasse, where Comrade Liebknecht lives. We enter No. 14, climb up the stairs, ring his bell. Comrade Liebknecht opens the door himself. He is thin, his hair looks unusually black and his face is deathly pale. He walks like a dead man, walking with grim steps. He leaves us and soon returns with his wife; she is a Russian. She nods welcome to us all. Suddenly a terrible fear comes to me. No one has spoken a word, yet we all feel that we are in the presence of a supreme moment. From Comrade Liebknecht's grim silence we judge that he is about to hurl prudence to the four winds and defy the Government.
He hands out, one to each of us, a copy of the speech which he will deliver. So far not one word has been spoken. While we are hurriedly reading his speech, which is to be delivered within a few hours, he remarks, "I have several thousand of these printed."
We have finished reading the prospectus which will make history and send him to prison. Then we go into conference. We have been with him just an hour. We leave him.