ENGELS TO PAUL LAFARGUE 3?” 

[Excerpt] [London, mid-December 1884] 
In Germany there are far too many soldiers and non-commissioned 
officers belonging to the party for one to be able to preach a riot with 
the slightest chance of success. They know that it is in the ranks of the 

army itself that the demoralisation (from the bourgeois point of view) 
must take place; given modern military conditions (rapid-firing arms, 
etc.), the revolution is bound to begin in the army. At any rate it will 
begin there in our country. No one knows better than the government 
how the number of socialist conscripts is growing year after year. Our 
universal suffrage does not begin until the age of twenty-five; if the 
great reserve of the 21- to 25-year-olds does not figure in the voting, it 
is present in the army.