They know that after every war a veritable mud-volcano of Hunnic brutality and baseness sends its floods over the nations participating in it, rebarbarizing all civilization for years.[1] The worker knows that the fatherland for which he is to fight is not his fatherland; that there is only one real enemy for the proletariat of every country—the capitalist class who oppresses and exploits the proletariat; that the proletariat of every country is by its most vital interests closely bound to the proletariat of every other country; that all national interests recede before the common interests of the international proletariat; and that the international coalition of exploiters and oppressors must be opposed by the international coalition of the exploited and oppressed. He knows that the proletarians, if they were to be employed in a war, would be led to fight against their own brethren and the members of their own class, and thus against their own interests. The class-conscious proletarian therefore not only frowns upon that
- ↑ Cf. Moltke, p. 24, note 6, of this book, and "Moltke's Collected Works," II, p. 288. In his opinion war is supposed to promote virtue and efficiency, especially moral energy.
