Readers who are interested in the point are referred to the report[67] of the Socialist Congress held in Berlin, October, 1892.  The party leaders endeavoured to gloss the matter over with righteous indignation and ambiguous phrases, but it nevertheless remains a fact that the desire to counteract effectively, a tendency to perjury among Socialists led the German Government a few years later to make perjury punishable by penal servitude up to ten years.

[Footnote 67:  All these reports may be seen in the British Museum Reading Room.  Press mark is:  08072d.]

Before leaving the Volksstaat the author only wishes to state that it lays the axe on every conception of morality, religion and social order which we esteem.  In the place of existing conditions, it would erect a mob tyranny more degrading to the individual than Czarism or Republicanism.  The mines of Siberia and the tinned-meat factories of Chicago may enslave the body, but the Volksstaat, as portrayed by Socialist writers and speakers, promises an intellectual tyranny—­hopeless alike to body and soul; and those who have had an opportunity to observe the brutal tyranny called “party discipline” which rules the German Social Democrats, will bear the present writer out in saying that its like, could only be found inside the German army.

The strongest, best organized and most thoroughly disciplined political party in the world has repeatedly expressed its unalterable determination to place national before international interests, whenever these two should seem to be at variance.  In the light of these declarations, the action of German Socialists in giving unreserved support to the German Government in this war, is not altogether surprising.

Furthermore, this foundation-stone in their policy ought never to have been left out of consideration when pondering over their ecstatic utterances on peace and internationalism.

The communistic manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, first published in London in the German language in 1847, contains the following:  “Men say that we Communists wish to destroy the nationality of the native land.  Workmen have no Fatherland.  It is impossible to take away what they do not possess.  The Communists scorn to conceal their views and intentions.  We declare openly, that their aims can only be attained by the violent overthrow of all existing social orders.  Let the ruling classes tremble before a communistic revolution.  The proletarians have nothing but their chains to lose, while they have a world to gain."[68]

[Footnote 68:  “Envy and greed are the two powerful levers by which the Social Democrats are endeavouring to lift the world off its hinges.  They live by the destruction of every ideal.”  Treitschke in the “Preussische Jahrbuecher,” vol. 34.]