Social Democratic League of America
The Social Democratic League of America (SDL) was a short-lived social-democratic political party established in 1917 by electorally-oriented socialists who favored the participation of the United States in World War I. Led by such intellectuals as John Spargo, Emanuel Haldeman-Julius, and William English Walling, the SDL maintained effective control over the venerable American socialist newspaper The Appeal to Reason (then known as The New Appeal) during 1918, the year of the group's greatest public influence. Claiming a membership of 2,500 at its peak — a number possibly inflated — the SDL achieved some limited success in building support for the military effort among the wavering socialists of France and Great Britain during the last weary months of the war. Following the end of the European fighting, the SDL lost much of its raison d'être and dissolved amidst personal acrimony, as did the National Party, a parallel political umbrella organization with which it was closely associated. Organizational history Background American entry into World War I came in the immediate aftermath of President Woodrow Wilson's successful November 1916 re-election campaign, which made prominent use of the slogan "He Kept Us Out of War". Just months after Wilson's resounding victory, the resumption of unlimited submarine warfare by Germany early in 1917 pushed Wilson and the United States towards intervention in the European conflict. For its part, the Socialist Party of America (SPA) had been steadfast in its opposition to militarism and American participation in the bloodbath on the other side of the Atlantic. Throughout 1915 and 1916, the SPA had consistently put forward pacifist views in opposition to the Preparedness Movement. With the Wilson Administration clearly careening towards war, the Socialist Party had called an Emergency National Convention to open in the city of St. Louis, Missouri, where the party was to once again reiterate its anti-war stance and attempt to generate publicity so as to mobilize public opinion to keep America out of the war. Events proved to outpace the best pacifistic intentions of the Socialists, however, and on April 6, 1917 Woodrow Wilson addressed the United States Congress in calling for a declaration of war against Germany. By the time the Socialist Party assembled in St. Louis on April 7, the direct participation of the United States in the war was an accomplished fact. The most important work group at the Socialist Party's St. Louis Emergency National Convention was its Committee on War and Militarism, chaired by veteran party leader Morris Hillquit and including notably his New York comrade Algernon Lee, head of the Rand School of Social Science, and Cleveland radical C.E. Ruthenberg. This committee passed a majority resolution branding the American government's entrance into the European conflict as "a crime against the people of the United States and against the nations of the world" and promising "continuous, active, and public opposition to the war." A pro-war minority, headed by Vermont author John Spargo put forward a competing resolution which charged Germany with having committed a "crime against Socialist principles"