Page:Karl Liebknecht - Militarism (1917).djvu/207

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SOME CARDINAL SINS
175

jingoist militaristic spirit is a fight against the danger threatening the peace of the nations. The old adage, "Si vis pacem, para bellum" may be true for the individual state surrounded by militaristic states, but it is in no wise true for the capitalist countries taken collectively, with which the international propaganda of the Social Democracy is concerned. Still less does that adage prove the necessity of preparing for war in the particular form of the standing army, to which on the contrary exactly the opposite aphorism applies—"Si vis bellum para pacem": there is no greater danger of war than such a peace insurance! It is true that for the aggressive economic-political imperialism of our days the standing army is the suitable form of war preparations.

As truly as the maintenance of international peace is in the interest of the international proletariat and beyond that in the interest of the civilization of the whole of humanity, as truly is the struggle against militarism—that epitome of national hatreds, that sum and extract of all peace disturbing tendencies of capitalism, in short, that