Page:Jean Jaurès socialist and humanitarian 1917.djvu/148

 indivisible duty of maintaining peace by all means in its power, and of safeguarding the independence of all nations. Yes, of maintaining peace by all the means of action open to the proletariat, even by a general international strike, even by revolution. How many misunderstandings, voluntary and involuntary, how much contempt and calumny the adversaries of Socialism have gathered together on this subject.

"They forget, they affect to forget, that even in democratic countries war can be unchained without the consent of the people, without their knowledge, against their will. They forget that in the mystery in which diplomacy is still enveloped, foreign politics too often escape from the control of nations, that an imprudence, a fatuity, a stupid provocation, the infamous greed of some group of financiers may unchain sudden conflicts; that it depends still on a minority, a small circle, or on a system-ridden and infatuated man to engage the nation, and create the irreparable, and that war and peace are still unaffected by the law of democracy."

Jaurès saw that against this kind of scheming the proletariat had little resource and that it was possible that he might be forced to take desperate means against these evil effects of our present system of diplomacy. He might have to signify that "he would not fight or rather that he would