“There is not a single nation which cannot reproach its neighbours with some crime of this sort; not a single nation which at the present moment does not hold within its borders some province incorporated against the desire of its inhabitants. And, if those who performed these acts of brigandage were highly detestable, in what respect are their descendants responsible therefor? Should we also be held responsible for the acts of brigandage which our histories teach us to admire as glorious achievements?
“Who among those who aspire to live solely by their own work can take delight in seeing one nation rush upon another nation? It is only those who have made themselves the masters of nations, and who find it for their interest to augment the numbers of those whom they exploit, who feel the need of supplying aliment to the troops they train for the work of slaughter. These understand perfectly that a menace of war with a neighbour serves to justify the existence of the armies which are their main prop.
“The despots who have exalted patriotism into a new religion know very well how to ignore frontiers when the defence of their privileges or the extension of their exploitation is at stake. If it is a question of hunting down subversive ideas, the French, German, Italian, Swiss, Russian, and other bourgeois are ready enough to lend to each other their diplomats and their police.
“Is it a question of putting down a strike? The exploiters are not slow to engage foreign workmen, so that they consent to work at the lowest wage; and governments would not hesitate, if there were need, to lend each other their armies.
“And do not all the international understandings which have been established for finance, the postal service, commerce, navigation, railroads, prove that it is the _entente pacifique_, after all, which is the supreme law?
“The anarchists would bring the workers to see a brother in every workingman, on whichever side of the frontier he chances to have been born.
“Brothers in misery, suffering from the same ills, bowed beneath the same yoke, they have the same interests to defend, the same ideal to pursue. Their veritable enemies are those who exploit them, who enslave them and prevent their development. It is against their masters that they should arm themselves.”