Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/258

 as aim that the people should be left only their eyes to weep with. Belgian Socialism, which so often has risen against oppression within, was not likely to submit to oppression from without.

When they burned our villages, when they insulted our women, when they brutally suppressed our hardly-won liberties, how could we admit that this was a simple bourgeois quarrel which did not concern the working classes.

On the other hand, if they had given up the idea of fighting and protested that William II's soldiers were too numerous and his cannons powerful, they would have been dishonoured in their own eyes, cowardice never having been numbered among revolutionary virtues.

We must add that such renunciation was not even discussed. With their rifles and their strikes they have fought, and all the reports that come to us from our country are at one in stating that they will go on fighting whatever may be the sacrifices, however long may be the suffering, until this tyranny is vanquished.