Page:Studies in socialism 1906.djvu/110



the 7th of August, 1901, the first anniversary of Liebknecht's death, Vorwärts published some very important fragments by him.

Like most journalists who are in the fighting line, Liebknecht was forced to scatter his thoughts, to deal with the daily problems one by one as they presented themselves. But, like many of that profession, too, he cherished the ambition of embodying his essential ideas in a lasting and serious work. His friends found an incomplete manuscript among his papers, written in 1881, in which he had begun to formulate an answer to the great question: How shall Socialism be put into practice? This work gives proof of an indomitable courage in its author, because it was at the very moment when the régime of the state of siege and Bismarck's still undiminished power were weighing most heavily on the Socialist party, that Liebknecht asked himself, not whether Socialism would triumph, but how it would triumph. And this work shows at the same time his vivid sense of the difficulties to be overcome and the