minority would reach it per saltum, by bloodshed if necessary, and by
confiscation - "expropriation" they call it. All alike conduct their
propaganda by endeavoring to create or accentuate the class
consciousness of manual workers who constitute the majority of human
beings and whose condition, it is insisted, would be improved under a
Socialistic regime. The violent wing promotes not merely class
consciousness but class hatred.

I have no time to split hairs in this discussion and it may be assumed
that I understand that Socialists do not expect to absolutely control
all personal activity but would leave all persons free to pursue any
vocation which they might desire and to have and hold whatever they may
acquire by personal activity and enterprise so only that they make no
profit on the work of another or absorb for their own use any gift of
Nature. No Socialist that I know of has attempted to draw the exact line
between activities to be wholly absorbed by the State and those which
would be left to private enterprise. No wise Socialist I think - if
there are wise Socialists - would attempt to draw such a line at
present. There is a certain vagueness in the Socialists' presentation of
their case.

And before we proceed further let us get rid of the intellectual fog
which envelops and shelters the advocates of Socialism. It is the fog of
humanitarianism. I see and hear no advocacy of Socialism whose burden is
not the uplift of humanity. Now, humanitarianism is perhaps the most
beautiful thing there is. There is no more ennobling and inspiring
sentiment than desire for the uplift of our fellowmen; but it has no
legitimate place in the discussion of Socialism. For an advocate of
Socialism to even refer, in presenting his case, to humanitarian
sentiment is to that extent to beg the question.