April 21, 1916, when the situation between the Imperial German Government and the United States was highly critical by reason of the use of submarines against American vessels, the national secretary of the Socialist Party of America met with the secretaries of the various foreign language federations of the party and drew up a proclamation. This was disseminated in all foreign languages to the party membership and closes with the following appeal to force and violence:

"We suggest and appeal that the workers as a measure of self-defense and as an expression of their power exert every effort to keep America free from the stain of a causeless war, even to the final and extreme step of a general strike and the consequent paralyzation of all industry.”

In the same year the Zimmerwald Conference reconvened at Kienthal, Switzerland, and a manifesto, very similar to the Zimmerwald proclamation was issued. The Socialist Party of America was again responsive to the International program of Lenin, Trotzky and other Socialists. By the wanton depredations of the Imperial German Government upon our ships on the high seas, our country was being drawn closer and closer to participation in the World War. While the Imperial German Government was spending millions of dollars in propaganda in this country, while munition factories were being blown up by German agents, and while our national honor was being defiantly flaunted by Germany, the Socialist Party of America did everything possible to render this country impotent to protect its national honor, and impotent to maintain its rights against all the world. It adopted the following in its presidential platform of that year:

"Therefore, the Socialist Party stands opposed to military preparedness, to any appropriations of men or money for war or militarism, while control of such forces through the political state rests in the hands of the capitalist class. The Socialist Party stands committed to the class war, and urges upon the workers in the mines and forests, on the railways and ships, in factories and fields, to use of their economic and industrial power, by refusing to mine the coal, to transport soldiers, to furnish food or other supplies for military purposes, and thus keep out of the hands of the ruling

class the control of armed forces and economic power, neces sary for aggression abroad and industrial despotism at home."

These pronouncements were followed, after the declaration of war upon Germany by the United States, by the war proclamation and program which we have previously discussed, and which carried out to the letter the same spirit and purpose which these previous utterances had expressed.

Had the call of the Socialist Party to the workers of America to refuse to support their government in the war been heeded no coal would have been mined, not a wheel in factory, shop or railroad would have turned, no troops would have been transported, no munitions would have been produced, no food would have been distributed, none of those articles needed in the prosecution of the war would have been produced. The nation would have been paralyzed in the throes of the general strike and would have fallen an easy prey and a ready victim to the force and power of its enemies.

Yet, while the Socialist Party of America took this antipatriotic, anti-national stand, the Majority Socialists of Germany casting away the Socialist creed in the hour of their nation's war, bled and died on the field of battle for their country and while the Majority Socialists of Germany were assisting their government in their endeavor to crush the United States, the Socialist Party of America refused its support to this country, decried the idea of national patriotism, and attempted to render this country weak and helpless. The plainly visible intent of the St. Louis platform of 1917 was indicated in the language of the platform, in part quoted above, and this at a time when all the loyal men and women of this country were enlisting in the only struggle before the people-the struggle for the maintenance of the national honor and integrity of the country. At such a time the Socialist Party of America was urging participation of the workers in the party's struggle, the class struggle, and the taking advantage of the acute situation created by the war.

At this same convention of April, 1917, occurred a very significant change in the party's constitution. The sinister purpose and intent of this change can be readily grasped from the following recitals:

The practice of sabotage had been forbidden up to this time by the party's constitution since 1912, the prohibition against

sabotage having been embodied in Article II, section 6, of its national constitution; but with the declaring of a state of war existent between this country and the Imperial German Government in April, 1917, this provision of the Socialist Party constitution was repealed. No longer was there a check upon this iniquitous practice in the party's decrees.

Read in connection with the war program of the party, with its insistent urge to allow its members to use all means within their power to resist the prosecution of the war, with the declaration that the only struggle which would justify the workers in taking up arms was not the nation's struggle, but the class struggle, the removal of restraint on the use of sabotage becomes manifestly clear. Now might the workers throw a monkey wrench into the machinery of production, now might they slow up, now might they idle and loaf on the job, now were they notified that even the negative restraint contained in Article II, section 6, of the Socialist Party's National Constitution was removed. What but an invitation to the continued commission of sabotage was the repeal of this section? These proceedings of the National Convention of April, 1917, were circulated broadcast throughout the country, as was the war program adopted by the various Socialist Party locals throughout the United States. The platform was also distributed for the consideration. and vote of the Socialist Party's locals, as was also the repeal of the anti-sabotage clause. They were all adopted by referendum vote.

And here came a break in the Socialist Party. Those members of the Socialist Party who had placed love of their country above their Socialist creed, deserted its ranks and stood by their country in the hour of its need. Among the men who left the party at this time were J. G. Phelps Stokes, Allen Benson, John Spargo, William English Walling, Henry Slobodin, and others.

Said Allen Benson, the Socialist Party's candidate for President in 1916:

"The present foreign-born leaders of the American Socialist Party, if they had lived during the Civil War, would doubtless have censured Marx for congratulating Lincoln.

"For these reasons I now take leave of the Socialist Party a year after I ceased to agree with it. It seemed to me that,