dering over their ecstatic
utterances on peace and internationalism.

The communistic manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, first
published in London in the German language in 1847, contains the
following: "Men say that we Communists wish to destroy the nationality
of the native land. Workmen have no Fatherland. It is impossible to take
away what they do not possess. The Communists scorn to conceal their
views and intentions. We declare openly, that their aims can only be
attained by the violent overthrow of all existing social orders. Let the
ruling classes tremble before a communistic revolution. The proletarians
have nothing but their chains to lose, while they have a world to
gain."[68]

[Footnote 68: "Envy and greed are the two powerful levers by which the
Social Democrats are endeavouring to lift the world off its hinges. They
live by the destruction of every ideal." Treitschke in the "Preussische
Jahrbuecher," vol. 34.]

German Socialists have incorporated these principles _in theory_ in
their programme, but _in practice_ they do not hold them, especially if
their own skins are endangered, together with the Government which is
threatened by "violent overthrow." That is the sum total of their
extensive defence--literature published _since_ the outbreak of the
present war. In its naked reality that is what the guarantee-insurance
policy covered. So long as no danger threatened their own lives, goods
and chattels, such eloquence as the following extracts were shouted into
the world; but when they personally stood face to face with the Moloch
upon which for years they had heaped contemptuous abuse, then national
(_i.e._, personal) interests came first.

Herr Fischer, in his capacity as president of the Socialist Congress in
Berlin, 1892, said:

"The reception of French delegates at Halle, and of Liebknecht at
Marseilles, have proved incontrovertibly that the struggling French
proletarians are of one mind and heart with German Social Democracy. Let
the chauvinists, burning with hate on this and that side the Rhine, urge
us on to war; let the diplomats and Governments of both countries
sacrifice the well-being of the two nations to militarism and the
war-bogey. The working-men in the two countries stretch out their hands
to each other over the frontiers as pioneers of true culture and
morality. They are convinced that there is only one enemy which
separates them, and that it is their common task to fight a