Page:Karl Liebknecht - Militarism (1917).djvu/190

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158
MILITARISM

at Ostheim, at the convention of the Grandducal Saxon Veterans' and Military Association of Saxe-Weimar, is of the greatest interest. The discussion arose in connection with a principle adopted by the convention, according to which every member of the association is in duty bound to urge the expulsion of such members as are shown to be adherents of parties hostile to the government, especially of the Social Democratic party. The result was that not all strikes, but all those strikes which run counter to the members' duty of "fidelity to Emperor, Prince and Fatherland" are considered as actions betraying sentiments hostile to the government and revolutionary sentiments. Since it will depend upon the eminent gentlemen who as a matter of course play the first fiddle in the veterans' associations, to declare where and when said fidelity is called in question by a strike, and since those gentlemen, like our police and courts, are only too much accustomed to consider strikes (which only too often touch their own vital interests, directly or indirectly) as Social Democratic machinations, we can count upon a