How would he have acted had he lived? The proletariat of Europe looked to him for guidance, and had faith in him--Camille Huysmans has said so in the speech delivered at his grave in the name of the Workers' International.[51] There can be no doubt that when he had fought against the war until all hope of preventing it was gone, he would have yielded loyally to the common duty of national defense and taken part in it with all his might. He had announced this point of view at the Congress in Stuttgart, in 1907, in full agreement therein with Vandervelde and Bebel: "If, whatever the circumstances, a nation were to refuse from the outset to defend itself, it would be entirely at the mercy of the Governments of violence, barbarism, and reaction.... A unity of mankind which was the result of the absorption of conquered nations by one dominating nation would be a unity realized in slavery." On his return to Paris, in giving an account of the Congress to French Socialists (September 7, 1907, at the Tivoli Vaux-Hall), he impressed upon them their double duty--war against war, so long as it is only a menace upon the horizon, and in the hour of danger war in defense of national independence. For this great European was also a great Frenchman.[52] Yet it is certain, too, that the firm accomplishment of his patriotic duty would not have prevented him from maintaining his human ideals, and watching with untiring eyes for every opportunity of reconstructing the shattered unity. Certainly he would not have allowed the vessel of socialism to drift, as his feeble successors have done. * * * * * He has passed from us. But the reflection of his luminous genius, his kindness in the bitter struggle, his indestructible optimism even in the midst of disaster, shine above the carnage of Europe, over which the dusk is gathering, like the splendor of the setting sun. There is one page which he wrote, which cannot be read without emotion--an immortal page in which he represents the noble Herakles, resting after his labors on the maternal earth: