selves, this knowledge will support and strengthen us. Not lightly, but from the bottom of our hearts we declare that we are ready for all sacrifices!”
It was like a Ruetli pledge. The whole world looked toward the Minster of Basel; where the bells, slowly arid solemnly, rang to the approaching great fight between the armies of labor and capital.
On the third of September, 1912, the social-democratic deputy, David, spoke in the German Reichstag:
"That was the most beautiful hour of my life. That I here avow. When the chimes of the Minster rang in the long train of international Social-Democrats, when the red flags were planted in the nave of the church about the altar, when the emissaries of the people were greeted by the peels of the organ that resounded the message of peace, that was an impression that I can never forget . . . .
"You must realize what it was that happened here. The masses have ceased to be willess, thoughtless herds. That is new in the history of the world. Hitherto the masses have always blindly followed the lead of those who were interested in war, who drove the peoples at each others' throats to mass murder. That will stop. The masses have ceased to be the instruments, the yeomen of war profiteers."
A week before the war broke out, on the 26th of July, 1914, the German party papers wrote:
"We are no marionettes; we are fighting with all our might, against a system that makes men the powerless tools of blind circumstances, against this capitalism that is preparing to change Europe, thirsty for peace, into a smoking battlefield. If destruction takes its course, if the determined will for peace of the German, of the international proletariat, that will find expression in the next few days in mighty demonstrations, should not be
