able to prevent the world-war, then it must be at least, the last war, it must be the Goetterdaemmerung of capitalism."
On the 30th of July, 1914, the central organ of the German Social-Democracy cried out:
"The socialist proletariat rejects all responsibility for the events that are being precipitated by a ruling class that is blinded, and on the verge of madness. We know that for us new life will spring from the ruins. But the responsibility falls upon the rulers of today.
"For them it is a question of existence!
"Die Weligeschichte ist das Weltgericht!"
And then came the awful, the incredible 4th of August, 1914.
Did it have to come? An event of such importance cannot be a mere accident. It must have its deep, significant, objective causes. But perhaps these causes may be found in the errors of the leader of the proletariat, the Social-Democracy itself, in the fact that our readiness to fight has flagged, that our courage and our convictions have forsaken us. Scientific Socialism has taught us to recognize the objective laws of historical development. Man does not make history of his own volition, but he makes history nevertheless. The proletariat is dependent in its actions upon the degree of righteousness to which social evolution has advanced. But again, social evolution is not a thing apart from the proletariat; it is in the same measure its driving force and its cause as well as its product and its effect. And though we can no more skip a period in our historical development than a man can jump over his shadow, it lies within our power to accelerate or to retard it.
Socialism is the first popular movement in the world that has set itself a goal and has established in the social life of man a conscious thought, a definite plan, the free will of mankind. For this reason Friedrich Engels calls the final victory of the socialist proletariat a stride by human kind from the animal kingdom into
