186 THE CLASS STRUGGLE SOCIALISM AND THE LEAGUE 187 The worker must be provided with the explanation of the rise and function of the League of Nations, together with an explanation of the forces affecting its disintegration. Emphasis must be laid upon the next step in the evolution of internationalism, the accomplishment of a federation of the proletariats of the world. Here is an ideal, a positive one, and one that will ultimately fire him, since it is a prefiguration of an approaching social phenomenon. It is something for him to grasp and to materialize.
Persistent and illustrative presentation of all the phases of the class struggle must be made. And, with this tragical wail and its incidents, with the revolutionary uprisings and their fascinating touches of the dramatic, with the establishment of workers republics and their absorbing activities, never was there greater abundance of material for refreshing illustration. Between the application of the theory of the class struggle to the problems of the workers immediate environment, and to those of his relationship to the workers of other countries is not even a stepit is a gradation.
assumed by the League of Nations. decision of the League to abolish armaments would undoubtedly be welcomed, and suit gladly followed. And it seems no less clear that a decision on the part of the League to maintain a military force would be met with corresponding determination on the part of the federation, forced to such a program as a defensive measure, Assistance to the Socialist movements throughout the world may be provided by the furnishing of financial aid, and the supplying of niost persuasive material for propaganda as well as most persuasive propagandists. First hand enlightenment is appetizing. The worker is stimulated by the knowledge that other workers, facing the same problems, have actually arrived at a solution, particularly when he discovers that that solution is one which is fattering to his own intelligence, and laudatory of his own powers. Further, knowledge garnered from the experience of countries that have gone through, or are going through the transitional stages of the social change will be of inestimable value to revolutionary elements in countries approaching these stages. This knowledge must be collated and distributed where its want is felt.
It is only natural that with the growth of power of such a federation will come the decline of power of the League of Nations. It will be as the flow of power from one to the other, the League being disintegrated by the loss of its units, which of necessity will attach to the federation. It will be practically impossible for the League to curb this tendency, as its efforts would have to be directed not only against the lost member, but at the federation with which the member will have identified itself, and which, by the acqusition of this new strength will have become greater in its power of resistance. The life blood of the League will be drained away, to throb in the veins of a newly vitalized body, thrilling in the passion of resistless conquest.
In countries under bourgeois control it is idle of the workers to oppose the formation of the League of Nations. Such negative propaganda can be of no avail, since it leaves the choice between the League, with its seductive ideological accouterments, and the old system with its ideology shattered beyond repair by the tragedy of the war. more important reason for declining to oppose the formation of the League is that such opposition would without doubt fall into the category of dissipated energy. Opposition is useless. Some such league is an inevitable consequence of the accelerated development of international capitalism. ll activity should start from this assumption, and proceed in harmonious contemplation of the next evolutionary development, The Logic of Insanity By CHARLES RAPPOPORT, Paris have just returned from Berne, where have watched, with mingled feelings, the vain attempts of our International Opportunists to galvanize the corpse of the second nationalist International and to restore to it the spirit that brought about the socialist catastrophe of August 4, 1914. should, suppose, give a record of the impressions received there, but events of such far reaching significance, of so much vaster scope are attracting our immediate attention, The insane madmen who loosed this tempest upon the earth, still continue to rule the world, leading it recklessly onward, along the path that leads to an abyss and bloody chaos. Twenty million men, the flower of the world vigorous youth, have been sacrificed in vain. Forty billion dollars in property have been uselessly destroyed, for the general education of our honorable rulers. The misery that awaits thousands of households, the dreadful epidemics that continue to be a constant menace to every one of us, the terrific rise in the cost of living, all of these questions so vital to the peoples of all nations, are of no significance to our blind and war mad nationalists. They shout for