Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/260

 tinction is drawn between the aggressor and the victim, and speeches are made on the technical difficulty of recognizing the real assailant. The failure of Bebel's thesis is proclaimed. We have no intention of stopping to discuss this mere verbiage.

To all clear consciences the fact of dealing a blow will always be distinct from the fact of parrying that blow. And, what, although the guilt of the German Government be not sufficiently established by the mere fact that they declared war, if other manifest proofs exist to show their criminal intention, their long premeditation and their methodical carrying out of their plan. All comparison between us—we who join with all the nation because she is attacked—and those who joined their Emperor to attack us seems to us an outrage, which we deeply resent and which makes any common understanding, any discussion even, impossible.

The defence against aggressive imperialism implies for us something more than the mere driving back of the invader from our frontiers. Now that the attack has been made we can no longer exist, the