Page:Karl Liebknecht - Militarism (1917).djvu/95

 Rh turn the mind and sentiments of those soldiers whose class-interest removes them entirely from the sphere of jingoism and makes them see in every step in advance, including the overthrow of the existing order of society itself, the only reasonable goal to be aimed at. We do not deny that with the proletarian of military age class-consciousness is usually not yet firmly rooted, though he generally greatly surpasses the bourgeois youth of the same age in independence of character and political understanding.

It is an extremely bold and cunning system, this system of moulding a soldier's intellect and feeling, which attempts to supplant the class-division according to social status by a class-division according to ages, to create a special class of proletarians of the ages from 20 to 22, whose thinking and feeling are directly opposed to the thinking and feeling of the proletarians of a different age.

In the first place the proletarian in uniform must be separated locally, sharply and without any consideration, from members of his class and