The position is perfectly simple, and to those who are sufficiently ignorant and naive this programme promises an universal salvation, as delirious in its joy as that expected by African races when bending the knee before images of wood and stone.  German Socialists are pledged just as irrevocably to the doctrines of brute force as are the Junker and military powers in the German Fatherland.  What is their industrial and class warfare but an attempt to enforce the doctrine of might is right?

In the official programme drawn up at Erfurt, 1891, there is a paragraph stating a claim for uneingeschraenktes Koalitionsrecht (absolute and unlimited right of coalition), which means that the masses may unite to enforce what they will, and annihilate whom they please.  The same rights of coalition are denied to anyone else, and in the coal-strikes in South Wales[66] we have a lurid example—­such instances could not be found in Germany—­of the absolute and unlimited right of coalition at the risk of undoing any and every other right.

[Footnote 66:  The strikes during the present war.—­Author.]

The point is this:  German Socialists have declared their intention to give no allegiance to any existing form of government and to overthrow them at the earliest possible moment.  Do British Socialists accept this part of the programme?

Throughout German Social Democratic literature we find Mr. Ramsay Macdonald referred to as Genosse Ramsay Macdonald, which means that he is considered a full member of the brotherhood.  If that is really the case, and if he accepts their programme as one to be followed here he would be favouring the substitution of the volksstaat for the British constitutional monarchy.

In face of this it may be asked why do British members of the Socialist party take an oath on entering the House of Commons, and why do they accept L400 per annum to support a national State, if they have pledged themselves internationally to overthrow it?

The author admits his inability to solve the riddle, but during the years 1902-1914 he has heard members of all non-Socialist German parties assert that the German Socialists do not recognize any religious oath, and sections of the Socialists admit this position.  As a party they are professedly atheistic; therefore when the might of the German State compels them to take an oath—­they take it with an inward Rueckversicherung.

In a word, false-swearing is permitted, when one is obliged by circumstances, to take an oath to authorities whose right and might the oath-taker does not admit.  So long ago as 1892 the Social Democrats were publicly charged with condoning perjury in order to rescue fellow members from the results of breaches of the law.  Judge Schmidt in a court at Breslau said in that year:  “Social Democrats have never concealed the fact that they are hostile to any religious form of oath.  For them the religious importance and responsibility of an oath has no meaning whatever.”  Numerous German judges and authors have expressed themselves in a similar strain.