Thus the tide, checked for a time, will inevitably break forth with renewed force.  It is probable that the next fifty years will be a period of great change—­even of revolutions, peaceful or otherwise, throughout the earth.

To understand the effect on the whole socialist movement, one must distinguish clearly the two contrasting types of socialism.  It is the curse of the orthodox, or Marxian, type of socialism, that it was “made in Germany.”  Its economic state is modeled directly on the Prussian bureaucratic and paternalistic state.  Its dream realized, would mean Prussian efficiency carried to the nth power, in a society of as merciless slavery as that prevailing among the ants and the bees.  It is doubtless this characteristic that has made so many bureaucratic or orthodox socialists instinctively Pro-German in sentiment and sympathy during the War.

The contrasting type of socialism is that which is really the full development of democracy, its movement from a narrow individualism to ever wider voluntary co-operation.  It moves, not toward government ownership, but toward ownership by the people, of natural monopolies.  It means, not the turning over to a bureaucratic government, of plants and instruments of production, but the progressive cooperative ownership of them by the workers themselves.  It will end, not in the overthrow of the capitalist regime, but in all workers becoming co-operative capitalists, and all capitalists, productive workers, since no idle rich—­or poor, will be tolerated.  Such socialism, if it be so called, will depend upon the highest individual initiative, the most voluntary co-operation and will include the individualism which is the cherished boon of democracy.  It is significant that those who represent this type of socialism and who think for themselves, are breaking away from the orthodox party, under the courageous leadership and example of John Spargo, in increasing numbers, since our entrance into the War.  They are as instinctively American and democratic in sympathy, as those of the opposite type are Pro-German.

Even in the most democratic countries, however, the War has caused a vast increase of the undesirable type of socialism:  that is one of its temporary penalties.  To carry on such a war successfully, it is necessary to multiply the authority of the central government.  That has been the experience of England, now being repeated here.  Men, who were citizens of a democracy, become, as soldiers, and in part as workers, subjects of the government in war.  To some extent we are forced to imitate the tendencies we deplore and seek to overthrow in Germany, to be able to meet and defeat Germany.

Even so, the difference is profound.  The subordination to the government is, for the people as a whole, voluntary, achieved through laws passed by chosen representatives of the people, and not by the arbitrary will of a kaiser and ruling caste.  Thus the freedom, voluntarily relinquished for a time, can be quickly regained when the crisis is past.  Subjects will become citizens again, when soldiers return to civil life.