Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/280

 and ourselves serve, in what could it end, other than some equivocal resolution, whose skilfully veiled phrases should hide the lack of unanimity?

We believe that it is frankness rather than diplomatic skill that the international working class has need of at present.

If an assembly in such conditions seemed simply useless, we might still give in to it in deference to our comrades. But we consider it dangerous for the cause of democracy, and even for the cause of the International itself. That is why we insist. It is dangerous because it is misleading; because it obscures the situation; because it holds out the illusion that a just and durable peace is possible before Imperialism has been destroyed; because, finally, in holding out the false hope of an equitable and early solution it weakens energy and favours that drifting of weak wills towards peace at any price. We who aspire to peace only with liberty cannot associate ourselves with what might favour a German peace, under the hegemony of the King of Prussia.

We wish it to be clearly understood