The correspondence between Marx and Engels shows that they were guided chiefly by historical considerations in their attitude towards the War of 1870. To them, of course, it was by no means a matter of indifference as to who conducted the war and how it was conducted. "Who would have thought it possible," Marx writes bitterly, "that twenty-two years after 1848 a nationalist war in Germany could have been given such theoretical expression." Yet what was of decisive significance to Marx and Engels was the objective consequences of the war. "If the Prussians triumph, it will mean the centralization of the state power--useful to the centralization of the German working-class." Liebknecht and Bebel, starting with the same historical estimate of the war, were directly forced to take a political position toward it. It was by no means in opposition to the views of Marx and Engels, but, on the contrary, with their perfect acquiescence that Liebknecht and Bebel refused, in the Reichstag, to take any responsibility for this War. The statement they handed in read: "We cannot grant the war appropriations that the Reichstag is asked to make because that would be a vote of confidence in the Prussian government.... As opponents on principle of every dynastic war, as Social Republicians and members of the International Labor Association, which, without distinction of nationality, fights all oppressors and endeavors to unite all the oppressed in one great brotherhood, we cannot declare ourselves either directly or indirectly in favor of the present war." Schweitzer acted differently. He took the historical estimate of the war as a direct guide for his tactics--one of the most dangerous of fallacies!--and in voting the war credits gave a vote of confidence to the policy of Bismarck. And this in spite of the fact that it was necessary, if the centralization of state power arising out of the War was to turn out of use to the Social Democratic cause, that the working-class should from the very beginning oppose the dynastic-Junker centralization with their own class-centralization filled with revolutionary distrust of the rulers. Schweitzer’s political attitude invalidated the very consequences of the War that had induced him to give a vote of confidence to the makers of the War. Forty years later, drawing up the balance sheet of his life-work, Bebel wrote: