4 THE CLASS STRUGGLE LETTER FROM LEON TROTZKY Republic, for the Franco Russian alliance and its consequences, for the conquest aims of the Czar, and for all the aims and methods of this war it remains for you to accept as well the renown for the deeds of these agents provocateur of his Majesty the autocratic ruler of Russia.
At the beginning of the war, when promises were spread with a lavish hand, your partner, Sembat, enchanted the Russian journalists with the perspective of the most beneficial influence to be exerted by the allied democracies upon the internal regime of autocratic Russia. Moreover, this argument was used persistently by the Social patriots of France and Belgium to reconcile the revolutionary Russians with the French Government, but with little success. Twenty six months of constant military coalition between the generalissimi, between diplomats and parliamentarians, the visits of Viviani and Thomas to Tsarkoe Selo, in short, twenty six months of incessant influence exerted by the Western democracies upon the Russian regime have only served to strengthen in our land the boldest and most impudent reaction, softened, to a small extent, by the chaos of the administration; have succeeded, moreover, in transforming the internal regime of England and France until they have become very similar to that of Russia.
The generous promises of Mr. Sembat are obviously less expensive than his coal. The unfortunate fate of the right of asylum but a conspicuous symptom of materialistic and police rule that are becoming more and more predominant on both sides of the Channel. Lloyd George, of Dublin fame, the imperialist incarnate, with the manners of a drunken clergyman, and Mr. Aristide Briand, for whose characterization beg to refer you, Mr. Jules Guesde, to your own article of earlier days, these two figures represent, in the highest degree, the spirit of the present war, its justification, its morality based upon the appetites of classes and of individuals. Can there be a better and a more deserving partner for Messrs. Lloyd George and Briand than this Mr. Stürmer, the German, who, like a real Russian, has made a career by pinning himself to the Cossacks of the Metropolitans and to the petticoats of bigoted court damsels? What a splendid, what an incomparable trio!
Verily, history could have selected no better colleagues and chieftains for Guesde, the minister.
Is it possible for an honest Socialist not to fight against them? You have transformed the Socialist party into a submissive chorus, that servilely imitates the leaders of capitalist highway robbery, at a historical epoch when bourgeois society whose deadly enemy you, Jules Guesde, have hitherto beenhas revealed and demonstrated its true nature to the core. From the events, prepared in a period of worldwide depredation and robbery, whose awful consequences we have so often predicted, from the rivers of blood, from the awful suffering, and misfortune, from the crimes, from the bloodthirsty ferocity and hypocrisy of the Governments you, Jules Guesde, draw but one lesson for the enlightenment of the French proletariat: that Wilhelm II and Francis Joseph are two criminals, who, contrary to Nicholas II and Mr. Poincaré, refused to respect the rules and regulations of international law.
French Socialism, with its glorious past, with its proud line of thinkers, of fighters and martyrs, has at last found. and what a disgrace to think that it has found. in Renaudel, a translator, during the most tragic period of the world history, for the elevating thoughts of the yellow book into the language of yellow journalism.
The Socialism of Babeuf, of Saint Simon, of Fourier, of Blanqui, of the Commune, of Jaurès, and of Jules Guesde yes, of the Jules Guesde of the days of yore has found its Albert Thomas, who consults with the Russian tyrant concerning the surest and safest method of capturing Constantinople; has found its Marcel Sembat, to exercise and display dilettante nonchalance over the corpses and the ruins of French civilization; has found its Jules Guesde, to follow the triumphal chariot of the trumpeter Briand. And you believed and you hoped that the French proletariat, that has been bled to the point of exhaustion in this endless war for the crime of the ruling classes, will continue to tolerate quietly, to the end, this shameful union between official Socialism and the worst enemies of the proletariat? You