Page:Karl Liebknecht - Militarism (1917).djvu/84

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MILITARISM

jingo and imperialist world policy, but in the second line quite unmistakeably by changes in the interior tension, the intensification of the class-struggle. It is scarcely possible that the militaristic velleities of the British war secretary, Haldane, in September, 1906, have only a temporal relation to the energetic political activity of the British working-class. The propensity to introduce universal military training of the Swiss kind, which for the time being has been repulsed in England in spite of the strong agitation in favor of such training and which in the United States found significant expression in Mr. Roosevelt's message of December 4, 1906, is not a symptom of progress. It signifies, in spite of all said to the contrary, a strengthening of militarism as compared to its present condition, and is a station on the precipitous road leading to a standing army, as the example of Switzerland proves.

On account of the great multiplicity of possible combinations between the factors determining the extent and nature of the special requirements for protection against the exterior and interior enemy,