Page:Jean Jaurès socialist and humanitarian 1917.djvu/127



, by its very nature, is opposed irreconcilably to Militarism. In his book on Jaurès, M. Rappoport points out that, after the foundation of the second International in Paris in 1889, Socialism more and more developed an anti-militarist bias. Jaurès, who was above all things a humanitarian, ardently supported the cause of International Peace. Though he believed that France and other countries should defend themselves against aggression, yet he was, after Tolstoy, the strongest individual force for Peace in Europe.

He had no doubt of the need of the people for peace. “It is war above all which will make orderly social evolution impossible,” he says, “while on the contrary, by the guarantee of democracy and peace, the fullness of popular rights and international security, the passage from our bourgeois society to the socialist order can be accomplished by steps, by arranged transitions, without violence and shedding of blood, without waste of economic forces.”