Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/145

 din into their ears big-sounding names and to prevent them from asking him unpleasant questions.

"… Four million people turned right-about-face at the command of a handful of politicians. …"

This is an untruth. The German party organization did not have four million members, but one million. Furthermore, the wishes of that mass were expressed, as they are in each and every organization by its center, the handful of men who betrayed Socialism. The handful of men was asked questions, was called upon to pass resolutions; it did pass them, it wrote articles, etc. … The masses were never asked for their opinion. They were not allowed to vote; they were divided up and pursued, not by a handful of parliamentarians, but by the military authorities. The military machine was united and did not have traitors in its ranks. It called upon the masses to unite by giving them this ultimatum: Fight (as your leaders advise you to do) or be shot. The masses could not act as an organization, for their organization was represented by that handful of men, Legien, Kautsky, Scheidemann, who had already betrayed the masses. It takes time to perfect a new organization; it takes a good deal of strength to discard the old one when it is rotten and worn out.

Kautsky tries to answer his adversaries of the left by charging them with thoughtlessness. The masses should, in answer to the declaration of war, have started a revolution in 24 hours, and raised Socialism against Imperialism. Having failed to do that the masses have been guilty of betrayal and showed their lack of ''character. ''This is the worst rot, the kind of rot used against revolutionists by stupid bourgeois and secret service publications. Kautsky's opponents of the left wing know Very well that one does not start a revolution, that revolutions grow out of certain crises when a certain point is reached (this independently of party and