We have the reality. For whatever reason,
what is said to have happened to the people of Shinak has precisely and
practically happened to us.
None of us who have known Socialists (or rather, to speak more truthfully,
none of us who have been Socialists) can entertain the faintest doubt that
a fine intellectual sincerity lay behind what was called "L'Internationale."
It was really felt that Socialism was universal like arithmetic. It
was too true for idiom or turn of phrase. In the formula of Karl Marx men
could find that frigid fellowship which they find when they agree that two
and two make four. It was almost as broadminded as a religious dogma.
Yet this universal language has not succeeded, at a moment of crisis, in
imposing itself on the whole world. Nay, it has not, at the moment of
crisis, succeeded in imposing itself on its own principal champions.
Herve is not talking Economic Esperanto; he is talking French. Bebel is
not talking Economic Esperanto; he is talking German. Blatchford is not
talking Economic Esperanto; he is talking English, and jolly good English,
too. I do not know whether French or Flemish was Vandervelde's nursery
speech, but I am quite certain he will know more of it after this struggle
than he knew before. In short, whether or no there be a new union of
hearts, there has really and truly been a new division of tongues.
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