15 14 THE CLASS STRUGGLE The Passing of the Nation By BOUDIN And at the very moment when Bakhmetieff stood hat in hand, a humiliating speech passing over his lips, in the presence of the representatives of capitalism, Tseretelli and Kerensky were explaining to the revolutionary democracy how impossible it was to dispense with armed force in its fight with the anarchy of the left, and threatening to disarm the workers of Petrograd and the regiment which made common cause with them. We know that these threats came just in the nick of time; they served as a strong argument in favor of the Russian Loan in Wall Street. You see, Mr. Bakhmetieff was in a position to say to Mr. Wilson our revolutionary pacifism differs in no respect from your own brand of pacifism, and if you put your faith in Bryan, there is no reason why you should distrust Tseretelli.
There remains to us only the necessity of putting one question: How much Russian flesh and Russian blood will it take on the external front as well as in the interior, in order to secure the Russian Loan, which, in its turn, is to guarantee our continued fidelity to the Allies?
In my discussion of Socialist Terms of Peace in the preceding issue of the Class STRUGGLE came to the conclusion that the solution of the problem of war and peace lay in complete disarmament and international organization.
This gives to the question of internationalism a new aspect.
Internationalism ceases to be a mere ideal always to be striven for but never to be reached and becomes a practical problem of every day life. It also ceases to be a purely Socialist principle, influencing the action of Socialists only, but becomes a matter of general practical politics. The question of internationalism, therefore, becomes an eminently practical one namely, Has Internationalism Arrived?
Is the world ripe for internationalism of any kind? This question must be answered in the affirmative, if the conclusions to which came in my article on Socialist Terms of Peace are at all valid. For if the world is not ripe for internationalization it would be more than utopian to demand it now; such a demand would be a confession that the problem of peace and war is insoluble for the world as at present constituted. When proposed internationalization as one of the elements of my solution of the problem of war and peace I, therefore, impliedly asserted that the world is ripe for some form of internationalization that is to say, that it is at least ready to recognize the principle of internationalism, and to make the first step in the direction of its realization. This assertion undoubtedly runs counter to the popular conceptions on the subject, and therefore feel that on me now rests the burden of proving the correctness of my estimate of the situation and the fallacy of popular notions on the subject. feel this burden to be particularly heavy in view of the fact that since the war has been upon us, both friends and enemies have united in certifying to the impotency of internationalism.
The war such was the all but unanimous verdict has clearly demonstrated the vitality of the nation and the tremendous hold