lind to the readiness of the
plutocratic and militaristic forces in control of governments to proceed
to illegal _coups d'etat_, to destroy all vestiges of democracy, if
thought necessary, and to use every form of violence, as soon as they
feel that they are beginning to lose their political power. The evidence
that this is already the intention is abundant.

There is no one who has recognized more clearly than the recent
"Socialistic" Prime Minister of France (Briand) that the ruling classes
force the people to fight for every great advance. In the French
Socialist Congress of Paris, in 1899, Briand said: "Now I must reply to
those of my friends who through an instinctive horror of every kind of
violence have been brought to hope that the transformation of society
can be the work of evolution alone.... Such certainly are beautiful
dreams, but they are only dreams.... In a general way, in every
instance, history demonstrates that the people have scarcely obtained
anything except what they have been able to take for themselves.... It
is not through a fad, and much less through the love of violence, that
our party is and must remain revolutionary, but by necessity, one might
say by destiny.... In our Congress we have even pointed out forms of
revolt, among the first of which are the general strike." In the
International Congress at Paris in 1900, Briand again advocated the
general strike on the ground that it was "necessary as a pressure on
capitalistic society, indispensable for obtaining continued
ameliorations of a political and economic kind, and also, under
propitious circumstances, for the purposes of social revolution." Nor
can there be any doubt as to the revolutionary meaning of Briand when he
advocated the general strike. In 1899 he had said, "One can discuss a
strike of soldiers, one can even try to make ready for it ... our young
military Socialists busy themselves in making the workingman who is
going to quit his shop, and the peasant who is going to desert his
fields to go into the barracks, understand that there are duties higher
than those discipline would like to impose upon them." I have already
quoted his recommendation, made on this occasion, that in the case of a
social crisis the soldiers might fire, but need not necessarily fire in
the direction suggested by the officers. As late as 1903 he took up the
defense of Gustave Herve, when the latter was accused of
anti-militarism, and said before the cour