26 THE CLASS STRUGGLE 27 PEACE AND THE INTERNATIONAL were not the greatest of all horrors, as if the praise of human slaughter in a socialist periodical were not mental Cossackdom in its very essence.
But the horrors of imperialist bestiality in Europe have had another effect, that has brought to the civilized world 110 horror stricken eyes, no agonized heart. It is the mass destruction of the European proletariat. Never has a war killed off whole nations; never, within the past century, has it swept over all of the great and established lands of civilized Europe.
Millions of human lives were destroyed in the Vosges, in the Ardennes, in Belgium, in Poland, in the Carpathians and on the Save millions have been hopelessly crippled. But ninetenths of these millions come from the ranks of the working class of the cities and the farms. It is our strength, our hope that was mowed down there, day after day, before the scythe of death. They were the best, the most intelligent, the most thoroughly schooled forces of international socialism, the bearers of the holiest traditions, of the highest heroism, the modern labor movement, the vanguard of the whole world proletariat, the workers of England, France, Belgium, Germany and Russia who are being gagged and butchered in masses. Only from Europe, only from the oldest capitalist nations, when the hour is ripe, can the signal come for the social revolution that will free the nations. Only the English, the French, the Belgian, the German, the Russian, the Italian workers, together, can lead the army of the exploited and oppressed. And when the time comes they alone can call capitalism to account for centuries of crime committed against primitive people; they alone can avenge its work of destruction over a whole world. But for the advance and victory of Socialism we need a strong, educated, ready proletariat, masses whose strength lies in knowledge as well as in numbers. And these very masses are being decimated all over the world. The flower of our youthful strength, hundreds of thousands whose socialist education in England, in France, in Belgium, in Germany and in Russia was the product of decades of education and propaganda, other hundreds of thousands who were ready to receive the lessons of socialism, have fallen, and are rotting upon the battlefields. The fruit of the sacrifices and toil of generations are destroyed in a few short weeks, the choicest troops of the international proletariat are torn out by the life roots.
The blood letting of the June battle laid low the French labor movement for a decade and a half. The blood letting of the Commune massacre again threw it back for more than a decade. What is happening now is a massacre such as the world has never seen before, that is reducing the laboring population in all of the leading nations to the aged, the women and the maimed; a blood letting that threatens to bleed white the European labor movement.
Another such world war, and the hope of Socialism will be buried under the ruins of imperialistic barbarism. That is more than the ruthless destruction of Liége and of the Rheims Cathedral. That is a blow, not against capitalist civilization of the past, but against socialist civilization of the future, a deadly blow against the force that carries the future of mankind in its womb, that alone can rescue the precious treasures of the past over into a better state of society. Here capitalism reveals its death head, here it betrays that it has sacrificed its historic right of existence, that its rule is no longer compatible with the progress of humanity.
But here is proof also that the war is not only a grandiose murder, but the suicide of the European working class. The soldiers of Socialism, the workers of England, of France, of ermany, of Italy, of Belgium are murdering each other at the bidding of capitalism, are thrusting cold, murderous irons into each others breasts, are tottering over their graves, grappling in each other death bringing arms. Deutschland, Deutschland über alles; long live democracy. long live the czar and slavery, ten thousand tent cloths, guaranteed according to specifications, hundred thousand pounds of bacon, coffee substitute, immediate delivery dividends are rising proletarians falling; and with each one