William E. Bohn, international editor of ISR, was an immediate connection with the German internationalists in the Social Democratic Party when World War One began. He long knew and corresponded with Karl Liebknecht, and traveled to Europe in early 1915 to restore those connections when he met Franz Mehring, who wrote this letter to Bohn on his return.

‘Letter to U.S. Socialists’ by Franz Mehring from International Socialist Review. Vol. 16 No. 5. November, 1915.

DEAR Comrade Bohn,

It was a great pleasure to me to greet you here at Berlin and through you to hear of the American comrades who stand firm in the Socialist faith during a time of unprecedented confusion.

We are only “a very small minority,” a handful of intractable fanatics-as the superwise statesmen proclaim, the same statesmen who have found a new source of inspiration for the modern labor movement in the mass-murder of a world war. After one has been denounced in this way during nine long months, and by the highest authority, one may be excused for beginning to lose faith in himself. You will understand, therefore, dear comrade, that it gives us deep satisfaction to be assured by comrades in other countries that we are still in possession of our five senses and that our sole crime consists in not having been able to forget in one great chauvinistic spasm all that we have taught and learned during a generation devoted to Socialism.

I do not mean to say by this that we ever seriously questioned the fact that we are on the right road. We owe it to the German working class also, to say that it has never forgotten its great task as utterly as some of its leaders. So long as Germany is still in a state of siege an appearance of truth may be given to the tale about “the great majority’ and “the small minority.” But even if we were “a very small minority,” our victory would not be less certain. The logic of events will finally open the eyes of those who are today wandering in strange ways and will gather them at last under the red flag of proletarian emancipation.

It is true that we had not counted on such a terrible crisis as this one which international Socialism has to endure. Had anyone prophesied nine months ago what we have lived through during the past nine months, he would have been consigned to a madhouse. But anyone who is turned from his revolutionary convictions even by the most terrible catastrophe never really deserved to bear the honorable name of Socialist. If the way to peace proves to be longer and more difficult than we believed and hoped, only a fool will lose his reckoning because of it; a sensible person will only increase the zeal with which he seeks his goal.

Even if the old International is broken down, its spirit is not buried under the ruins. But this spirit would be smothered by a policy of deception and secrecy. The only thing that can restore it is a policy of ruthless self-criticism- of which Marx once said that it is the necessary condition to revolutionary progress.

In the spirit of our great leaders of former days we labor at the rebuilding of the International, and in the consciousness of our mission we can disregard the slanders launched against us and set them down as what they really are, proofs of weakness in those who fabricate them.

Berlin, 1915. FRANZ MEHRING.

(Translation by W. E. B.)

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v16n05-nov-1915-ISR-riaz-ocr.pdf