be taken as a compliment, but it is the truth; and this truth we must keep in sight, and direct our affairs accordingly. ["Quite right!"][1]
Bebel and the trade-unionists carried the day at Mannheim;[2] and at the international congresses of 1907, 1910, and 1912, the majority of the German delegates renewed their opposition to the general strike.[3]
Parallel with the debates in the Socialist congresses on the practicability of the general strike, went debates in the Reichstag and in the press on the changed tendencies of German foreign policy: the new imperialism and "world power", and the rapid increase of military and naval armaments. Into these debates the Social Democrats entered with enthusiasm and unanimity, denouncing the Chinese expedition of 1900, the Bagdad railway concessions, the spectacular entry of the Kaiser into the Moroccan imbroglio in 1905, the outrages committed by German soldiers in suppressing the Southwest African revolt in 1905–1906, and the constant threats of armed force with which the emperor and Chancellor von Bülow sought to widen the sphere of Germany's participation in world politics and in economic exploitation.[4] It was because the Socialist group in the Reichstag made common cause with the Centrists in 1906 in refusing appropriations deemed necessary for the suppression of the African revolt, that the government dissolved the lower house and decreed the fateful elections of January, 1907. The decisive nature of the impending elections was clearly stated in the electoral address of the Social Democrats:
You have now to choose new deputies at the polls, in accordance with your opinions, not merely upon the position in Southwest Africa, but upon our entire policy at home and abroad. The situation is serious, very serious. After a thirty-five years' existence the German Empire finds itself in almost complete isolation. For the last fifteen years there has been no lack of speeches and trips made in many potentates' countries, no lack of presents made to the most diverse nations. But the result of all these unsought assurances of love and affection is that to-day German policy is regarded with distrust by almost every foreigner, and Germany instead of friends has scarcely any but covert or overt enemies. Consequently, the world-situation is such that despite all the peace-loving assurances which ruling sovereigns give on occasion after occasion, armaments by land and sea are
- ↑ Protokoll des Parteitages (1906), pp. 240–241; cf. Ensor, Modern Socialism (second ed.. 1908), p. 195.
- ↑ The Mannheim Resolution was worded as a compromise: in effect it was a defeat for Rosa Luxemburg and her party. Cf. Wilhelm Schröder, op. cit., p. 310.
- ↑ Walling, The Socialists and the War (1915), pp. 30–49.
- ↑ See Parvus, Die Kolonialpolitik und der Zusammenbruch (1907), and Gustav Noske, Kolonialpolitik und Sozialdemokratie (1914)
