Page:The guilt of William Hohenzollern.djvu/269

Rh proletariat and of humanity. A Nationalist, on the contrary, is one for whom his own nation stands higher than others, who cares more for the enemies of his class among his own countrymen than for his own class among others.

Before the war such elements already existed in the German Social Democracy as, no doubt, in almost every Socialistic party. The war, and before that the incipient bellicose temper of the people, gave at one blow an enormous impetus to nationalism among the Socialist ranks—and that not in Germany alone.

The more a Socialist party becomes a party of the masses, the stronger becomes its nationalism; the more rapid its growth before the war, the less opportunity it had to educate its followers.

Nowhere had it grown by such leaps and bounds as in Germany, where the number of Social Democrat voters increased by a million between 1907 and 1912. How strong the national idea everywhere is the war and its consequences have most clearly shown. For the great untrained masses, however, it easily degenerates into the nationalistic idea, especially when the country is in great danger, unless this idea is paralysed by other closely-connected and powerful factors, e.g., a ruthless policy of Socialist persecution by their own Government.

William had willed such a policy. The fact that the will did not become the deed is, no doubt, to be attributed to Bethmann. It was probably the one sensible thing he did in that time.

In addition to all this, the mass of the thoughtless—and these were recruited from all circles and not least from among the writers and thinkers—welcomed the war with jubilation, because they expected it would be short, and was already as good as won, whilst from