This world war is not the first crisis through which our international principles have passed. Our Party was first tried forty-five years ago. At that time, on the 21st of July, 1870, Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel made the following historical declaration before the Reichstag:
"The present war is a dynastic war in the interest of the Bonaparte dynasty, as the war of 1866 was conducted in the interest of the Hohenzollern dynasty.
"We cannot vote for the funds which are demanded front the Reichstag to conduct this war because this would be, in effect, a vote of confidence in the Prussian government. And we know that the Prussian government, by its action in 1866, prepared this war. At the same time we cannot vote against the budget, lest this be construed to mean that we support the conscienceless and criminal policies of Bonaparte.
"As opponents, on principle, of every dynastic war, as Socialist-Republicans and members of the 'International Workingmen's Association': which, without regard to nationality, has fought all oppressors, has tried to unite all the oppressed into a great band of brothers, we cannot directly or indirectly lend support to the present war. We therefore refuse to vote, while expressing the earnest hope that the peoples of Europe, taught by the present unholy events, will strive to win the right to control their own destinies, to do away with the present rule of might and class as the cause of all social and national evil."
With this declaration the representatives of the German proletariat put their cause clearly and unreservedly under the banner of the International and definitely repudiated the war against France as a national war of independence. It is well known that Bebel many years later, in his memoirs, stated that he would have voted against. the war loan had he known, when the vote was taken, the things that were revealed in the years that followed.
Thus, in a war that was considered by the whole bourgeois
