in their struggle a number of extraordinarily brilliant and daring
characters came to the front. But during the next decade their tragic
desperation, instead of advancing anarchism, served only to strengthen
the reactionary elements of Europe in their effort to annihilate the now
formidable labor and socialist movements.

Turning now to the struggle for existence of the socialist parties of
the various countries, there is one story that is far too important in
the history of socialism to be passed over. It was a magnificent battle
against the terrorists above and the terrorists below, that ended in
complete victory for the socialists. Strangely enough, the greatest
provocation to violence that has ever confronted the labor movement and
the greatest opportunity that was ever offered to anarchy occurred in
precisely that country where it was least expected. Nowhere else in all
Europe had socialism made such advances as in Germany; and nowhere else
was the movement so well organized, so intelligently led, or so clear as
to its aims and methods. An immense agitation had gone on during the
entire sixties, and working-class organizations were springing up
everywhere. Besides possessing the greatest theorists of socialism, Marx
and Engels, the German movement was rich indeed in having in its service
three such matchless agitators as Lassalle, Bebel, and Liebknecht.
Lassalle certainly had no peer, and those who have written of him
exhaust superlatives in their efforts to describe this prodigy. He,
also, was a product of that hero-producing period of '48. He had been
arrested in Duesseldorf at the same time that Marx and his circle had
been arrested at Cologne. He was then only twenty-three years of age.
Yet his defense of his actions in court is said to have been a
masterpiece. Even the critic George Brandes has spoken of it as the most
wonderful example of manly courage and eloquence in a youth that the
history of the world has given us.

Precocious as a child, proud and haughty as a youth, gifted with a
critical, penetrating, and brilliant mind, and moved by an ambition that
knew no bounds, Lassalle, with all his powerful passion and dramatic
talents, could not have been other than a great figure. When a man
possesses qualities that call forth the wonder of Heine, Humboldt,
Bismarck, and Brandes, when Bakounin calls him a "giant," and even
George Meredith turns to him as a personality almost unequaled in
fiction and makes a