By KARL LIEBKNECHT*
Who should the German people thank for the continuation of the horrible war, for Italy's intervention? No one is responsible except the irresponsible people in our own country!
What had been expected for ten months, since Austria's attack on Serbia, has happened: the war against Italy has begun.
The masses of the belligerent countries began to free themselves from the web of official lies. Knowledge of the grounds and aims of the world war, of who bore direct responsibility for its outbreak, also began to spread among the German people. Illusions about the “sacred” aims of the war diminished, enthusiasm for war cooled, and the desire for peace rapidly gained a powerful momentum everywhere – even in the army!
This was a great problem for the German and Austrian imperialists, who were vainly seeking their salvation. It seems to have come to them now. Italy's intervention in the war must offer them a welcome opportunity to whip up new frenzies of national hatred, to stifle the will for peace and to hide the traces of their own guilt. They are banking on the German people's forgetfulness, they are banking on their patience, which has already been abused too often.
If this plan succeeds, the bloody experience of ten months would have been discarded, the international proletariat would be disarmed and completely erased as an independent political factor.
The plan must be thwarted – as long as that part of the German proletariat which has remained faithful to international socialism keeps in view and remains faithful to its historic mission in this terrible moment.
The enemy of the people counts on the forgetfulness of the masses – to this speculation we counterpose the resolution: Learn everything, forget nothing! Forget nothing!
We have watched the masses bewitched by the explosion of bellicosity of the ruling classes with their seductive melodies for the purposes of capitalist war. We have seen the glitter of demagogy burst like soap bubbles, the lunatic dreams of August evaporate; how, instead of joy, anger and misery have descended upon the masses, how the tears of widows and war organs have flowed in torrents, how the miseries of the three classes have been maintained, the obstinate canonization of the quartet: semi-absolutism – rule of the junkers – militarism – police despotism – has become a bitter truth.
Thanks to experience, we are alert: learn everything, forget nothing!
The diatribes with which Italian imperialism disguises its policy of plunder are repugnant; this Roman tragicomedy in which the now common gesture of the Burgfrieden is present. Most disgusting, however, is that in all this we recognize the German and Austrian methods of July and August 1914.
The Italian war agitators deserve to be denounced. But they are nothing more than copycats of the German and Austrian war agitators, who are mainly responsible for the outbreak of war. Birds of a feather!
Who can the German people thank for this tribulation?
Who will be held accountable for the victims of the new hecatombs, which will become increasingly greater?
It remains the case that Austria’s ultimatum to Serbia on July 23, 1914, was the spark that ignited the world, although it spread to Italy only belatedly. It remains the case that this ultimatum was the signal for the redistribution of the world and, of necessity, called for the participation of all the capitalist plundering states in the plan. It remains the case that this ultimatum put on the agenda the question of supremacy in the Balkans, Asia Minor and the entire Mediterranean Sea and thus contained at the same time the contrasts between Austria and Germany and Italy in one fell swoop.
If German and Austrian imperialisms are now hiding behind the thicket of Italian robbery, if they are trying to hide behind the scenes of Italian disloyalty, if they are wearing the robe of moral indignation and innocence, whereas in Rome they have in reality found their equals, they are deserving of the highest contempt.
Let us not forget that the German people were deceived precisely on the Italian question, they were deceived by the very respectable German patriots.
The triple alliance with Italy has always been a sham – you have been deceived about it!
Experts have always taken it for granted that in the event of war Italy would be an antagonist to Austria and Germany – you were led to believe that she would be a sure ally! In the Treaty of the Triple Alliance, whose conclusion and renewal no one consulted you, much of Germany's political destiny was consolidated – to this day not a single letter of this treaty has been shared with you.
Austria's ultimatum to Serbia, with which a small clique of rabble surprised all mankind, was the rupture of the treaty of alliance between Austria and Italy – but to you, nothing of the sort was said. This ultimatum was published with the express opposition of Italy – but to you, this information was withheld.
On May 4 of this year, the alliance between Italy and Austria was already dissolved – until May 18, the German and Austrian people were deprived of the knowledge of this accomplished fact, yes, despite the truth, it was denied by the officials – an equivalent of the deliberate deception of the German people and parliaments about the German ultimatum to Belgium on August 2, 1914.
As for the official negotiations between Germany and Austria with Italy, on which intervention in Italy depended, it was impossible to have any influence. You were treated like children in these matters of great importance, while the war party, while secret diplomacy, while a handful of people in Berlin and Vienna played dice with the fate of Germany.
The torpedoing of the Lusitania not only consolidated the power of the English, French and Russian war partisans, but also initiated a difficult conflict with the United States, all neutral foreign countries showed signs of fervent indignation against Germany, and not only that, the fatal work of the Italian war partisans was facilitated at the most critical moment – for this the silence of the German people was necessary; the heavy hand of the state of siege was clamped on their throats.
Peace could have already begun in March of this year – the offer was made by England – but the greed of the German imperialists reared its head again. The hopeful efforts for peace were thwarted by German interests in large-scale colonial conquests, in the annexation of Belgium and French Lorraine, by the capitalists of the big German transport companies, by the demagogues of German heavy industry.
This too was hidden from the German people, and no one was held accountable for it either. Who, then, should the German people thank for the continuation of the horrible war, for Italy's intervention? No one is responsible except the irresponsible people in our own country!
Learn everything, forget nothing!
For thinking minds, the Italian copy of the German events of last summer will not be the trigger for new war deliriums, only a new stimulus to drive away those mistaken hopes of a dawn of political and social justice, only a new ray of light in the illumination of political responsibilities, in the revelation in its entirety of the public danger represented by the Austrian and German war leaders, only a new act of accusation against them.
But the rule of learning and not forgetting also applies to the heroic struggle of our Italian comrades against the war, who have fought more and more. Fighting in the press, in assemblies, in street demonstrations, fighting with revolutionary vigor and audacity, waging with body and soul violent battles against the officially inflamed nationalist wave. Their struggle deserves enthusiastic congratulations. May their genius serve as an example to us! Let us see to it that their example becomes international!
If it had been like that in those August days, everything would have been better in the world. Everything would have been better for the international proletariat.
But the resolute willingness to fight cannot come too late!
The absurd slogan of “resistance,” which only and always leads deeper into the whirlwind of destruction of the peoples, is ruined. The class struggle of the international proletariat against the destruction of the peoples promoted by international imperialism is the socialist task of the moment.
The main enemy of every people is in their own country!
The main enemy of the German people is in Germany: German imperialism, the German war-mongers, and German secret diplomacy. This enemy in its own country must be fought by the German people in a political struggle, in cooperation with the proletariat of other countries, which have begun the struggle against their own imperialists.
We know that we are one with the German people – we have nothing to do with the German Tirpitz and Falkenhay, the German government of political repression, of social servitude. Nothing for these, everything for the German people. Everything for the international proletariat, for the German proletariat, for the humiliated cause of humanity!
The enemies of the working class count on the forgetfulness of the masses – let us beware lest they miscalculate! They speculate on the patience of the masses – we, however, raise the stormy cry:
How much longer will imperialism's gambling games abuse the people's patience? Enough, enough of the carnage! Down with the war mongers, inside and outside the borders! An end to the genocide!
Proletarians of all countries, follow the heroic example of your Italian brothers. Join the international class struggle against the conspiracies of secret diplomacy, against imperialism, against war, for peace in the spirit of socialism! The main enemy is in our own country!
*Karl Liebknecht (1871-1919) was a member of parliament in Germany and leader of the Spartacist movement.
Translation: V.Souza, Mr. Nogueira & P. Mosque.
Originally published in .
As January 15 approaches – the day in 1919 when Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were assassinated by police officers of the German social democratic government – we publish texts that recover the legacy of these important revolutionaries.
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