Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/274

 disposes of herself as long as the semi-absolutism of the Hohenzollern exists. This seems to us essential. We consider the Democratic Constitution of Germany not only as a right that she can claim, but as a condition to which other nations have the right to subordinate their adhesion to a general peace.

We can certainly trust ourselves to an agreement signed in the name of a people having the will and the power to guide their own destinies, but we can consider only as another scrap of paper a treaty which would be guaranteed only by an Emperor accustomed to hold lightly his given word, and having, as in the past, the power to lead a docile nation where he chose.

We do not hesitate to add that this necessity for liberty à interio, without which the world can know no durable peace, is necessary. What we have just said can be applied elsewhere than to Germany. A Democratic Constitution should be brought into being everywhere, developed or consolidated, so that nations can at last associate them-