According to these reports there were no serious differences of opinion in our party in regard to the political situation, and our own position and decision to assent to war credits are alleged to have been arrived at unanimously.
In order to prevent the dissemination of an inadmissible legend I feel it to be my duty to put on record the fact that the issues involved gave rise to diametrically opposite views within our parliamentary party, and these opposing views found expression with a violence hitherto unknown in our deliberations.
It is also entirely untrue to say that assent to the war credits was given unanimously.
SOCIALISTS STILL GERMANS.
Letter from Philipp Scheidemann, Ex-Vice President of the Reichstag, in the New Yorker Volkszeitung, Sept. 10.
BERLIN, Aug. 21.
——, I send you a few facts.
No one in Germany wanted this war. The fact that Germany declared war on Russia and finally on France does not contradict this statement. If Germany, who was exactly informed as to the preparations being made by her neighbors, had delayed for ever so short a time, Russia would have completed her mobilization which she had secretly been carrying on for some time, and with her Cossacks would have swept down on our eastern country which was only moderately well protected. And then woe to us!