Such an army of revolution, 7,000,000 strong, is a thing to make rulers and ruling classes pause and consider.  The cry of this army is, “No quarter!  We want all that you possess.  We will be content with nothing less than all that you possess.  We want in our hands the reins of power and the destiny of mankind.  Here are our hands.  They are strong hands.  We are going to take your governments, your palaces, and all your purpled ease away from you, and in that day you shall work for your bread even as the peasant in the field or the starved and runty clerk in your metropolises.  Here are our hands.  They are strong hands.”

Well may rulers and ruling classes pause and consider.  This is revolution.  And, further, these 7,000,000 men are not an army on paper.  Their fighting strength in the field is 7,000,000.  To-day they cast 7,000,000 votes in the civilized countries of the world.

Yesterday they were not so strong.  Tomorrow they will be still stronger.  And they are fighters.  They love peace.  They are unafraid of war.  They intend nothing less than to destroy existing capitalist society and to take possession of the whole world.  If the law of the land permits, they fight for this end peaceably, at the ballot-box.  If the law of the land does not permit, and if they have force meted out to them, they resort to force themselves.  They meet violence with violence.  Their hands are strong and they are unafraid.  In Russia, for instance, there is no suffrage.  The government executes the revolutionists.  The revolutionists kill the officers of the government.  The revolutionists meet legal murder with assassination.

Now here arises a particularly significant phase which it would be well for the rulers to consider.  Let me make it concrete.  I am a revolutionist.  Yet I am a fairly sane and normal individual.  I speak, and I think, of these assassins in Russia as “my comrades.”  So do all the comrades in America, and all the 7,000,000 comrades in the world.  Of what worth an organized, international, revolutionary movement if our comrades are not backed up the world over!  The worth is shown by the fact that we do back up the assassinations by our comrades in Russia.  They are not disciples of Tolstoy, nor are we.  We are revolutionists.

Our comrades in Russia have formed what they call “The Fighting Organization.”  This Fighting Organization accused, tried, found guilty, and condemned to death, one Sipiaguin, Minister of Interior.  On April 2 he was shot and killed in the Maryinsky Palace.  Two years later the Fighting Organization condemned to death and executed another Minister of Interior, Von Plehve.  Having done so, it issued a document, dated July 29, 1904, setting forth the counts of its indictment of Von Plehve and its responsibility for the assassination.  Now, and to the point, this document was sent out to the socialists of the world, and by them was published everywhere in the magazines and newspapers.  The point is, not that the socialists of the world were unafraid to do it, not that they dared to do it, but that they did it as a matter of routine, giving publication to what may be called an official document of the international revolutionary movement.