Page:Karl Liebknecht - Militarism (1917).djvu/44

 12 as a rule, also no political domination of classes. In general, militarism can not develop; external complications, it is true, force such peoples to be prepared for war and produce temporarily even military despotism, a very frequent phenomenon with pastoral peoples on account of the warlike situations they encounter and because they regularly divide in classes at an earlier time.

We next remind the reader of the constitution of the Greek and Roman armies in which they find, according to class-division, a purely military hierarchy, organized on the basis of class, the armament of each file depending upon the class to which the soldier belonged. Let the reader also remember the armies of the feudal knights, with their following of much worse armed and protected squires who, according to Patrice Laroque, played rather the part of assistants to the combatants than that of combatants. The reason why the rulers in those times allowed and even brought about the arming of the lower orders is to be sought much less in the small degree of general security which the state could offer to the interests