In the last analysis it was not overthrown; it was destroyed from within by a cancer that had been eating at its vitals for eighty years. And the seeds of this cancer, by the strange irony of fate, were sown in Germany and cultivated by Germans. The cancer was Socialism, or Social-Democracy, as it is termed in Germany. CHAPTER III. Internationalism and Vaterlandslose Gesellen. The concluding statement in the previous chapter must by no means be taken as a general arraignment of Socialism, and it requires careful explanation. Indiscriminately to attack Socialism in all its economic aspects testifies rather to mental hardihood than to an understanding of these aspects. A school of political thought which has so powerfully affected the polity of all civilized nations in the last fifty years and has put its impress upon the statutes of those countries cannot be lightly dismissed nor condemned without qualification. Citizens of the recently allied countries will be likely also to see merit in Socialism because of the very fact that, in one of its aspects, it played a large part in overthrowing an enemy government. Let this be clearly set down and understood at the very beginning: the aspects of Socialism that made the German governmental system ripe for fall were and are inimical not only to the governmental systems of all states, but to the very idea of the state itself. More: The men responsible for the _debacle_ in Germany--and in Russia--regard the United States as the chief stronghold of capitalism and of the privilege of plutocracy, and the upsetting of this country's government would be hailed by them with as great rejoicing as were their victories on the continent. The aspect of Socialism that makes it a menace to current theories of government is "internationalism"--its doctrine that the scriptural teaching that all men are brothers must become of general application, and the negation of patriotism and the elimination of state boundaries which that doctrine logically and necessarily implies. And this doctrine was "made in Germany." The basic idea of Socialism goes back to the eighteenth century, but its name was first formulated and applied by the Englishman Robert Owen in 1835. Essentially this school of political thought maintains that land and capital generally--the "instruments of production"--should become the property of the state or society. "The alpha and omega of Socialism is the transformation of private competing aggregations of capital into a united collective capital."[7] Ethically Socialism is merely New Testament Christianity, but, as will be seen later, it is in effect outspokenly material, irreligious and even actively anti-religious. [7] _Die Quintessenz des Sozialismus_, by Schaeffle.