Such a treaty could not bring real peace to the world even if the conditions were less critical and complex. As they are, it will hasten and aggravate what the world will soon discover to be the most serious, vital and revolutionary consequence of the war. What this will be has already been dimly foreshadowed by the almost unanimous condemnation of the treaty by the Socialists of France, Italy, England and nearly all neutral countries. Virtually all Americans and even most Europeans have little conception of the extent to which the war and its two great revolutions have awakened the class-consciousness of the proletariat of all lands. Everywhere the laboring masses have been the chief sufferers. Everywhere composing an overwhelming majority of the people, they have nowhere been able to decide their own destinies or have an effective voice in government except through revolution. Everywhere they have been the pawns sacrificed on the bloody chessboard of war to protect kings and queens, bishops and castles. They are beginning to ask why this must be and why they were not permitted to have a voice in the conference at Versailles, and this question will become an embarrassing one for all who try to find the answer in the textbooks of governments as governments today exist. Deplore it though one may, Internationalism is on the march. Nor is it confined even today to people who work with their hands. Its advocates are to be found--have been found by hundreds in America itself--in the ranks of the thinkers of every country. The press in America has for months been pointing out the prevalence of internationalist sentiments among school-teachers and university professors, and it has been gravely puzzled by this state of affairs. It considers it a paradox that Internationalism exists among presumably well educated persons. One might as well call it a paradox for a victim of smallpox to have an eruption. It is no paradox. It is a symptom. And, incorrectly diagnosed and ignorantly treated, it is a dangerous disease. The physician diagnoses a disease at the outset, if he can, and aborts it if possible. If it be contagious, he employs precautions against its spread. No part of these precautions consists in ordering other people at the point of a rifle not to catch the disease. The greatest task of the governments of the world today is to diagnose correctly and treat intelligently. The proletarians have learned their strength. A new era is dawning. That era will be marked by an internationalism whose character and extent will depend upon the wisdom with which the masters of the world administer the affairs of their peoples. And the question which every man should ask himself today is: Shall this Internationalism be Red or White? CHAPTER XIX The Weimar Constitution