But the "Center" was described as "represented by leaders of the type of Karl Kautsky, and who constitute a group composed of ever-hesitating elements, unable to settle on any determined direction and who up to date have always acted as traitors." "In regard to the 'Center,'" the call continues, "the tactics consist in separating from it the revolutionary elements, in criticizing pitilessly its leaders and in dividing systematically among them the number of their followers." The Left Wing leaders in America, however, ignoring the recognition of a "Center" in this country, lumped together and designated as the "Right" all their Socialist opponents, the special followers of Hillquit, Victor L. Berger and the other "bosses" of the Socialist Party; but they certainly followed the tactics of "criticizing pitilessly its leaders." (See the Moscow call in
Chapter III and the details of the Left Wing fight in Chapters III, IV and V.)
These facts explain the course pursued by Hillquit and his fellow-leaders. In the first place they had to get rid of the Left Wing leaders whose "control of the party" would make it "an outlaw organization and break up the organization." This they accomplished by wholesale expulsions and suspensions, as we have seen in earlier chapters. But in the second place they had to prepare a sufficiently strong public declaration of the real revolutionary principles of their party and a sufficiently explicit identification of the party with the Moscow International to satisfy both the rank and file of their followers and Lenine and Trotzky in Russia, while yet not going far enough to incriminate themselves with the awakening suspicions of our National and State Governments. As a result we have the utterances of the Emergency Convention of August-September, 1919, where every compromising word was still only a hint of the principles and plan of action carefully concealed behind it.
Even so, the leaders soon realized that they had revealed too much of the truth for their safety; while the wholesale arrests, indictments and