Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/263

 working classes other than in a durable peace, and the only durable peace conceivable lies in the development of international law, in the solution of conflicts by legal ruling, in the establishment of international institutions that will administer justice in this society of nations that the President of the United States has announced amid the applause of the democracy of the world.

But how could nations engage in this worthily, how could they become useful parties to the international contract if in the first place they are not masters of their own destinies, if they could not effectively control a Government responsible to them.

We insist on making quite clear, to avoid all possibility of a mistake, that the necessary struggle, in our opinion, is the struggle against German Imperialism, and not against the German people.

Whatever may have been our grief and indignation when we learned what the German people had become in this War, the servile executors of the will of their master, when we saw Socialists whom we had become accustomed to consider as