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In fact, in the latter's preface he seems conscious of this defect, and says: Whether socialism proves, in the long span of centuries, to be good or evil, a blessing to men or a curse, Karl Marx must always be an object of interest as one of the great world-figures of immortal memory.

I visited another library, which was appreciably larger, and whose managers were evidently less guided by their prejudices. Here were several thousand books on Marx, and I spent the best part of the day in looking them over. What struck me as most singular was the fact that there was scarcely a volume about Marx himself.

Marx made the discovery before 1848, but that date is immortal because in that year it was published to the world. That date ranks with 1859 when the "undying Darwin" gave us "The Origin of Species." The book was not intended for a book and became a book only by reason of its great importance. It was published as a political manifesto the manifesto of "The Communist League."

But the streamers had to be tied, and likewise the big red flag over the stage, and the banner of the Karl Marx Verein, and the banner of the Ypsels, or Young People's Socialist League of Leesville, and the banner of the Machinists' Union, Local 4717, and of the Carpenters' Union, District 529, and of the Workers' Co-operative Society.

The Socialist view of the evolution of society is that the central fact of history is this struggle of classes for political and economic power. The governing class of any society or period, Marx taught, consists of the economic exploiters, the governed class of the economically exploited.

There is already a Lenin legend. He is regarded as almost a prophet. His picture, usually accompanied by that of Karl Marx, hangs everywhere. In Russia one never hears Lenin and Trotski spoken of in the same breath as is usual in the western world. Lenin is regarded as in a class by himself. Trotski is but one of the lower order of mortals.

In placing these two worlds in sharp contrast one to another, Contradictions, with all its acknowledged faults and errors, performed an undeniable service; and this book against which Karl Marx has written a severe attack will retain for all time its value as one of the most important and thorough works of social philosophy.

This is what Marx means when he says that every such measure is "self-contradictory and must be such of necessity." Up to a certain point they put capitalism on "a larger basis"; if carried beyond that, they may, in the right hands, become steps in Socialism.

Treitschke hates the Jews because they are unwarlike, because they are absorbed in material interests, because they are Atheists. He abhors the Gospel according to Saint Marx. He denounces the cynicism of Heine. He dreads the influence of the Jewish Press.

The one-room shack was lined with tar-paper, on which were pinned lithographs of Robert G. Ingersoll, Karl Marx, and Napoleon. Under a gun-rack made of deer antlers was a cupboard half filled with dingy books, shotgun shells, and fishing tackle. Bone was reading by a pine table still littered with supper-dishes. Before him lay a clean-limbed English setter. The dog was asleep.