The Social Democratic League of America 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 during 1918, the year of the group's greatest public influence. Wikipedia