Page:Rosa Luxemburg - The Crisis in the German Social-Democracy (The "Junius" Pamplhet) - 1918.pdf/109

 Rh The one hundredth anniversary of 1793 is approaching. Should Russia's desire for conquest, or the chauvinistic impatience of the French Bourgeoisie, check the victorious but peaceable march of the German Socialists, the latter are prepared—be assured of that—to prove to the world that the German proletarians of today are not unworthy of the French Sansculottes, that 1893 will be worthy of 1793. And should the soldiers of Monsieur Constans set foot upon German territory we will meet them with the words of the Marseillaise:

"Shall hateful tyrants, mischief breeding,

With hireling host, a ruffian band,

Affright and desolate the land?"

"In short, peace assures the victory of the Social-Democratic party in about ten years. The war will bring either victory in two or three years or its absolute ruin for at least fifteen or twenty years."

When Engels wrote these words, he had in mind a situation entirely different from the one existing today. In his mind's eye, ancient Czarism still loomed threateningly in the background. We have already seen the great Russian Revolution. He thought, furthermore, of a real national war of defense, of a Germany attacked on two sides, on the East and on the West by two enemy forces/ Finally, he overestimated the ripeness of conditions in Germany and the likelihood of a social revolution, as ail true fighters are wont to overrate the real tempo of development. But for all that, his sentences prove with remarkable clearness, that Engels meant by national, defense in the sense of the Social-Democracy, not the support of a Prussian Junker military government and its Generalstab, but a revolutionary action after the example of the French Jacobites.

Yes, Socialists should defend their country in great historical crises, and here lies the great fault of the German