The point is this: German Socialists have declared their intention to give no allegiance to any existing form of government and to overthrow them at the earliest possible moment. Do British Socialists accept this part of the programme? Throughout German Social Democratic literature we find Mr. Ramsay Macdonald referred to as _Genosse_ Ramsay Macdonald, which means that he is considered a full member of the brotherhood. If that is really the case, and if he accepts their programme as one to be followed here he would be favouring the substitution of the _volksstaat_ for the British constitutional monarchy. In face of this it may be asked why do British members of the Socialist party take an oath on entering the House of Commons, and why do they accept £400 per annum to support a national State, if they have pledged themselves internationally to overthrow it? The author admits his inability to solve the riddle, but during the years 1902-1914 he has heard members of all non-Socialist German parties assert that the German Socialists do not recognize any religious oath, and sections of the Socialists admit this position. As a party they are professedly atheistic; therefore when the might of the German State compels them to take an oath--they take it with an inward _Rückversicherung_. In a word, false-swearing is permitted, when one is obliged by circumstances, to take an oath to authorities whose right and might the oath-taker does not admit. So long ago as 1892 the Social Democrats were publicly charged with condoning perjury in order to rescue fellow members from the results of breaches of the law. Judge Schmidt in a court at Breslau said in that year: "Social Democrats have never concealed the fact that they are hostile to any religious form of oath. For them the religious importance and responsibility of an oath has no meaning whatever." Numerous German judges and authors have expressed themselves in a similar strain. Readers who are interested in the point are referred to the report[67] of the Socialist Congress held in Berlin, October, 1892. The party leaders endeavoured to gloss the matter over with righteous indignation and ambiguous phrases, but it nevertheless remains a fact that the desire to counteract effectively, a tendency to perjury among Socialists led the German Government a few years later to make perjury punishable by penal servitude up to ten years. [Footnote 67: All these reports may be seen in the British Museum Reading Room. Press mark is: 08072d.]