A copy has been received of an open letter by Dr. Karl Liebknecht, the
German Socialist, which proved an important factor in his
imprisonment--which still continues. It bears date May 3, 1916, and was
addressed to the Berlin District Court-Martial. The German authorities
suppressed it, and made it a criminal offense for any one to be found in
possession of it.
After stating his view of the war as a struggle of the masses against
the classes throughout the world, Dr. Liebknecht wrote:
"The German Government is in its very social and political being an
instrument for the exploitation and suppression of the laboring masses.
It serves at home and abroad the interests of Junkerdom, capitalism, and
militarism. It is the reckless representative of world political
expansion, the strongest driver of competition in armaments, and
therewith one of the weightiest exponents in the creation of the causes
for the present war. It plotted this war in conjunction with the
Austrian Government, and so burdened itself with the chief
responsibility for its outbreak. It arranged this war while misleading
the masses of the people and even the Reichstag.
"Compare, for instance, the keeping silent about the ultimatum to
Belgium, the making up of the German White Book, the alteration of the
Czar's telegram of July 29, 1914, &c. It seeks to maintain the war
feeling in the nation by the most blameworthy means. It carries on the
war by methods which, even regarded from the hitherto customary level,
are monstrous. Such, for instance, are the invasion of Belgium and
Luxemburg, poison gases, the Zeppelins, which are designed to destroy
everything living, combatant or noncombatant, in a wide circle below
them; the submarine trade war; the torpedoing of the Lusitania; the
system of hostages and contributions, especially in the beginning, in
Belgium; the systematic trapping of Ukrainian, Polish, Irish,
Mohammedan, and other war prisoners in German prison camps for purposes
of a traitorous war service and traitorous espionage in the interests of
the Central Powers; the treaty of Under Secretary Zimmermann with Sir
Roger Casement of December, 1914, as to the formation, equipment, and
training of British soldiers from among the prisoners to form an Irish
brigade in the German prison camps; the attempts to use civilian
subjects of hostile States who were in Germany, by threatening them with
forced internment, for war services of a treacherous character against
their country; the dictum necessity knows no law, &c.
"The German Government has tremendously increased the want of political
rights and the exploitation of the masses of the people by the
conditions it imposed under a state of siege. It refuses all serious
political and social reforms, while by phrases about the supposed
equality of all parties, about the supposed reform of political and
social treatment, about the supposed 'neuorientierung,' &c., it tries to
maintain its hold on the masses of the people for the purposes of its
imperialistic war policy. Because of its regard for the agragrians and
the capitalists it has entirely failed in the economic provisioning of
the population during the war, and it has prepared the road for making
usury out of the people and their very needs. Today still it holds fast
to its war objects of conquest, and therewith forms the chief hindrance
to immediate peace negotiations on the ground of no annexations and no
force of any kind. By the maintenance of the illegal state of siege,
censorship, and so on, it smothers public knowledge of uncomfortable
facts and criticism of its methods.
"The present war is not a war for the defense of the national
inviolability or for the liberty of small nations. From the standpoint
of the proletariat it signifies only the most extreme concentration and
increase of the political suppression, their economic draining, and
militaristic slaughter of the life of the working classes for
capitalistic and absolutist advantage. To this there is only one answer
of the laboring classes of all countries, namely, a sharpened
international class fight against the capitalistic Governments and
dominating classes of all countries, for the removal of every form of
suppression and exploitation, and for ending the war by a peace in the
Socialistic sense. As a Socialist I am on principle an opponent of this
war, as of the existing military system. The fight against militarism is
a life question for the working classes. The war demands that the
anti-militarism struggle shall be carried on with redoubled energy."