Page:Karl Liebknecht - Militarism (1917).djvu/85

 Rh militarism shows unmistakeably a pronounced multiformity and transmutability. But that transmutability is always kept within the limits prescribed by the absolutely essential capitalistic purpose of militarism. Nevertheless, development may temporarily take directly opposite roads. While France, for example, under Picquart, is earnestly attacking the problem of greatly reducing the training period of her reserve and territorial troops, reforming the "biribiri" and abolishing separate military jurisdiction, the president of the German central military court, von Massow, quitted the service in the fall of 1906, because the military command (the Prussian war ministry) had on the strength of legal interpretation formally invaded the independence of the military courts, an independence which had indeed already received a curious construction by the disciplining of the judges acting in the Bilse case. French conditions are almost exclusively due to the prevailing anti-clericalism; clericalism has an important pillar in the army; the government needs the help of the proletariat for its anti-cleri-