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 176 serious danger of world war—a fight for civilization which the proletariat is proud to wage, which it must wage in its very own interest and which to wage no other class as such (leaving out of account some well-intentioned enthusiasts who only prove the rule) is even remotely so much interested in.

But militarism also disturbs the national peace, not only by the brutalizing effect it has upon the people, the heavy economic burdens it imposes upon the people and the pressure of taxes and tariff thus brought about; not only by the corruption accompanying it (see the cases of Wörmann, Fischer, von Tippelskirch, Podbielski and friends); not only by dividing into two castes a people already sufficiently oppressed by class-division; not only by its practice of maltreating soldiers and its system of dispensing justice: but above all by being a powerful obstacle in the way of every kind of progress, by being an ingenious and highly efficient instrument for closing by force the valve of the social steam-boiler. He who believes that the progress of humanity is inevitable must see in