Page:Jean Jaurès socialist and humanitarian 1917.djvu/113

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CHAPTER V

THE NEW ARMY

It was Jaurès' intention to write a vast work under the general title of “The Socialist Organization of France.” He believed that Socialism would come about in that democratic country before long, and he wished to help in every way towards this development. His extreme optimism, amounting to a gift of faith, makes one feel as if he would almost have created the new conditions by his ardent belief in them. At the end of his discourse on the results of the International Congress at Stuttgart, which he delivered at the Tivoli-Vaux-Hall in Paris, on the 7th of September, 1907, he said: “Ah, citizens, I have for my part an illimitable confidence in the future. It is with serene certainty that we look at things and that we go forward in the battle.… The ideal beauty of social justice, of the proletarian revolution, cannot perish: it is as immortal as work, as imperishable as conscience, and I salute with you, soldiers of the International, the coming of Socialist Humanity.”