Page:Karl Liebknecht - Militarism (1917).djvu/138

 106 new Japanese militarism, too, has promptly got entangled. It is another dilemma of militarism.

The causes of such maltreatments are not to be met with everywhere in a uniform degree. It is above all the degree of popular education which exercises a strongly modifying influence, and it is not surprising that even French colonial militarism forms in this respect a favorable contrast to the Prussian-German home militarism.

It is exactly in this form of exercising disciplinary power, and just in that necessity by which it arises out of the system, that we Socialists find an excellent weapon with which to combat militarism fundamentally and most successfully, arousing against it an ever growing portion of the people and carrying class-consciousness into groups that otherwise could not yet be reached or could only be reached with much greater difficulty. The maltreatment of soldiers and military class-justice, one of the most provoking phenomena of capitalist barbarism, are not only dangerously undermining military discipline, they are also the most effective weapons in the war for the liberation of the pro-