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112 Paris. All the shopkeepers and a portion of the workmen donned the tricolour cockade. In all foundry districts, cannon and armour-plates were once more forged. Terrible wars were anticipated. This mad spurt lasted three years, without matters coming to a clash, and then it slackened imperceptibly. The militias gradually recovered the bourgeois aspect and feeling. The union of nations, which had seemed postponed to a fabled remoteness, was near at hand. Pacific efforts were developing day by day; collectivists were gradually achieving the conquest of society. The day came at last when the defeated capitalists abandoned the field to them.'

"'What a change!' I exclaimed. 'History cannot show another example of such a revolution.'

"'You may well imagine, comrade,' resumed Morin, 'that collectivism did not make its appearance till the appointed hour. The Socialists could not have suppressed capital and individual property had not those two forms of wealth been already all but destroyed de facto by the efforts of the proletariat, and still more so by the fresh developments of science and industry.

"'It had indeed been thought that Germany would be the first collectivist State; the Labour Party had there been organised for about one hundred years, and it was everywhere said: 'Socialism is a thing German?' Still, France, less well prepared, got the start of her.