Page:Karl Liebknecht - Militarism (1917).djvu/151

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SOME CARDINAL SINS
119

duce its masterpiece, for the day when the people rises boldly and fearlessly against its rulers, the day of the great reckoning.

On that day, which the elect of militarism would see dawn rather today than tomorrow (because they hope that the sooner it comes the more surely it will be the deluge of Social Democracy) militarism will shoot, fire grape-shot and massacre en masse to its heart's content "with God, for King and Fatherland." The 22nd of January, 1905, the bloody May week of 1871 will be its ideal and model. The commander of the Vienna corps, Schönfeldt, made a touching vow at a banquet of feasting bourgeois in April, 1894, when he said: "I can assure you that you, too, will find us behind your front when the existence of society, the enjoyment of the hard earned property are endangered. When the citizen stands in the first line the soldier flies to his assistance."

Thus the mailed fist is ever raised and ready to come down with a crushing blow. Hypocritically they speak about "the maintenance of law and order," "the protection of the liberty to work,"