It is such scenes of bloodshed and injustice--just this kind of triumph of might over right--that Socialists would have repeated. They cannot deny this, John, because this program, horrible as it may seem to us, is perfectly logical from the Socialist point of view. “According to Socialist ethics,” says Ming (“The Morality of Modern Socialism,” p. 344), “all means are morally good which lead to the victory of the proletariat. Why, then, should violence not be justified if it brings success? The working class is the only class that has the right and power to be; it is society, the nation, the true public, while capitalism is but a cancer of the social organism. Why should it not employ violence when deemed an effective means for emancipation, conquest of power and introduction of collectivism?” No, John, it is not when Socialists advocate violence that they are illogical; it is when they deny that they advocate and plan to resort to violence in accomplishing their purposes that they show a lack of logic. CHAPTER XV WHAT WE ARE PROMISED My dear John, We have already seen how impossible many of the basic theories of Socialism are; but, heretofore, we have been dealing with definite proposals, and not with the general application of the Socialist ideas. To return to the simile of the jig-saw puzzle, John, we may say that we now have all the pieces properly cut out before us. What we have to do is to fit them together and see what kind of a picture they give us. Of course, we shall not be able to do this without some protests from Socialists. They do not like us to test their theories by constructing an imaginary Commonwealth, even though we use no other material than the facts which they themselves have given us--the admitted principles of international Socialism--in its construction. Indeed, Socialists insist that it is a mark of imbecility for anyone to ask for such a picture to say nothing of complaining because it is not available. “Only the ignorant would ask for a cut-and-dried plan of a state that can exist only in its completeness in the distant future,” says Suthers, in his popular propaganda booklet, “Common Objections to Socialism Answered.” “Why is it impossible to produce a cut-and-dried plan? Simply because comprehensive prophesy of the future is beyond human power.... Is there a man alive to-day who can forecast the details of all the events that will register themselves in his single consciousness to-morrow?... It were a silly waste of time for any Socialist to spend his life in drawing up cut-and-dried plans of a distant future.... They (the critics) say that one says one thing and one another. God of brains, what else do they expect?”