d then "the general strike will be the only resource left";
and finally cries, "Never in the name of the working people will we give
up the right of insurrection." This position is verbally correct from
the Socialist standpoint, and it shows the power of the revolutionary
idea in France, when even Jaures is forced to respect it. But any
capitalist politician might safely use the same expressions--so long, at
least, as revolution is still far away.

So also Mr. Berger has written in the _Social Democratic Herald_ of
Milwaukee that "all the ballot can do is to strengthen the power of
resistance of the laboring people."

"We whom the western ultra class-conscious proletarians ... are
wont to call 'opportunists,'" writes Berger, "we know right well
that the social question can no more be solved by street riots and
insurrections than by bombs and dynamite.

"Yet, by the ballot _alone_, it will never be solved.

"Up to this time men have always solved great questions by _blood_
and _iron_." Berger says he is not given to reciting revolutionary
phrases, but asserts that the plutocrats are taking the country in
the direction of "a violent and bloody revolution."

"Therefore," he says, "each of the 500,000 Socialist voters, and of
the two million workingmen who instinctively incline our way,
should, besides doing much reading and still more thinking, also
have a good rifle and the necessary rounds of ammunition in his
home and be prepared to back up his ballot with his bullets if
necessary.... Now, I deny that dealing with a blind and greedy
plutocratic class as we are dealing in this country, the outcome
can ever be peaceable, or that any reasonable change can ever be
brought about by the ballot in the end.

"I predict that a large part of the capitalist class will be wiped
out for much smaller things ... most of the plutocratic class,
together with the politicians, will have to disappear as completely
as the feudal lords and their retinue disappeared during the French
revolution.

"That cannot be done by the ballot, or _only_ by the ballot.

"The ballot cannot count for much in a pinch."[187] (My italics.)

And in another number Mr. Berger writes:--

"As long as we are in the minority we, of course, have _no right to
force_ our opinion _upon an unwilling majority_.... Yet we do