Page:Karl Liebknecht - Militarism (1917).djvu/50

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MILITARISM

"learned to suppress all strife under the long endured foreign yoke," to use the jargon of the military weekly gazette. As has so often been the case, the financial and military questions played a revolutionary part. Many economic, social and political obstacles were removed. Industry and commerce, financially of chief importance, were promoted as far as it was possible with the peddling democratic spirit of Prussia-Germany. Even poliitcal liberties were introduced or at least promised. The people rose in arms, the storm burst forth, the army of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, the army of the general arming of the people chased the "hereditary enemy" across the Rhine in the great Wars of Liberation, and prepared a miserable end for the world conqueror who had undermined the France of the Great Revolution, though that army was not even the democratic institution Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had wanted to create. The German people, like the Moor in "Fiesco," having done their duty, duly received the "thanks of the House of the