28 THE UTOPIAN COMMUNIST
as divine truths which derive from the "father of light" above.
Weitling rejected the pacifism of some of the early Christians
and quoted Matthew to prove that Christ had come to bring not
peace but a sword. He believed that the world needed leaders
and martyrs who would not compromise with the enemy nor seek
safety in cowardly evasion. At the same time, and perhaps because
he was a little alarmed by some of the implications of his logic,
Weitling hastened to tone down his statements by stressing the
virtue of tolerance, pointing out that no generation had a mo
nopoly of wisdom and that perfection could be achieved only by
God. He cautioned against attacking what others regarded as holy,
unless the enemy actually used these things as weapons in the
battle against progress, and reminded his readers that for a while
longer, until the harvest is ripe, good and bad will grow together.
Details of the political, economic, and social structure which
Weitling offered the workers of Europe, in the form of his com
munist Utopia, will be discussed in a later chapter. Obviously,
many of his proposals had been made by others and can be found
elsewhere in the revolutionary literature of the period. Neverthe
less, Weitling's eloquence and passion made his argument seem
peculiarly his own. He was sure that communism was a sound and
practical way of life and that the only problem that would need
to be faced after its adoption would be what to do with the great
surplus of products which would become available. He believed
that under the new moral dispensation, intemperance would re
main the only crime. Furthermore, he was convinced that the new
society would be so stable and so powerful that it could defend
itself easily in case of attack, and that three or four million com
munists occupying a small strip of Europe would be able to hold
all their neighbors at bay and finally take the offensive in a great
war for the liberation of all mankind. He envisaged a world held
together by a universal language, and a society in which all work
ers would be educated and all the educated also would be workers.
"Persevere," he exhorted the "children of light," for in three gen-