6 THE CLASS STRUGGLE LETTER FROM LEON TROTZKY are mistaken. The opposition is growing. In spite of martial law, in spite of this mania of nationalism which, whatever its form, be it royalistic, radical, or socialistic, always preserves its capitalistic quintessence revolutionary opposition is marching forward, slowly, but surely. Daily it is gaining ground. Nashe Slovo, the paper that you have strangled, lived and breathed in the atmosphere of awakening French international Socialism.
The group of Nashe Slovo, expelled from Russia. by the counter revolution, that is gaining in power and strength through the help and support of the French Banking Exchange, the group of the Nashe Slovo was privileged to echo, even though it was hindered and hampered by your censor the voice of the French side of the new International, that raises its head in the midst of the terrors of fratricidal war. In our capacity as undesirable foreigners we have identified our cause and our fate with that of the French opposition. We are proud to have received the first blow from the French Government, from your government, Jules Guesde!
We have the honor, together with Monatte, Merrheim, Saumoneau, Rosmer, Bourderon, Loriot, Guilbeaut, and so many others, to be accused, all of us, of being pro German, of friendliness toward Germany.
The weekly Paris organ of your friend Plekchanoff, your partner in honor and glory as well as in your inglorious fall, has denounced us week after week to the police of Mr. Malvy, as being in the service of the German General Staff. Formerly you knew the value of such accusations, for you yourself had the honor of being subjected to similar accusations. But now you put your stamp of approval upon Mr. Malvy by collecting, for the government of National Defense, the reports of Mr.
Malvy police spies. Moreover, my political correspondence box contains a very recent prison sentence pronounced against me, during the war, by a German court, in continuation as was not present for my pamphlet, The War and the International.
But besides this brutal fact, that can make an impression even upon the police brain cells of Mr. Malvy, should, believe, emphasize that we revolutionary internationalists are more dangerous enemies of German reaction than all the Governments of the allies taken together. Their hostility to Germany is, at the bottom, nothing but the hatred of the competitor; our revolutionary hatred of its ruling class is indestructible. Imperialist competition may again unite th rival enemy brethren of today. When the total destructon of Germany has been realized, England and France, after a decade, would again approach the Kaiserdom of the Hohenzollern in the friendliest spirit, to defend themselves against the superiority of Russia. future Poincaré will exchange telegrams of congratulations with Wilhelm or with his heirs; Lloyd George, in the peculiar language of the priest and the boxer, will curse and condemn Russia, as the defending wall of barbarism and militarism; Albert Thomas, as the French ambassador to the Kaiser, would be showered with flowers cut by the gentle hands of the court madams of Potsdam, as occurred so recently in Tsarskoe Selo.
All the banalities of present day speeches and articles would again be unpacked. Mr. Renaudel would have to change, in his article, only the proper names, a task for which his mental faculties and abilities would doubtless suffice. But we will remain the outspoken, sworn enemies of Germany rulers that we are today, for we hate German reaction with the same revolutionary hatred that we have sworn against Czarism and against the French moneyed aristocracy.
When you dare, you and your newspaper lackeys, to applaud a Liebknecht, a Mehring, a Luxemburg, a Zetkin, as the inflexible enemies of the Hohenzollerns dare you deny that they are ours, our faithful comrades, our comrades in battle? We are united with them against you and against your chiefs, with the unalterable unity of revolutionary warfare.
Perhaps you console yourselves with the thought that we are few in number? We are greater in number than the police souls of every grade believe. In your official myopia you do not see the ghost of rebellion that is arising from all the places of suffering and martrydom; you do not see it spreading through France, through Europe, in the suburbs, in the workmen dwellings, in the country places, in the shops and in the trenches.