Page:Karl Liebknecht - Militarism (1917).djvu/194

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
162
MILITARISM

summer of 1906. A considerable influence, which is now, however, rapidly decreasing, is exercised by militarism by means of a boycott directed against all those saloon keepers whose places are used by workmen's societies or associations even slightly suspected of Social Democratic sympathies. By that boycott it kills two birds with one stone. It protects the soldiers as much as possible from coming into contact with the poison of revolution (that, by the way, is part of the chapter on military pedagogy). In the second place, it makes it harder for the workmen to procure meeting places, as the policy is often carried out systematically so as to prevent the workmen from renting any halls at all. In Berlin that kind of boycott has proved impracticable and has been nearly done away with for that reason, but our comrades in the smaller places have had no little to suffer from that policy of pin pricks, which is naturally also directed against the proletariat in its economic conflicts.

But these are merely "the little wee ones" of its tricks. Militarism is not content with taking