THE WORLD REVOLUTION 21 



The leading features of a position which moves 

 towards greater events than any recorded in the 

 past of the world may be rapidly summed up. 

 There was no long parleying with the situation. 

 The leaders of the proletariat went straight to the 

 centre of it. History will record of them that 

 without hesitation they simply accepted the world 

 which the economists and the interpreters of 

 Darwin had thus rendered to them in terms of force. 

 But they accepted it with one reservation, the 

 significance of which has begun to overshadow all 

 the events of Western civilization. It became the 

 avowed intention and determination of the leaders 

 of the proletariat so to use the weapons which the 

 political power of labour had placed in their hands 

 that the result of the social war should be entirely 

 changed. It should no longer be against their 

 class ; it should be in favour of it. There can 

 be no mistaking the wider bearing of such a resolu- 

 tion. Under its inspiration the movement of the 

 proletariat in all the leading countries of the West 

 has gradually taken on a meaning in keeping 

 with the character of the general world movement 

 in which all the institutions of civilization have 

 become involved in our time. It has begun to 

 present all the same symptoms of a development 

 slowly concentrating on first principles, namely, 



