"We hope that the cruel school of war's sufferings will awaken a horror for war in new millions, and win them over to the socialistic ideal and international peace. Guided by these principles we vote in favour of the war loan. (Loud applause.)"[78] [Footnote 78: _Leipziger Volkszeitung_, August 5th.] A short historical comparison will assist in making the Social Democratic action still clearer. In 1870, when Bismarck asked the Reichstag for a war credit to prosecute the campaign against France, the Socialists were few and helpless. Yet Liebknecht and Bebel refused to vote in its favour. "Their moral demonstration was in itself perfectly logical, for Bismarck's and Napoleon III.'s intrigues equally deserved condemnation."[79] [Footnote 79: Kautsky: "Die Internationalitat und der Krieg," p. 19.] Apparently it did not occur to the Democrats in 1914, that probably Germany had again been guilty of intrigues. It is noteworthy, however, that the small party in 1870 protested when a national issue was at stake, while the mighty party of 1914 made no protest whatever, although, as they had previously announced and denounced, the issue had been raised by the unjust actions and vile intrigues of Austrian imperialism. The campaign against Russia conducted by the nationalist Press up till August 1st was taken up by the organs representing Social Democracy, immediately war broke out. Their papers were flooded with appalling pictures of Russian (generally termed Asiatic) barbarism, tyranny and misrule. Passages from the speeches and writings of Bebel, Liebknecht and others were quoted to show the fiendishness of Russian policy, and the justice of every German doing his utmost to smash Czarism and deliver millions of fellow workmen from its thrall. Even a blood-and-thunder story of the Russian police was turned on as a serial story in their daily papers.[80] In short, nothing was omitted which goes to make _Stimmung_. [Footnote 80: "Der Polizeimeister, ein russischer Polizeiroman," by Gabryela Zapolska. The story commenced in the Nuremberg party organ on August 11th, and in Kautsky's _Leipztger Volkszeitung_ on August 18th.] Had they been honestly impartial a still blacker picture of Austria, painted by one of the founders of the workmen's movement, might have been quoted, yet it might have been indiscreet to tell Germans what Lassalle wrote. "Austria? Russia is a mammoth, barbarian Empire which its despotic rulers endeavour to civilize, just so far as suits their despotic interests. In that country barbarism is excusable, because it is a national element. But the case is very different with Austria. There it is the government which represents the barbaric principle and crushes beneath it by artifice and violence, the civilized peoples under its rule."[81] [Footnote 81: Bernstein's edition of Lassalle's "Reden und Schriften," vol. I., p. 306.]