"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." Why the German Strike Failed The attempt of the German workingmen last Winter to force a genuine peace movement by means of a general strike was promptly suppressed by the Government, which proclaimed a state of siege and threatened to force the strikers into military service. The underlying causes of this failure were explained in an instructive article in the Arbeiter Zeitung, the leading Austrian labor organ, from which the following is taken: