Workmen who have affirmed that the exploited of all lands have common interests and that the exploiters of all lands are their common enemies are on the battlefields shooting each other. Each national group excuses its murderous denial of oft-repeated professions on the ground that it is engaged in a holy defensive war. The German Socialist is fighting to save his home and wife and children from the barbaric hordes of Russia. The French Socialist is defending his home and wife and children against the barbaric Prussianism of Germany. The Belgian Socialist, with whom everybody, including the German, has at least a sportsman's sympathy, is obviously in arms against the invader. Even the English Socialist makes a case for England as a defendant nation. “We regard this war as a war of self-defence. If England or Belgium had stood on one side now, no one would have cared if a victorious Germany had swallowed us up later. Only those extreme internationalists who think it a matter of no importance if one nation tries to tear the very tongue from the mouth of another nation and blot out all that is distinctive in its habits of life could refuse to fight against the German aggressor." That might have been uttered by

a member of the British Cabinet.

It was writ

ten by a British revolutionist, Mr. Arthur D. Lewis. I do not know how he stands with his fellow Socialists in England, but he is a competent student of revolutionary unionism and politics. In times like these the only smile that is seemly upon the human countenance is the smile of irony.

The apostasy of the majority of Socialists in the murdering nations has given great satisfaction to the political masters and their literary apologists. And when your enemy praises your conduct you can be dead sure that you have done wrong. Every German professor, psychologist, journalist, military expert, and clergyman who argues for the Fatherland points with pride to the magnificent unity of Germany, to the laying aside of party differences, yea, even to the loyalty of the Social Democrats. The entire empire marches to one tune and therefore its cause is just and holy. If a minority of unreconciled Socialists tried to pipe a different tune, the censor has taken care of them. France, too, is united as never before. Hervé, who served a term in prison for treasonous antimilitarism, is now as patriotic a warrior as the

rest.

And Great Britain is united (excepting

some of the pesky Irish) in a coagulated mass of anti-Germanism. Mr. Lewis, whose views happen to be nearest at hand for purposes of quotation, says that the anti-war manifesto of the Independent Labor party was the work of the National Council and does not express the views of the bulk of the members. "No section of anti-war opinion has had confidence enough in its cause to call any public meeting to explain its views. The sentiment of the people is always divided in England. In our lifetime it was never so unitedly in favor of any war as it is in favor of the present war." So we have splendid national units fighting with an annihilating determination, and in unity lies not only strength but right. Every nation is right because of its homogeneity of purpose. Kaiser and proletarian embrace fraternally and train their guns upon Guesde, the uncompromising French Marxian, his arms linked in the dance of death with Winston Churchill and the Russian Czar.

Each member of each group of national Socialists is justified in sticking a bayonet into a Socialist of another national group on the simple ground that he is defending his home. (His home probably belongs to the landlord.) He

is justified on much higher grounds, on impersonal idealistic grounds, grounds that are the cloudy floor of heaven. He is fighting for the liberty of mankind. German freedom means the freedom of the world. In Germany the Social Democratic idea has developed more highly than in any other country. Therefore it would be good for mankind if Germany prevailed. But in France and England liberal institutions flourish beyond anything known in military semi-feudal Germany. Therefore disaster to France and England entails disaster to liberalism, to democracy, to all that the world has won and must maintain if we are to advance to genuine democracy, to Socialism. Each group of Socialist murderers is killing the other group for the good of the slain, certainly for the ultimate triumph of the most advanced Socialist ideas. Compared with the state-mad Socialists, Dr. Eliot and Dr. Münsterberg are feeble champions of political liberty and culture. Each group is sure that the enemy is reactionary and backward. The German Socialists, it is true, do not pretend that England and France and Belgium are less democratic than Germany, but look at their ally, Russia the unspeakable! The Russian Socialists, consistent enemies of

the Russian Government and free from palaver, make no claims to superior culture and political liberty on behalf of their Fatherland. Plechanoff, a Russian Socialist, a profound Germantaught Marxist, holds that the "victory of Germany means the setback of progress in Western Europe and the definite, or almost indefinite, triumph of Russian despotism." But this is not because Russian democracy is superior to German; it is because the German autocracy is, in times of international peace, allied with the Czar to keep the people down, and the Russian despotism is easier to beat than such despotism as a victorious German Government would impose on the Russian people. Dr. Steinmetz, the distinguished German-American engineer, maintains that a victory of Russia and consequent dominion over Germany "threatens destruction to all that Socialism has accomplished by submergency under an autocracy based on the illiterate masses."

So though the Socialist behind the machine guns, like other good people, deplores the necessity of war and does not believe in war as a method of propagating his ideas, he can nevertheless wipe his bloody hands with a clear conscience and bind up his wounds with the salving