Page:Karl Liebknecht - Militarism (1917).djvu/71

 Rh This is modern militarism, which attempts nothing less than squaring the circle, which arms the people against the people itself; which, by trying with all means to force upon social division an artificial division according to ages, makes bold to turn the workman into an oppressor and an enemy, into a murderer of members of his own class and his friends, of his parents, sisters and brothers and children, into a murderer of his own past and future; which pretends to be democratic and despotic, enlightened and mechanical, popular and anti-popular at the same time.

It must, however, not be forgotten that militarism can also turn the point of its sword against the interior national, and even the interior religious "enemy" (in Germany, for instance, against the Poles, Alsatians and Danes), and can moreover be employed in conflicts among the non-proletarian classes; that militarism is a highly polymorphous phenomenon, capable of many