chance than in 1848. If it be indeed true that a few machine-guns may
decide the issue, it will be by no means difficult for the insurgent
people to secure possession of those machine-guns. If it be true that
a military training is essential to success, millions of Germans have
received that training. Let only the merest fraction of the people
raise the standard of rebellion, and let the spirit of rebellion be
rife, and that spirit will spread like wild-fire, and the Hohenzollern
Monarchy after this war will be brought to the ground like a decaying
tree in a November gale.

V.

We shall be told that if a revolution were such an easy task, it is
inconceivable that the German people should not have risen before; and
it is perfectly true that, since the bloody days of 1848, there has
been no serious riot, not to mention any rebellion, in the German
Monarchy. But the reason for this passive acquiescence in and for this
servile surrender to despotism is due to the German revolutionaries
themselves. One of the secrets of recent German history is that the
revolutionists themselves have repudiated revolutionary methods. It is
the Social Democrats who deserted the cause of democracy. In France
Socialists were pacifists abroad and aggressive at home. In Germany
the Socialists were pacifists at home and aggressive abroad.

That is why, as I anticipated in my "Anglo-German Problem" (1912), the
German Socialists are ultimately responsible for the war, even more
than the Junkers. The Junkers and the Government knew that they had no
reason to dread a renewal of 1848. They felt that they had a perfectly
free hand. They knew the temper of the Social Democrats and the
meaning of the Marxian creed. For it was an essential part of the
Gospel according to St. Marx that the revolution, if it ever came,
would come peacefully, inevitably, with the people raising their
little finger, through the mere automatic pressure of economic
concentration. Capitalism itself, so the Socialists said, was working
for the triumph of Socialism. Once the process of concentration of
production was complete, once all the capital was gathered in a few
hands, the German revolution would come of itself, and Kaiser Bebel
and Kaiser Liebknecht would simply substitute themselves for Kaiser
William as the rulers of an absolute collectivist State.

That attitude of passive acquiescence, that sordid materialistic
creed, explains the ignominious collapse of the Soci