e issued pacific manifestoes and organized
pacific processions; they have filed off in their hundreds of
thousands in the streets of Berlin to protest against the war party;
but when the question of peace or war has been brought to a point in
Socialist congresses--when their foreign brethren have moved that in
the case of an unjust aggression the German Social Democrats should
declare a military strike--German Socialists have refused to assent.
The dramatic oratorical duel which took place between the French and
the German delegates at the Congress of Stuttgart illustrates the
differences between the national temperament of the Frenchman and the
German. When called upon to proclaim the military strike, the German
Socialists gave as an excuse that such a decision would frighten away
from the Social Democrat party hundreds of thousands of middle-class
supporters. This excuse is an additional proof of the moral and
political weakness of Social Democracy. It illustrates its moral
weakness; for the Socialist leaders sacrifice a great principle for
the sake of an electoral gain. The leaders know that nationalist
feeling runs high in the middle classes; they know that any
anti-militarist policy would be unpopular. And they have not the
courage as a party to face unpopularity. And the arguments used at
Stuttgart also illustrate the political weakness of German Socialism;
for they show that the Socialist vote does not possess the cohesion
and homogeneity with which it is credited: they show that hundreds of
thousands of citizens who record a Socialist vote are not Socialists
at all. To vote for Socialism is merely an indirect way of voting
against the Government. There is no organized Opposition in Germany.
The Socialists are the only party who are "agin the Government." And
all those German citizens who are dissatisfied with conditions as they
are choose this indirect and clumsy method of voting for the
Socialists in order to express their dissatisfaction with the present
Prussian despotism.

It is therefore not true to say that Socialism in Germany is a
decisive force working for peace. It would be more true to say that it
is a force working for war, simply because it is a force working for
reaction. Prussian reaction would not be so strong if it were not for
the bugbear of Social Democracy. If Social Democracy attracts a
considerable section of the lower middle class, it repels and
frightens the bulk of the middle classes as