Defenders of victory for their own government in this war, like defenders of the slogan "neither victory nor defeat," equally stand on the point of view of social-chauvinism. The revolutionary class in a reactionary war cannot but wish for the defeat of its own government, cannot but see the connection between its military failures and the facilitation of its overthrow. Only a bourgeois, believing that a war begun by governments will necessarily end as a war between governments, and desiring this, finds the idea "ridiculous" or "absurd" that socialists of all warring countries should come forward with wishes for the defeat of all "their own" governments. On the contrary, precisely such an intervention would correspond to the hidden thoughts of every conscious worker and would lie along the line of our activity, directed toward the transformation of the imperialist war into civil war.

Unquestionably, serious agitation against the war by some English, German, Russian socialists "weakened the military power" of the respective governments, but such agitation was a merit of the socialists. Socialists must explain to the masses that there is no salvation for them outside the revolutionary overthrow of "their own" governments and that the difficulties of these governments in the present war must be used precisely for this purpose.