eve, indeed, it would be
the greatest misfortune for you if you did succeed. The anarchists, who
are now carrying on their work in Austria, have no footing in
Germany--and why? Because in Germany the mad plans of those men are
wrecked on the compact organization of social-democracy, because the
German proletariat, in view of the fruitlessness of your socialist law,
has not abandoned hope of attaining its ends peacefully by means of
socialistic propaganda and agitation. If--and I have said this
before--if your law were not _pro nihilo_, it would be _pro nihilismo_.
If the German proletariat no longer believed in the efficacy of our
present tactics; if we found that we could no longer maintain intact the
organization and cohesion of the party, what would happen? We should
simply declare--we have no more to do with the guidance of the party; we
can no longer be responsible. The men in power do not wish that the
party should continue to exist; it is hoped to destroy us--well, no
party allows itself to be destroyed, for there is above all things the
law of self-defense, of self-preservation, and, if the organized
direction fails, you will have a condition of anarchy, in which
everything is left to the individual. And do you really believe--you who
have so often praised the bravery of the Germans up to the heavens, when
it has been to your interest to do so--do you really believe that the
hundreds of thousands of German social-democrats are cowards? Do you
believe that what has happened in Russia would not be possible in
Germany if you succeeded in bringing about here the conditions which
exist there?"[33] Both Bebel and Liebknecht taunted the Chancellor with
his failure to drive the socialists to commit acts of violence. "The
Government may be sure," said Liebknecht in 1886, "that we shall not,
now or ever, go upon the bird-lime, that we shall never be such fools as
to play the game of our enemies by attempts ... the more madly you carry
on, the sooner you will come to the end; the pitcher goes to the well
until it breaks."[34]

At the end of this year the reports given from the several states of the
working out of the anti-socialist law were most discouraging to the
Chancellor. From everywhere the report came that agitation was
unintermittent, and being carried on with zeal and success. And Bebel
said publicly that nowhere was the socialist party more numerous or
better organized than in the districts where the minor state