lost energies, and which in any case would doubtless bring into power men with the will to govern;[1] or a great extension of proletarian violence, which would make the revolutionary reality evident to the middle class, and would disgust them with the humanitarian platitudes with which Jaurès lulls them to sleep. It is in view of these two great dangers that the latter displays all his resources as a popular orator. European peace must be maintained at all costs; some limit must be put to proletarian violence.
Jaurès is persuaded that France will be perfectly happy on the day on which the editors of his paper, and its shareholders, can draw freely on the coffers of the public Treasury; it is an illustration of the celebrated proverb: "Quand Auguste avait bu, la Pologne était ivre." A socialist government of this kind would without doubt ruin any country, if it was administered with the same care for financial order as l'Humanité has been administered; but what does the future of the country matter, provided that the new régime gives a good time to a few professors, who imagine that they have invented Socialism, and to a few Dreyfusard financiers?
Before the working class also could accept this dictatorship of incapacity, it must itself become as stupid as the middle class, and must lose all revolutionary energy, at the same time that its masters will have lost all capitalistic energy. Such a future is not impossible; and a great deal of hard work is being done to stupefy the worker for this purpose. The Direction du Travail and the Musée Social are doing their best to carry on this marvellous work of idealistic education, which is decorated with the most pompous names, and which is represented as a means of civilising the proletariat. Our professional idealists are very much disturbed by the Syndicalists, and experience
- ↑ Cf. G. Sorel, Insegnamenti sociali, p. 388. The hypothesis of a great European war seems very far fetched at the moment.
