e admitted that arms will always be
necessary, pre-supposing that the world continues along the same lines
of development as heretofore.

They have only objected to the existing _form_[65] of militarism, but
otherwise they have always been unanimous that military training should
be compulsory and universal. Their British _Genossen_ (comrades) have
either misunderstood or wilfully perverted these teachings. German
Socialists have unswervingly insisted upon every man learning the use of
arms, while their British followers have preached absolute disarmament
and done their utmost to betray this country into weakening herself
below the minimum necessary to guard the land, and to maintain the
country's pledges to the world.

[Footnote 65: Kautsky: "Die Internationalitaet und der Krieg" (Vorwaerts
Publishing House, Berlin, 1915), p. 26. "We have fought against the
military system not to make the land defenceless, but in order to
introduce another system in its place, which will give us the necessary
guarantees that the army will always be the tool of the civil
authorities and never their master. When the latter is the case we call
such a condition 'militarism,' and it is against that alone that we
fight." Seeing that military power is absolutely subordinated to the
civil authorities in the case of Great Britain (Mutiny Acts), then
according to the principles of German Socialists their British
colleagues were wrong in all the efforts which they have made against
the armed powers of these islands.]

In Halle, Herr Bebel made this statement: "I have already made it clear
that I consider the efforts of the so-called peace friends towards
disarmament to be useless (_aussichtslos_), because it is unthinkable
that the rival States would agree to legal restrictions concerning
disarmament. If such were made, each would endeavour by secret
preparations to out-do the other. War and national enmity are necessary
products of society, and the existing class distinctions."

The Germans were quite logical in this matter; in effect they said--the
existing States and forms of government make militarism necessary, and
war inevitable. Therefore we declare war to the knife on every existing
government, including Russian Czarism, British constitutionalism, German
autocracy and American republicanism. They are one and all rotten,
unjust and inhuman. Our programme includes their complete overthrow and
the erection in their stead of a _Volksstaat_