Page:Jean Jaurès socialist and humanitarian 1917.djvu/134

 independence of nations, and he adds: "The class which assumes this glorious and formidable responsibility is forced itself to an immense effort of education and organization, of wisdom and heroism. It is not naïve enough to claim to enclose beforehand in a well-arranged formula, tumultuous events. An abstract scheme would not suffice to guide men in these confused and terrible crises."

And again he says: "The voice of the proletariat everywhere, which begins to rise vibrating and strong above the nations agitated by an eternal anxious rumour of war, cannot repeat all that was said by Schiller's belfry. It can say 'I call the living and I weep over the dead.' It cannot yet say 'I break the lightning.' There still remains for us to accomplish," he repeats, "an immense work of education and organization. But in spite of all, henceforth one may hope, one can act. Neither blind optimism, nor paralyzing pessimism. There is a beginning of working class and socialist organization, there is a beginning of international conscience. Henceforth if we really wish we can re-act against the fatal tendency to war which the capitalist régime contains.

"The present condition of things is ambiguous and mixed. There is no fatality in it, no