Would “snooker” social reform at home
Sunday Times (Sydney), Sunday 24 January 1915
BUT THEIR ACTION IS SUICIDE.
Moreover, we must realise the folly of their joining the war party, the suicidal path entered upon when their leaders gave their hands to the royal burglar and pledged their souls to his projects. Continental wars have over and over again been embarked upon by rulers to prevent or delay social and political reforms at home. “Give them a war every four years” was Napoleon III,’s cynical maxim as to the way to keep back reform. The present war is the consequence amongst other things, of the socialist success, at the polls in 1912, which alarmed the German Emperor, and made him seek adventures which would “snooker” social reform at home. The Socialists will be the victims during the war, and after the war. It is, so far as their party is concerned, the fall of Lucifer, never to rise again, for, as Milton, said of the Great Rebel—
In the lowest deep, a lower deep,
Still threatening to devour them, opens wide.
German Social Democracy will never recover from their crime. European and Australian Democrats despite them, and will for ever distrust them, as the world distrusts the rest of their brutal and treacherous race.