16 In no modem revolution have the privileged classes been known to fight their own battles. They always depend on armies of the poor, whom they have taught what is called loyalty to the flag, and trained to what is called "the maintenance of order." Five millions of men, without counting the superior and inferior police, are employed in Europe in this work. But these armies may become disorganised, they may call to mind the nearness of their own past and future relations with the mass of the people, and the hand which guides them may grow unsteady. Being in great part,drawn from the proletariat, they may become to bourgeois society what the barbarians in the pay of the Empire became to that of Rome-an element of dissolution. History abounds in examples of the frenzy which seizes upon those in power. When the miserable and disinherited of the earth shall unite in their own interest, trade with trade, nation with nation, race with race; when they shall· fully awake to their sufferings and their purpose, doubt not that an occasion will assuredly present itself for the employment of their might in the service of right; and powerful as may be the Master of those days, he will be weak before the starving masses leagued against him. To the great evolution now taking place will succeed the long expected, the great revolution. It will be salvation, and there is none other. For if capital retains force on its side, we shall all be the slaves of its machinery, mere bands •Connecting iron cogs with steel and iron shafts. If new spoils, managed by partners only responsible to their cash books, are ceaselessly added to the savings already amassed in bankers' coffers, then it will be vain to cry for pity, no one will hear your complaints. The tiger may renounce his victim, but bankers' books pro> nounce judgments without appeal. From the terrible mechanism whose merciless work is recorded in the figures on .its silent pages, men and nations.come forth ground tl, p.9wder. If capital carries the day, it will be time to weep for our golden age ; in that hour we may look behind us and see like a dying light, love and joy and hope-all the earth has held of sweet and good. Humanity will have ceased to live. As for us, whom men call "the modern barbarians," our desire is justice for all. Villains that we are, we claim for &11that shall be born, bread, liberty, and progress. Fondazione Alfr~ Lewi Biblioteca Q-ino BiailC Bibi oteca G no B :anco
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