The Czechoslovak Review/Volume 2/American Socialist Party and its Slav membership

AMERICAN SOCIALIST PARTY AND ITS SLAV MEMBERSHIP.

 

At the recent conference of secretaries of the American Socialist Party at Chicago a memorandum was presented by the Czechoslovak branch of the party, signed also by the Serbian and Slovenian sections. The memorandum demands that the American Socialist Party change its anti-war attitude for one supporting the war.

The three following paragraphs best express the trend of the memorandum:

“The war and peace program of President Wilso, which today is timely and acute, in all decisive res pects is absolutely democratic and expresses those principles which international socialism always proclaimed. And these principles remain such principles regardiess of the fact who enunciated them. What we have considered good and demanded, we cannot declare evil or condemn because coming from somebody else.

The real mission of the Socialist Party in America now is, consciously and firmly to support the war and the principles laid down by President Wilson, and if the party now takes this attitude and in such a fashion that unsocialist pacifists and camouflage idolizing of the German regime will be unable to use it as a cloak, then it will have the next duty of seeing to it that the principles of President Wilson remain the real American principles until the very end, and that they receive appreciation in places where heretofore they have not been sanctioned.

If the steps hereinbefore enunciated are not taken, the situation so created will force us to act upon our convictions to the limit.”

In this connection it should be noted that the chief editor of the only Bohemian Socialist daily in America, Joseph Novak, recently enlisted in the Czechoslovak Army.