eat Britain, and is making rapid progress. "The
Socialist," the organ of the Socialist Labour party, a party which at
present is small in number, but which is most violent in attitude, in
an article entitled "The Socialist Labour Party and the Citizen Army,"
quotes with approval Herve's saying: "The present countries are cruel
step-mothers to the proletariat. There is at present no country so
superior to any other that its working class should get themselves
killed in its defence. In case of mobilisation the proletariat should
respond to the call to arms by an insurrection against their rulers to
establish the Socialist or Communist _regime_. Rebellion sooner than
war! In case of an order to mobilise, we would seize the moment to
attempt the revolution, to place our hands on the social wealth to-day
usurped by a minority." The foregoing is printed in very large type.
The article then continues, commenting upon Herve's advice as follows:
"The soldier has been fed and clothed by the working class. His
continued efficiency as a military automaton depends upon regular
supply of food, clothing, and the necessaries of life from the same
source. He has been transported to the field of conflict by the labour
of a whole army of railwaymen. Let us suppose that the day of the
final struggle has been reached. Suppose the capitalist attempts to
stifle the revolution in blood; suppose he calls upon the army to
crush the revolutionary working class by brute force. Let us suppose,
too, that the revolutionary agitation has not penetrated the Chinese
walls of military discipline (a most improbable hypothesis) and that
the soldiers, instead of turning their guns against the capitalist
murderers, cheerfully and willingly serve their masters in the attempt
to crush the people--what then? We shall put the army in quarantine.
We shall isolate it from the rest of the community. We shall cut off
supplies of food, clothing, and fuel. The railway and telegraph
service will no longer be at its disposal--and in this respect we are
in a more advantageous position than our French and German
fellow-workers, inasmuch as the Government ownership of the railways
in these countries is used to deny the workers connected with them the
right of organisation. The army would be in a state of siege,
surrounded on all sides by implacable foes. That, coupled with
whatever may be possible and necessary in the way of armed
insurrection within and outside of the army