to corrupt Socialism and to alienate the workers from the revolutionary idea. They have been led to deny the idea of patriotism by one of those necessities which are met with at all times in the course of history,[1] and which philosophers have sometimes great difficulty in explaining—because the choice is imposed by external conditions, and not freely made for reasons drawn from the nature of things. This character of historical necessity gives to the existing antipatriotic movement a strength which it would be useless to attempt to dissimulate by means of sophistries.[2]
We have the right to conclude from the preceding analysis that Syndicalist violence, perpetrated in the course of strikes by proletarians who desire the overthrow of the State, must not be confused with those acts of savagery which the superstition of the State suggested to the revolutionaries of '93, when they had power in their hands and were able to oppress the conquered—following the principles which they had received from the Church and from the Monarchy. We have the right to hope that a Socialist revolution carried out by pure Syndicalists would not be defiled by the abominations which sullied the middle-class revolutions.
- ↑ After the trial of Hervé, Léon Daudet wrote: "Those who followed this case were thrilled by the testimonies, by no means theatrical, of the trade union secretaries" (Libre Parole, December 31, 1905).
- ↑ Yet Jaurès had the audacity to declare in the Chamber on May 11, 1907, that there was only "on the surface of the working-class movement a few paradoxical and outrageous formulas, which originated, not from the negation of the fatherland, but from condemnation of the abuse to which word and idea were so often put." Language like this could only have been used before an assembly which was entirely ignorant of the working-class movement.
