"The war has proved that your constitution is no better today than it was when I expressed my opinion of it nine years ago. Your people have been helpless in the face of it and were drawn into war just like the other belligerents. The National Assembly (Weimar) now planned will bequeath to us a charter equally as worthless. The workingmen are opposed to the perpetuation of private ownership."
In the face of this, it must be assumed that American glorification of Liebknecht rests upon ignorance of the man and of what principles he supported.
For a few months after the beginning of the war Liebknecht stood almost alone in his opposition. As late as September, 1914, we see Haase heading a mission of Socialists to Italy to induce her to be faithful to her pledges under the Triple Alliance and to come into the war on Germany's side, or, failing that, at least to remain neutral. Haase, who was a middle-aged Königsberg (East Prussia) lawyer, had for some years been one of the prominent leaders of the Social-Democratic party and was at this time one of the chairmen of the party's executive committee. He was later to play one of the chief rôles in bringing about the revolution, but even in December, 1914, he was still a defender of the war, although already insistent that it must not end in annexations or the oppression of other peoples. It was not until a whole year had passed that he finally definitely threw in his lot with those seeking to weaken the government at home and eventually destroy it.
The real undermining work, however, had begun earlier. Several men and at least two women were responsible for it at this stage. The men included Liebknecht, Otto Rühle, a former school teacher from Pirna (Saxony), and now a member of the Reichstag, and Franz Mehring. Rühle, a personal friend of Liebknecht, broke with his party at the end of 1914 and devoted himself to underground propaganda with an openly revolutionary aim, chiefly among the sailors of the High Seas fleet. Mehring was a venerable Socialist author of the common idealistic, non-practical variety, with extreme communistic and international views, and enjoyed great respect in his party and even among non-Socialist economists. The two women referred to were Clara Zetkin, a radical suffragette of familiar type, and Rosa Luxemburg.
The Luxemburg woman was, like so many others directly concerned in the German revolution, of Jewish blood. By birth in Russian Poland a Russian subject, she secured German citizenship in 1870 by marrying a Genosse, a certain Dr. Lübeck, at Dresden. She left him on the same day. Frau Luxemburg had been trained in the school of Russian Socialism of the type that produced Lenin and Trotzky. She was a woman of unusual ability—perhaps the brainiest member of the revolutionary group in Germany, male or female—and possessed marked oratorical talent and great personal magnetism. Like all internationalists and especially the Jewish internationalists, she regarded war against capitalistic and imperialistic governments, that is to say, against all bourgeois governments, as a holy war. Speaking Russian, Polish and German equally well and inflamed by what she considered a holy mission, she was a source of danger to any government whose hospitality she was enjoying. She became early an intimate of Liebknecht and the little group of radicals that gathered around him, and her contribution to the overthrow of the German Empire can hardly be overestimated.
The first of the anti-war propaganda articles whose surreptitious circulation later became so common were the so-called "Spartacus Letters," which began appearing in the summer of 1915. There had been formed during the revolution of 1848 a democratic organization calling itself the "Spartacus Union." The name came from that Roman gladiator who led a slave uprising in the last century of the pre-Christian era. This name was adopted by the authors of these letters to characterize the movement as a revolt of slaves against imperialism. The authorship of the letters was clearly composite and is not definitely known, but they were popularly ascribed to Liebknecht. His style marks some of them, but others point to Frau Luxemburg, and it is probable that at least these two and possibly other persons collaborated in them. They opposed the war, which they termed an imperialistic war of aggression, and summoned their readers to employ all possible obstructive tactics against it. Revolution was not mentioned in so many words, but the tendency was naturally revolutionary.
Despite all efforts of the authorities, these letters and other anti-war literature continued to circulate secretly. In November, 1915, Liebknecht, Frau Luxemburg, Mehring and Frau Zetkin gave out a manifesto, which was published in Switzerland, in which they declared that their views regarding the war differed from those of the rest of the Socialists, but could not be expressed in Germany under martial law. The manifesto was so worded that prosecution thereon could hardly have been sustained. The Swiss newspapers circulated freely in Germany, and the manifesto was not without its effect. The Socialist party saw itself compelled on February 2, 1915, to expel Liebknecht from the party. This step, although doubtless unavoidable, proved to be the first move toward the eventual split in the party. There were already many Socialists who, although out of sympathy with the attitude of their party, had nevertheless hesitated to break with it. Many of these, including most of Liebknecht's personal followers, soon followed him voluntarily, and the allegiance of thousands of others to the old party was seriously weakened.
Outwardly, however, what was eventually to become a revolutionary movement made no headway during the spring and summer of 1915. The shortage of food, although making itself felt, had not yet brought general suffering. The German armies had won many brilliant victories and suffered no marked reverse. Mackensen's invasion of Galicia in May and June revived the spirits of the whole nation, in which, as among all other belligerent nations, a certain war-weariness had already begun to manifest itself.
The open break in the Socialist party first became apparent at the session of the Reichstag on December 21, 1915. The government had asked for a further war-credit of ten billion marks. Haase had a week earlier drawn up a manifesto against the war, but the newspapers had been forbidden to print it. At this Reichstag session he employed his parliamentary prerogatives to get this manifesto before the people in the form of a speech attacking the war as one of aggression, and announced that he would vote against the credit asked. Fourteen other members of his party voted with him. The German people's solid war-front had been broken.
The motives of most of those who thus began the revolt against the government and who were later responsible for the revolution are easy to determine. Many were honest fanatics, and some of these, chief among them Liebknecht, carried their fanaticism to a degree calling for the serious consideration of alienists. Others again were moved by purely selfish considerations, and some of them had criminal records. Haase presented and still presents a riddle even for those who know him well. Judged by his speeches alone, he appears in the light of an honest internationalist, striving to further the welfare of his own and all other peoples. Judged by his conduct, and particularly his conduct in the months following the revolution, he appears in the light of a political desperado whose acts are dictated by narrow personal considerations. He was particularly fitted for leadership of the government's opponents by the absence from his makeup of the blind fanaticism that characterized the majority of these, and by an utter unscrupulousness in his methods. He was free also from that fear of inconsistency which has been called the vice of small minds.