112 THE CLASS STRUGGLE CURRENT AFFAIRS 113 paign, as long as the Allied peoples are taught by Mr. Simonds and their other patriotic advisers that national selfishness is the highest virtue?
Germany is able to follow the Napoleonic strategy because Germany has in fact no allies. Her allies have been conquered by her long ago and are mere subordinates as far as the conduct of the war is concerned. There is no Allied General Staff on the German side, such as is now being proposed for the Allies, in consonance with Mr. Simonds ideas. There is just a German General Staff because there is just a German paramount interest. And there is no possibility of a real Allied General Staff on the side of Germany opponents, unless one of them should subordinate the rest to her own will. Or, unless they shall learn from the bitter experience of this World War that there is something higher, more important, and vastly nobler than national interest. international interest, the interest of humanity.
therein expressed, and the more one studies the operations of the opponents of Napoleon the more clearly one perceives the reasons why German High Command has won so many successes since the beginning of the war. Through all the period of his great wars Napoleon fought coalitions and alliances. His victories in the early period of the Empire were won with inferior numbers under conditions which should have produced victory for his opponents. Austerlitz was possible because of division in the council of Russian and Austrian leaders. It was not until 1813 that his opponents learned to act together with any measure of coherence, and as late as the Marne campaign 1814. division of forces gave Napoleon his last victories and almost enabled him to triumph over vast numbers when his armies had been reduced to a handful.
Mr. Simonds then proves the wisdom of the Napoleonic strategy by illustrations from the wars of Louis XIV. as well as from our own Civil War; he then proceeds to show that Germany has won her great successes in the present World War by following the Napoleonic strategy; and winds up with the following admonition to the Allies. The next conference of the Allies, about which so much is being written, must achieve a pooling of all military resources, an agreement for the subordination of all national schemes to an Allied plan and the formulation of a concerted programme for the operations of 1918.
But how can all national schemes be subordinated to some abstract Allied plan, when there are national interests to be subserved, which national interests are, according to all accepted political doctrines, paramount to all other interests?
Can Italy or France, or any other nation fighting on the side of the Allies, give up her national schemes, which means subordinate her national interests, in order to further some international interest, represented by the proposed Allied plan?
Will France or Italy, or any other country fighting on the side of the Allies, give up her separate national interest and with it her national scheme of carrying on the war, in favor of the Allied international interest with an Allied international plan of camThe Neue Zeit An Obituary On October 1st Karl Kautsky ceased to be editor of the Neue Zeit, having been ousted from his position by Messrs.
Scheidemann Co.
To many this may seem too small a matter for notice at a time when our entire civilization is being shaken to its foundations. To those, however, who are familiar with the history of the International Socialist Movement, and the part which Kautsky and the Neue Zeit have played in it for a generation, this incident will seem like the visible marking point of the close of an epoch of Socialist history. For the Neue Zeit, of which Kautsky was the founder and guiding spirit for thirtyfive years, was not a mere magazine: It was an institution an international Socialist University. Many a man who has since become prominent in the international Socialist movement has received his education at that University, and its graduates are the leaders of thought wherever there are thinking Socialists. The present writer is proud of the fact that he