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We passed through that painful schooling the more rapidly because we immediately entered the revolutionary epoch. But even we paid dearly for these lessons. The working classes of other countries have to go through that period now, and their difficulties are greater, because their bourgeoisie is clever, more cunning, and more skilful than ours, and their Mensheviks display their artfulness in subtly deceiving the workers. This period in Germany has not been outlived yet.
That is the crux of the situation.
At the present time, however, the condition of the workers has become so hard, the treachery of the German Mensheviks has become so evident, that even there the Independent Party, hitherto united, has come to a split. And of course this fact will be of enormous importance not only to Germany, but to the whole International, and the international revolution, and first, and foremost to the workers of Italy, France, and England. We are therefore justified in saying a new page in the history of the struggle of the working class of Germany and of the whole of Europe was begun at Halle.
The German Mensheviks believe neither in God nor the devil. They imagine they are some kind of nurses and governesses appointed to the working class. But in fact they only hinder the progress of the working class. They imagine that the workers are simpletons, and unless the wise Menshevik aunt keeps them out of mischief, they will get themselves into an awful state.
One should have seen those venerable intellectual "leaders" at Halle. They were at a loss for words, these enlightened, experienced leaders, as they thought themselves when they were suddenly turned out by the workers! Our Mensheviks—Martov, Dan, Tseretelii, Tchkheidze—were equally unable to understand such a turn of affairs, and left us with the conviction that we had committed the greatest historical injustice, that we had destroyed the sacred intellectual vessel, that we are barbarians who fail to understand the intellectual beauty of those leaders, their great experience, the fact of their being the pearl of the party, the salt of the earth, etc. The same hatred was manifested in Halle towards the workers, because the latter failed to appreciate the Hilferding "pearl," because
