Page:Karl Liebknecht - Militarism (1917).djvu/130

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MILITARISM

drill which capitalist militarism, (for which the inward voluntary discipline is an unattainable goal), can not dispense with for want of a better method. We repeat that they are considered, not officially, it is true, but semi-officially, in spite of all the scruples and regrets we hear expressed, not as a legal, but as an indispensable means of military education.

But apart from military scruples, our militarists suffer from a bad conscience since they have been caught at their game, i. e., since the relentless Social Democratic criticism of the army institutions began and large portions of the middle-class commenced to disavow that military morality. With a gnashing of teeth militarism had to acknowledge that it was not simply devised and commanded by the supreme war lord, but that it depends, especially in regard to its material existence, on the popular representative body on which it looks with such scornful disdain—on the Reichstag which includes even representatives of the "mob"; in short, that it depends on the "rabble" and that under cover of their immunity the peo-