Russia alone can serve her interests in so terrible a war and work directly to that end.... But, in any case, as political affairs stand to-day, the chances are ten to one that at the first cannon shot on the Vistula the French armies march on the Rhine.
“And then Germany fights for her bare existence. ... In such circumstances (if Germany were beaten), what would become of the German Social-Democratic party? So much is certain: neither the Tsar, nor the French bourgeois-republicans, nor the German Government itself, would let slip such a fine opportunity for the crushing of the only Party that is ‘the enemy’ for all three....
“But if the victory of the Russians over Germany means the crushing of German Socialism, what then becomes the duty of the German Socialists in regard to such a prospect? Are they to remain passive in view of events that threaten their destruction?...
“By no means. In the interests of European revolution they are bound to maintain all the positions they have conquered, and not to capitulate either to the external or to the internal enemy. And that can only be done by fighting to the death Russia and all her allies, whoever they may be. Should the French Republic place itself in the service of His Majesty the Tsar and Autocrat of all the Russias, the German Socialists would fight it with grief, but fight it we would.” (Published in German under the title, “Der Sozialismus in Deutschland,” Neue Zeit, X. 2, pages 585, 586.)
These currents of thought were still active in the German Social Democracy in 1914. They were based on
