mobilised and the so-called militia (the Swiss army) is summoned to the colours; so far, however, the militia has not fired on the proletarians. In the United States, the army has frequently burned working-class settlements and has razed houses to the ground (for instance, during the strike in Colorado). The armies of the capitalist States are to-day combining to strangle the workers’ revolutions in Russia, Hungary, the Balkans, and Germany; they are crushing revolts all over the world.
The police and the gendarmerie. In addition to the regular army, the capitalist State has an army of picked ruffians, and of specially trained troops, peculiarly adapted for the struggle with the workers. These institutions (the police, for instance) have, indeed, the function of combating theft and of “protecting the persons and property of citizens”; but at the same time the police are maintained for the arrest, prosecution, and punishment, of discontented workers. In Russia, the police have been the most trustworthy protectors of the landlords and the tsar. Especially brutal, in all capitalist countries, have been the members of the secret police and of the corps of gendarmes — in Russia the secret police force or “political police” was known as the ohrana (protection). Large numbers of detectives, provocative agents, spies, strikebreakers, ete. work in cooperation with the official police.