unger, I would have shouldered a gun. But as my age
does not permit this I will, nevertheless, face the enemy and defend the
cause of humanity.

I am confident of final victory, and without hesitation as to its
subsequent role in France, the party will never deviate from the line of
conduct laid out. As the solidarity of workmen does not shut out the
right to defend themselves against traitor workmen, so international
solidarity does not exclude the right of one nation to defend itself
against a Government traitor to the peace of Europe.

France has been attacked, and she will have no more ardent defenders
than the workmen's party.

* * * * *

[Illustration: JULES GUESDE,
French Cabinet Minister and Exponent of French Socialism.
(_Photo from Trans Atlantic Co._)]

MINISTER JULES GUESDE.

Editorial Article in the New Yorker Volkszeitung, Aug. 28.

Who would have suspected in 1904 that Jules Guesde would come to be once
more a member of a Ministry, popular in its majority? Who would have
thought then--it was in the time of the memorable debates over
socialistic "ministerialism" in the Amsterdam Congress of the
International--that there ever could come a time when this clear-headed
and unswerving exponent of academic socialism would be forced by the
need of the hour to take a step which in ordinary circumstances would be
absolutely inconceivable for him?

And now this has actually happened. Jules Guesde, who has been
called--in contrast to the easily moved emotional Jaures--the
stiff-necked dogmatist, is not only become Minister, but with him
another proved Socialist champion, Marcel Sembat, who for his part too
would rather have split the party than to have approved the entrance of
Millerand into the Cabinet of Waldeck Rousseau.

But now these two are sitting on the same Ministerial bench, not only
with this self-same Millerand, but with the much more deeply despised
renegade Briand, with the anti-Socialist abettor Ribot, and the
disgusting reactionary and favorite of the Czar, Pelcassi. The world
seems to be unhinged.

Yet the incomprehensible is under the existing circumstances only too
easily understood, Guesde and Sembat have taken this difficult step,
because there was no other choice for them, they had to take it. They,
as representatives of a party which had sent 102 members to the Chamber
of Deputies, could not refuse, when this was the question, to create a