Page:Jean Jaurès socialist and humanitarian 1917.djvu/117

 Still less is he calling by this wish for the absorption of nations in a tremendous servitude, for the incorporation of all countries by the most brutal country, and for human unity by means of the unity of a colossal militarism. By calling for the end of nations he is calling for the end of the egoism and antagonism of nations. Down with jingo prejudices and blind hatreds! Down with fratricidal wars! Down with countries of oppression and of destruction. He asks with a full heart for the universal fatherland of free workers, of independent and friendly nations.'"

To Jaurès this national unit is intensely precious, and he saw that nearly all men felt it to be so. The yoke of Capitalism is heavy on the neck of the worker, but it is not apparent to the average imagination. Part of the reward of labour is constantly filched away from the labourer, but it is not obvious to him that it is so; he finds himself in a system, but it does not appear to him, any more than it does to the average capitalist, that it ought to be different. But the yoke of foreign domination is as obvious as it is odious to all men, and the worker, crushed down by Capitalism, finds an additional and more galling misery added to his life.

Capitalism, though it must pass away, Jaurès has shown to have been a natural evolution, but foreign domination is always unnatural and impossible to bear. So we find the workers