Katayama, here still living in New York, honors the martyred comrades and remembers Rosa Luxemburg at the 1904 Congress in Amsterdam.

‘Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg’ by Sen Katayama from Revolutionary Age. Vol. 1 No. 16. February 1, 1919.

A Tribute from the Far East. This tribute to the man and woman who have died that the toiling masses of the world may realize life in its fulness, is perhaps one of the reddest of the many flowers that are strewn on their graves from all over the world, for it comes from one embodying in his the world, for it comes from one embodying in his being the reality of the International, one who in a long life of struggle against great odds has always remained true to revolutionary Socialism. It is the new soul of the East crying to Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg as they pass on that their sacrifice Rosa Luxemburg as they pass on that their sacrifice has not been in vain. It is the voice of the Oriental races pledging solidarity with the Caucasian and is prophetic of the new era of the Brotherhood of the Workers of the World.

The international Socialist movement has lost two of its greatest figures in Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. The loss to our movement is greatest in that it comes just at this moment. Scheidemann & Co. killed the Second International by supporting Kaiserism and its war, they betrayed the cause of Socialism and the proletariat, but now they have committed their greatest crime by murdering two of our foremost leaders of the Third International. Varied reports concerning the death of our two comrades reach us through the bourgeois press, which has endeavored to discredit them, but it cannot be denied that they both were completely in the hands of Scheidemann, Ebert & Co., and we can easily imagine both were willfully murdered by these “Socialists,” through their so-called loyalists. The Independent Socialists of Berlin assert that Liebknecht did not attempt to escape but was killed by the soldiers escorting him. “Liebknecht,” the New York Times reports, “cool in facing death, smiled derisively as he heard the howls of the Berlin mob, remarking to the soldiers on guard: ‘They would kill Jesus Christ, Himself.’ He was very pale but otherwise showed no fear.”

The hotel near where Rosa Luxemburg was lynched and Karl Liebknecht mobbed is located in the most fashionable quarter of the city, populated by the classes who feared most the “Red” Socialist movement. This being the case we can understand why they were mobbed.

We mourn our loss the more that these two brave comrades were murdered at the very moment that the power and influence of the revolutionary movement is about to sweep all over the European continent. The loss may temporarily set back the revolution, at least in Berlin, but henceforth these two stalwarts, murdered by Scheidemann, Ebert & Co., will live in the very life of the world’s proletariat and lead, even more successfully to the final victory of the proletarian Socialist Revolution. We, the left wing Socialists, will never cease our protest against the crime of majority Socialism in Germany in murdering our two comrades after they were arrested.

I, personally feel infinite sorrow at the death of Rosa Luxemburg, because I knew her intimately, stayed in the Hotel Posen at Amsterdam in 1904 when she was there, often took our meals at the same table and talked together as we were, then, the left wing. She interpreted my English speech at the Congress, as did her comrade and co-worker in Germany Klara Zetkin. She translated my words into French while Klara Zetkin translated into German.

The Ebert government may think that murdering the opposing leaders, together with the support of the “loyal” army and the bourgeois classes, will keep it in power, but these very murders seal its fate and reveal it as the arch enemy of Socialism and the toiling masses. They are bound to fall before the oncoming Social Revolution directed by the mighty spirit of Bolshevism.

We sorrow at the loss of our great international comrades, but at the same time we are sure of our success in the coming Social Revolution that will establish temporarily in every nation a labor dictatorship. In this great work our comrades Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in their mighty personalities will do ever greater and wider service.

The Revolutionary Age (not to be confused with the 1930s Lovestone group paper of the same name) was a weekly first for the Socialist Party’s Boston Local begun in November, 1918. Under the editorship of early US Communist Louis C. Fraina, and writers like Scott Nearing and John Reed, the paper became the national organ of the SP’s Left Wing Section, embracing the Bolshevik Revolution and a new International. In June 1919, the paper moved to New York City and became the most important publication of the developing communist movement. In August, 1919, it changed its name to ‘The Communist’ (one of a dozen or more so-named papers at the time) as a paper of the newly formed Communist Party of America and ran until 1921.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/revolutionaryage/v1n16-feb-01-1919.pdf