THE CRISIS
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myth that they, the Social-Democracy—had themselves created "With heavy heart I have been forced to mobilize the army against a neighbor at whose side I have fought on so many battlefields. With honest sorrow I saw a friendship, truly served by Germany, break." That was simple, open, honest. But when the rhetoric of the first weeks of war backed down before the lapidary language of imperialism, the German Social-Democracy lost its only plausible excuse.
