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THE FIGHT FOR EXISTENCE 209
Here, again, the question of means is of no importance.
A reform may be effected by insurrection and bloodshed,
and a revolution may take place in the deepest
peace." (18)
Through the agitation of Lassalle, the Universal German
Working Men's Association was organized, and it
was his work for that body that won him fame as the
founder of the German labor movement. Not a laborer
himself, nor indeed speaking to them as one of themselves,
he led a life that would probably have ended disastrously,
even to the cause itself, had it not been for his
dramatic ending through the love affair and the duel.
Fate was kind to Lassalle in that he lived only so long
as his influence served the cause of the workers, and in
that death took him before life shattered another idol
of the masses. "One of two things," said Lassalle once
before his judges. "Either let us drink Cyprian wine
and kiss beautiful maidens— in other words, indulge in
the most common selfishness of pleasure
— or, if we are
to speak of the State and morality, let us dedicate all our
powers to the improvement of the dark lot of the vast
majority of mankind, out of whose night-covered floods
we, the propertied class, only rise like solitary pillars, as
if to show how dark are those floods, how deep is their
abyss." (19) With such marvelous pictures as this Lassalle
created a revolution in the thought and even in the
action of the working classes of Germany. At times he
drank Cyprian wines, and what might have happened
had he lived no one can tell. But he was indeed at the
time a "solitary pillar," rising out of "night-covered
floods," a heroic figure, who is even to-day an unforgettable
memory.
Bebel and Liebknecht appeared in the German movement
as influential figures only after the disappearance