(People's State).

The position is perfectly simple, and to those who are sufficiently
ignorant and naive this programme promises an universal salvation, as
delirious in its joy as that expected by African races when bending the
knee before images of wood and stone. German Socialists are pledged just
as irrevocably to the doctrines of brute force as are the Junker and
military powers in the German Fatherland. What is their industrial and
class warfare but an attempt to enforce the doctrine of might is right?

In the official programme drawn up at Erfurt, 1891, there is a paragraph
stating a claim for _uneingeschraenktes Koalitionsrecht_ (absolute and
unlimited right of coalition), which means that the masses may unite to
enforce what they will, and annihilate whom they please. The same rights
of coalition are denied to anyone else, and in the coal-strikes in South
Wales[66] we have a lurid example--such instances could not be found in
Germany--of the absolute and unlimited right of coalition at the risk of
undoing any and every other right.

[Footnote 66: The strikes during the present war.--Author.]

The point is this: German Socialists have declared their intention to
give no allegiance to any existing form of government and to overthrow
them at the earliest possible moment. Do British Socialists accept this
part of the programme?

Throughout German Social Democratic literature we find Mr. Ramsay
Macdonald referred to as _Genosse_ Ramsay Macdonald, which means that he
is considered a full member of the brotherhood. If that is really the
case, and if he accepts their programme as one to be followed here he
would be favouring the substitution of the _volksstaat_ for the British
constitutional monarchy.

In face of this it may be asked why do British members of the Socialist
party take an oath on entering the House of Commons, and why do they
accept L400 per annum to support a national State, if they have pledged
themselves internationally to overthrow it?

The author admits his inability to solve the riddle, but during the
years 1902-1914 he has heard members of all non-Socialist German parties
assert that the German Socialists do not recognize any religious oath,
and sections of the Socialists admit this position. As a party they are
professedly atheistic; therefore when the might of the German State
compels them to take an oath--they take it with an inward
_Rueckversicherung_.

In a word, false-swearing is p