Page:Wilhelm Liebknecht - Socialism; What It Is and What It Seeks to Accomplish - tr. Mary Wood Simons (1899).djvu/57

 hundreds of thousands in their person and property, will he made personally responsible for it. I do not wish that, as in France, the taxpayers should be obliged to meet the indemnity, but that the ones in fault be proceeded against." The expression "personal responsibility" was interpreted by certain reactionaries as though I had demanded lynch law. To be sure, I thought of the administration of law, but not of lynch law. The personal responsibility of the official is a necessary postulate of the people's sovereignty. An officer is not a being of higher order; he has simply to accomplish the will of the people, or to act in harmony with that will. He is accountable for all his actions and must not stand beyond the pursuance of the civil and common law. That is what we wish to express. In England this is already a law and brings excellent results. Every commoner without exception is equal under the civil and common penal law for all his acts, as are also the officers and soldiers in service. Officers and soldiers are, it is true, in England, as with us, under military law, which demands blind obedience to orders, but they are at the same time accountable to the civil and criminal law for all their deeds, including those done in service.

Suppose an officer on the occasion of a riot gave the command to shoot. According to military law he is obliged to do so. He has the commission and is not accountable to military law for the blood and death of his fellow-men. How comes the common civil law; first of all the post-mortem examination. Here are the dead, violently killed. How did they come to their end? Through the bullets of the soldiers. The officers gave the command, Fire! The soldiers shot and the people were struck by the bullets and killed. Did the officer do this in self-defense? is now asked further, or is it manslaughter or murder? And the law in England