Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/252

 hegemony, and who, conscientiously and deliberately carrying out a plan long since matured, have let loose this War on the vilest pretext and for the most miserable cause. They have been able to put their designs into execution owing to the passivity of their people, a passivity inconceivable in any other country, in France, Great Britain, even in Russia of 1914, where already the forces of democracy were rising against the Czar, and would have certainly rebelled against so amazing an endeavour.

We shall dwell but an instant, and only to set it aside, on the objection that if the Central Powers are guilty of Imperialism the Allied Powers are not exempt either, that in France, Britain, or Italy a certain proportion of the population, certain interests, certain groups always aspire to veritable territorial conquests, either colonial economic gains or even European, we should not dream of denying, no more than we should allow plausible conclusions to be drawn from that fact.

It is only in the ideal land of dreams that causes appear with simplicity and theoretic purity. In the world in which