In default of revolutionary activity as well as the possibility for reformist work, the Party spent its entire energy on building up the organization, on gaining new members for the unions and for the Party, on starting new papers and getting new subscribers. Condemned for decades to a policy of opportunist waiting, the Party took up the cult of organization as an end in itself. Never was the spirit of inertia produced by mere routine work so strong in the German Social Democracy as in the years immediately preceding the great catastrophe. And there can be no doubt that the question of the preservation of the organizations, treasuries, People’s Houses and printing presses played a mighty important part in the position taken by the fraction in the Reichstag towards the War. "Had we done anything else we would have brought ruin upon our organization and our presses" was the first argument I heard from a leading German comrade. And how characteristic it is of the opportunistic psychology induced by mere organization work, that out of ninety-one Social Democratic papers not one found it possible to protest against the violation of Belgium. Not one! After the repeal of the anti-Socialist laws, the Party hesitated long before starting its own printing presses, lest these might be confiscated by the government in the event of great happenings. And now that it has its own presses, the Party hierarchy fears every decisive step so as not to afford opportunity for confiscation. Most eloquent of all is the incident of the _Verwärts_ which begged for permission to continue to exist--on the basis of a new programme indefinitely suspending the class conflict. Every friend of the German Social Democracy had a sense of profound pain when he received his issue of the central organ with its humiliating "By Order of Army Headquarters." Had the _Verwärts_ remained under interdiction, that would have been an important political fact to which the Party later could have referred with pride. At any rate that would have been far more honorable than to continue to exist with the imprint of the general’s boots on its forehead. But higher than all considerations of policy and the dignity of the Party stood considerations of membership, printing presses, organization. And so the _Verwärts_ now lives as two-paged evidence of the unlimited brutality of Junkerdom in Berlin and in Louvain, and of the unlimited opportunism of the German Social Democracy.