But what the working-class can do, when once they grow into a solidified organization, is to show the possessing classes, through a sudden cessation of all work, that the whole social structure rests on them; that the possessions of the others are absolutely worthless to them without the workers' activity; that such protests, such strikes, are inherent in the system of property, and will continually recur until the whole thing is abolished,--and having shown that, effectively, proceed to expropriate. "But the military power," says the political actionist; "we must get political power, or the military will be used against us!" Against a real General Strike, the military can do nothing. Oh, true, if you have a Socialist Briand in power, he may declare the workers "public officials" and try to make them serve against themselves! But against the solid wall of an immobile working-mass, even a Briand would be broken. Meanwhile, until this international awakening, the war will go on as it has been going, in spite of all the hysteria which well-meaning people, who do not understand life and its necessities, may manifest; in spite of all the shivering that timid leaders have done; in spite of all the reactionary revenges that may be taken; in spite of all the capital politicians make out of the situation. It will go on because Life cries to live, and Property denies its freedom to live; and Life will not submit. And should not submit. It will go on until that day when a self-freed Humanity is able to chant Swinburne's Hymn of Man: "Glory to Man in the highest, For Man is the master of Things." The Paris Commune The Paris Commune, like other spectacular events in human history, has become the clinging point for many legends, alike among its enemies and among its friends. Indeed, one must often question which was the real Commune, the legend or the fact,--what was actually lived, or the conception of it which has shaped itself in the world-mind during those forty odd years that have gone since the 18th of March, 1871. It is thus with doctrines, it is thus with personalities, it is thus with events. Which is the real Christianity, the simple doctrine attributed to Christ or the practical preaching and realizing of organized Christianity? Which is the real Abraham Lincoln,--the clever politician who emancipated the chattel slaves as an act of policy, or the legendary apostle of human liberty, who rises like a gigantic figure of iconoclastic right smiting old wrongs and receiving the martyr's crown therefor?