The motives of most of those who thus began the revolt against the government and who were later responsible for the revolution are easy to determine. Many were honest fanatics, and some of these, chief among them Liebknecht, carried their fanaticism to a degree calling for the serious consideration of alienists. Others again were moved by purely selfish considerations, and some of them had criminal records. Haase presented and still presents a riddle even for those who know him well. Judged by his speeches alone, he appears in the light of an honest internationalist, striving to further the welfare of his own and all other peoples. Judged by his conduct, and particularly his conduct in the months following the revolution, he appears in the light of a political desperado whose acts are dictated by narrow personal considerations. He was particularly fitted for leadership of the government's opponents by the absence from his makeup of the blind fanaticism that characterized the majority of these, and by an utter unscrupulousness in his methods. He was free also from that fear of inconsistency which has been called the vice of small minds.
The questions growing out of the manner of conducting the submarine warfare became acute in the first months of 1916. The government was determined to prevent any open debate on this subject in the Reichstag, and the deputies of all parties bowed to the government's will. Haase and his little group of malcontents, however, refused to submit. They carried their opposition to the authority of their own party to such an extent that a party caucus decided upon their exclusion. The caucus vote was followed on the same day--March 24, 1916--by the formal secession from the party of Haase and seventeen other members, who constituted themselves as a separate party under the designation of "Socialist Working Society" (_Arbeitsgemeinschaft_). The seceders included, among others, Georg Ledebour, Wilhelm Dittmann, Dr. Oskar Cohn, Emil Barth, Ernst Däumig and Eduard Bernstein. Liebknecht, who had been excluded from the party a year earlier, allied himself to the new group. All its members were internationalists.
The formation of the new party furnished a rallying point for all radical Socialists and also for the discontented generally, and the numbers of these were increasing daily. Under the protection of their parliamentary immunity these members were able to carry on a more outspoken and effective agitation against the war. Haase, Ledebour and other members of the group issued a manifesto in June, 1916, wherein it was declared that the people were starving and that the only replies made by the government to their protests took the form of a severe application of martial law. "The blockade should have been foreseen," said the manifesto. "It is not the blockade that is a crime; the war is a crime. The consolation that the harvest will be good is a deliberate deception. All the food in the occupied territories has been requisitioned, and people are dying of starvation in Poland and Serbia." The manifesto concluded with an appeal to the men and women of the laboring-classes to raise their voices against the continuance of the war.