Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/276

 Emperors as in those of the Entente, the energetic action of the working class against Imperialism carried out on the lines of the programme that the Workmen and Soldiers' Council has formulated, and of which we have endeavoured to explain the exact bearing in the first part of the memorandum. We wish to state also that, in what concerns the Belgian Socialists, they have not for one day ceased fighting against the policy of aggression and conquest. We have been accused of having sacrificed ourselves to Imperialism because we have defended our independence and our national liberty, in combination with all classes in our country, because one of us has accepted a place in the Committee of Public Safety in the Government of Havre. It is not the Russian Socialists, placed since the Revolution in the same difficult circumstances, and who have been led by these circumstances themselves to like solutions, who will echo these calumnies. They understand, as we did, that the duty of defending liberty against foreign tyranny is as sacred a duty as to defend it within our own country.