If the working class in any one country had had the faith and the courage to revolt, the spell of the old idea of national defence would have been broken in all other countries, and the revolt would have become international. But that is at present beside the point. What it is necessary to emphasise is that the development of Socialist thought before the war had brought out a new conception of national defence, which, if acted upon, would have prevented the war altogether and thus f>roved the most efficacious method of national defence.
But then the mistake—it may be objected—has been made, and have we any other option but to fall back upon the old method? The reply will be found in the same Stuttgart resolution, endorsed and amplified at the Basel congress: "Should war nevertheless break out, it is the duty of Socialists to intervene to bring about its cessation at the earliest possible date, and to make the fullest possible use of the economic and political crisis caused by it with a view to rousing the people and thereby accelerating the downfall of capitalist domination."
This is but the same idea of international action for national defence, only extended to the time of war. Not by fighting against one another, but by joining hands in a common effort to stop the war and to overthrow Capitalism, the author of the war, will the working class best achieve the security of their respective "Fatherlands."
WARS—ANCIENT AND MODERN
Enrichment—apart from prestige in the case of despotisms—has ever been the object of war. "The art of war" was Aristotle's opinion more than 2,000 years ago, "is, in sense, by nature ,part of the art of acquisition," and Plato makes his Socrates tell what would happen if the ideal republic were to abandon itself to the ordinary mundane affairs, and, in consequence, outgrow its own resources: "Then a piece of our neighbours' country would be wanted by us for pasture and tillage, and they, in their turn, if they exceed the limits of necessity, will want a piece of ours, and then, Glaucon, we shall go to war." "So we shall," was Glaucon's reply. This is as elementary and as simple as A. B. C. Whatever the poets may have sung, whatever dip-
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