12

The war has proven how much more solid and persistent than we thought was the power and strength of the bourgeois state. When you have seen millions and millions of proletarians marching for a good five years at the behest of a carabineer or of a shock trooper, almost without a single revolt; when you have seen that the executions by shooting, the decimation, and all that is most horrible in the military courts, have been tolerated by the proletarians of all nations; when you have seen that a war, which was one of the most hateful expressions of the cannibalistic antagonisms of the various bourgeois states, has not served to rekindle, strengthen and renew the proletarian International but instead has suffocated and scattered it; finally, when you have gone through all these experiences, you are honestly forced to take them into account in forming your predictions and evaluations.