The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife Part 9

"In a word, of all the measures open to us to adopt, none is so likely to bring us to disaster as universal military service."--_By Hon.

Bertrand Russell (in "The Labour Leader," October 15, 1914)._

H.G. WELLS ON THE REGULATION OF ARMAMENTS AND NEUTRALIZATION OF THE SEA.

"If there is courage and honesty enough in men, I believe it will be possible to establish a world Council for the regulation of armaments as the natural outcome of this war. First, the trade in armaments must be absolutely killed. And then the next supremely important measure to secure the peace of the world is the neutralization of the sea.

"It will lie in the power of England, France, Russia, Italy, j.a.pan, and the United States, if Germany and Austria are shattered in this war, to forbid the further building of any more s.h.i.+ps of war at all."--_From the "Daily Chronicle," August 21, 1914._

THE WAR AND DEMOCRACY.

"It will be necessary soon to consider the relations of democracy to the war. The war is a war of nationalities, but it was not made by peoples.

Its begetter was a comparatively small band of unscrupulous, blind, and conceited persons, who were clever and persistent enough to demoralize a whole people. In so far as they permitted themselves to be demoralized the people were to blame, but the chief blame lies on the small band.

Europe is laid waste, hundreds of thousands of men murdered, and practically every human being in the occidental hemisphere made to suffer, not for the amelioration of a race, but in order to satisfy the idiotic ambitions of a handful. Let not this fact be forgotten.

Democracy will not forget it. And foreign policy in the future will not be left in the hands of any autocracy, by whatever specious name the autocracy may call itself. Ruling cla.s.ses have always said that ma.s.ses were incapable of understanding foreign policy. The ma.s.ses understand it now. They understand that in spite of very earnest efforts in various Cabinets, the ruling cla.s.ses have failed to avert the most terrible disaster in history. The ma.s.ses will say to themselves, 'At any rate we couldn't have done worse than that.' The ma.s.ses know that if the war decision had been openly submitted to a representative German chamber, instead of being taken in concealment and amid disgusting chicane, no war would have occurred. It is absolutely certain that the triumph of democracy, and nothing else, will end war as an inst.i.tution. War will be ended when the Foreign Offices are subjected to popular control. That popular control is coming."--_Arnold Bennett in the "Daily News," October 15, 1914._

THE FUTURE SETTLEMENT.

Let us turn, then, from the past to the future and ask, first, what the governmental mind, left to itself, is likely to make of Europe when the war is finished; secondly, what we, on our part, want and mean to make of it. What the diplomatists will make of it is written large on every page of history. Again and again they have "settled" Europe, and always in such a way as to leave roots for the growth of new wars. For always they have settled it from the point of view of States, instead of from the point of view of human life. How one "Power" may be aggrandized and another curtailed, how the spoils may be divided among the victors, how the "balance" may be arranged--these kinds of considerations and these alone have influenced their minds. The desires of peoples, the interests of peoples, that sense of nationality which is as real a thing as the State is fict.i.tious--to all that they have been indifferent....

What can be foreseen with certainty is, that if the peace is to be made by the same men who made the war it will be so made that in another quarter of a century there will be another war on as gigantic a scale....

When this war is over Europe might be settled, then and there, if the peoples so willed it and made their will effective, in such a way that there would never again be a European War....

First, the whole idea of aggrandizing one nation and humiliating another must be set aside.... Secondly, in rearranging the boundaries of States, one point, and one only, must be kept in mind: to give to all peoples suffering and protesting under alien rule the right to decide whether they will become an autonomous unit, or will join the political system of some other nation.... Let no community be coerced under British rule that wants to be self-governing. We have had the courage, though late, to apply this principle to South Africa and Ireland. There remains our greatest act of courage and wisdom--to apply it to India.--_G. Lowes d.i.c.kinson, "The War and the Way Out," pp. 34 et seq._

A WAR NOTE FOR DEMOCRATS.

"The truth about the present fighting--well, it cannot be rendered in words significant enough to shock into understanding the people who are looking in the newspapers now for stories of heroism, 'brilliant bayonet charges,' and the rest of the inducements which sell stories of warfare, but tell us nothing about it. Perhaps, indeed, there are no words for it. I doubt whether the sincerest artist, finely sensitive, and with the choicest army of words at his ready and accurate command, could a.s.semble the case. The mind of a witness in France is not stirred; it is stunned.

One is speechless before the spectacle of men, not fighting in the way two angry men would fight, but coolly blasting great ma.s.ses of their opponents to pieces at long range, and out of sight of each other, till a region with its wrecked towns and homesteads is littered with human bowels and fragments. It is possible to value human life too highly, maybe. But what profit, physical, moral, or economic, can be got from draining several nations' best male generative force into the clay, I leave it to wors.h.i.+ppers of tribal war-G.o.ds of whatever church, and to the military minds, to explain. But unless the democracies of Europe, after settling this business, see to securing such a settlement --whatever the governing cla.s.ses desire--that this Continental waste can never occur again, then one would have to admit human nature is too stupid and base to be troubled over any longer."--_H.M.

Tomlinson, "English Review," December, 1914, p. 75_.

PATRIOTISM!

"It would seem, then, that love of our country can flourish only through the hatred of other countries, and the ma.s.sacre of those who sacrifice themselves in defence of them. There is in this theory a ferocious absurdity, a Neronian dilettantism which repels me in the very depths of my being. No! Love of my country does not demand that I shall hate and slay those n.o.ble and faithful souls who also love their country, but rather that I should honour them, and seek to unite myself with them for our common good....

"You Socialists on both sides claim to be defending liberty against tyranny--French liberty against the Kaiser, Germany liberty against the Tsar. Would you defend one despotism against another? _Unite and make war on both_. There was no reason for war between the Western nations; French, English, and German, we are all brothers, and do not hate one another. The war-preaching Press is envenomed by a minority, a minority vitally interested in maintaining these hatreds; but our peoples, I know, ask for peace and liberty, and that alone."--_From Romain Rolland's pamphlet "Above the Battlefield," Cambridge, 1914_.

NO PATRIOTISM IN BUSINESS!

The following leaderette is from the _Glasgow Evening Citizen_ for the 15th of January:--

"In business patriotism does not enter. Insistently the pocket comes first. And if the British consumer of aniline dyes can obtain his raw material more advantageously from the German than from the British producer, he will probably be ready to do so for the greater gain of more economic production in his own business."

MANIFESTO OF THE INDEPENDENT LABOUR PARTY.

"We desire neither the aggrandizement of German militarism nor Russian militarism, but the danger is that this war will promote one or the other. Britain has placed herself behind Russia, the most reactionary, corrupt, and oppressive Power in Europe. If Russia is permitted to gratify her territorial ambitions and extend her Cossack rule, civilization and democracy will be gravely imperilled. Is it for this that Britain has drawn the sword?

"To us who are Socialists the workers of Germany and Austria, no less than the workers of France and Russia, are comrades and brothers; in this hour of carnage and eclipse we have friends.h.i.+p and compa.s.sion to all victims of militarism. Our nationality and independence, which are dear to us, we are ready to defend, but we cannot rejoice in the organized murder of tens of thousands of workers of other lands who go to kill and be killed at the command of rulers to whom the people are as p.a.w.ns.

"The People must everywhere resist such territorial aggression and national abas.e.m.e.nt as will pave the way for fresh wars; and, throughout Europe, the workers must press for frank and honest diplomatic policies, controlled by themselves, for the suppression of militarism and the establishment of the United States of Europe, thereby advancing towards the world's peace. Unless these steps are taken Europe, after the present calamity, will be still more subject to the increasing domination of militarism, and liable to be drenched with blood."

RESPONSIBILITY RESTS ON THE WHOLE CAPITALIST CLa.s.s.

"Prussian militarism, as we have shown in previous issues, exists, as all militarism does, to further and protect trade. The furtherance of that trade meant territorial expansion, which in its turn was a menace to Britain and her allies. Thus it is that this war, carefully manoeuvred by the diplomats, is being fought to conserve to one set of capitalists their right to exploit the peoples, and to check another set from encroaching upon that right.

"Germany--or rather, the capitalists of Germany, for whom the Kaiser has always been the "Publicity Agent"--has consistently worked toward the objective of challenging the right of Britain to a world-wide Empire. To the German capitalists this war is but the realization of their philosophy, "Might is Right," and, reckless of human life and suffering, a European war is to them the way to vaster fields of exploitation and greater wealth. Their militarism was the machine, and the workers the cogs of the wheels. British capitalists, on the other hand, determined to maintain what they hold, forgetful of how it had been obtained, were thus compelled to take up the cudgels for their own sakes; and here, as in Germany, the workers are the tools used to save their fortunes and conserve their rights."--"_The Voice of Labour," October_, 1914.

"And it is not unlikely that the present b.l.o.o.d.y catastrophe will at last awaken the people from their indifference. The bitter pain and fearful suffering will perhaps make a deeper impression than the words of the revolutionaries. It is possible that the Social Revolution will be the last act in the present tragedy; possible that murderous militarism will be drowned in the blood of its numberless victims; that the people of the different countries will unite against the b.l.o.o.d.y regime of modern Capitalism and its inst.i.tutions, and finally produce a new social culture upon the basis of free Socialism."--"_Freedom," September 14._

In an American contemporary a quotation is given from an issue of _Vorwarts_ which was suppressed by the German Government. It reads:--

"The comrades abroad can be a.s.sured that the German working cla.s.s disapproves to-day of every piratical policy of State just as it has always disapproved and that it is determined to resist the predatory subjugation of foreign peoples as strongly as the circ.u.mstances permit.

The comrades in foreign lands can be a.s.sured that, though the German workmen are also protecting their Fatherland, they will nevertheless not forget that their interests are the same as those of the proletariat in other countries, who, like themselves, have been compelled to go to war against their will, indeed, even against their often repeated p.r.o.nouncements in favour of peace."

TEXT OF LIEBKNECHT'S PROTEST.

The _Berner Tagwacht_ publishes the full text of Karl Liebknecht's protest against the vote of credit by the Reichstag on December 2nd. The protest was not read, the President having vetoed it under pretext that it would entail a call to order. The protest was communicated to the German Press. Not one paper published it. It runs:--

"This war, desired by none of the peoples concerned, has not broken out in behalf of the welfare of the German people or any other. It is an Imperialist war, a war for the capitalist domination of the world's markets and for the political domination of important regions for the placing of industrial and banking capital. From the point of view of rivalry in armaments, it is a preventive war provoked by the German and Austrian war parties together in the obscurity of semi-absolutism and of secret diplomacy."

After declaring that this is not a defensive war for Germany, the protest continues:--