How the War Wrecked Theories.
I shall never forget that wonderful walk on the Coblenz road: the grave,
hard-cut featured face of the man of religion, pouring out his
socialistic theories, like a long pent-up torrent bursting through years
of accumulated debris. At one moment he would be calm and clear, but at
times, in his excitement, he would lash at wayside flowers with his
stick like a soldier with a sabre.
"The people are not sincere at heart in this Great War," he said, "it is
not the people's fight. If soldiers only had their own way this war
would be short lasting--in fact the war nearly ended on Christmas Day.
You have heard how the Germans and the English ceased firing at the dawn
of that holy morn. How a bayonet from a German trench held up a placard
with those magic words of good cheer that ever move the world--"A Merry
Christmas." How each side sang hymns at the other's invitation, crossed
the zone of fire, and exchanged cigarettes. Surely the spirits of Jesus
and Jaures moved along that line that wonderful morn."
"And yet," I said, "when time was up, back to their trenches the
soldiers crept and fought again like devils."
He went on, ignoring my interruption.
"And German officers, high in rank, held up their hands in horror at the
idea of an armistice being arranged without their consent. That is the
spirit that is going to end war--that human spirit that came to the
surface on Christmas morn and that proved that this awful war is but a
thing of Business."
Our road passed along the cliff tops of the Rhine. There was little
traffic on the river and no sign of war. Everything seemed peaceful. The
war, in draining the men and youths from the countryside, had placed a
mantle of calm upon life in the villages of the Rhine Valley. Even
across the river a long length of railway line lay as a long road of
emptiness. Not a train, not a truck, not any sign of life was upon the
long stretch of metal.
"And yet," said Brother Wilbrid, "that is the main line from Bonn to
Coblenz. All railwaymen, stock, and traffic are confined to the Theatres
of War."
We had walked in silence for quite a while. My companion was lost in
thought. I ventured an interruption.
"You are a Socialist," I said.
He looked at me a while before replying.
"A Socialist? Well, no, I'm not--that is so far as Socialists have gone.
I describe myself as a 'Humanist.' Socialism as we had it before the war
was synonymous with revolution. Its creed, 'Revolution before
evolution,' spelt destruction and anarchy. It aimed to get what it
wanted by force instead of striving to get it by constitutional means. I
broke with them just there--and yet--and yet," he mused, as if to
himself, "they were hounded down as outlaws of society for promising
force--for threatening to do what the armies are to-day doing in the
'interests of civilisation.'
"What a shuffle of theories this mighty conflict has brought about!
Strange that your Allies claim they are fighting to save civilisation
from being destroyed by the 'German barbarians,' whilst the German
convinces himself that he is fighting to impress his 'higher culture'
upon an unenlightened world!
"Listen! I was once an engineer in the Krupp Works, at Essen; that nest
of the German War Eagle. I was but a unit in a mighty mass. We were all
well treated. Our health was well served. Our masters had learned that,
just as they watched the health of horses, it was just as necessary to
study the well-being of their human workers; so model homes and villages
were built for us, our masters realising that if we were healthy they
would get more work from us. They were philanthropists with an eye on
the output. And the average German worker was getting contented--getting
into a groove."
[Illustration: "That Nest of the German War Eagle."-Chapter XIII.
(The Krupp Works, at Essen.)]
"Then," I ventured, "if a man's contented and has nothing to growl
about--why worry?"
"Ah," he replied, "that's just the trouble, the German worker, as a
worker, has little to complain of, but he is becoming systematised. He
cannot rise, he is forced to be content and do his job. His health is
insured by groups of employers sharing the responsibility. If workers
get hurt too much or sick too much, the insurance syndicate begins to
lose money; hence safety devices are considered and sanitoria built to
prevent illness; and this German social insurance speeds individual
initiative to top speed. It makes the German worker a splendid
animal--and there is the danger.
"You know it's human nature to complain--progress is built upon
discomfort, contentment means stagnation. I could see the workers fixed
in their contented groove under the studied philanthropy of his
employers and ending as in the dumb-driven-cattle age of the Feudal
Barons."
"It strikes me," I said, "that the Socialist is of that type of Irishman
that's never happy unless there's a chance of a fight. You might at
least admit that many employers have hearts like other human beings.
There are many that recognise that profits are not everything."
"No doubt," he said, "but they're not in Germany. Prior to the war the
workers were moving close to a war with employers--the rise of Labor has
been steady and sure the world over. Why in your own country, Australia,
Labor already controls the Governments. It was coming to that in Europe.
The worker was climbing, climbing, all the time--organising,
organising--but against the increasing demand for labor the employers
had a powerful weapon in the invention of labor-saving machinery.
"Every day saw more and more of the work of the world taken up by
machinery. Did a labor union demand increased wages, then a machine was
devised to do the work with less assistance. In a return issued by the
U.S. Government, it was estimated that 4,500,000 factory machine workers
of that country were turning out products in quantities equal to the
hand labor of 45,000,000 men. That meant that 90 per cent. of the work
in factories was being done by machinery; that one man, with the help of
machines could produce ten times more than he needs. It was more acute
in Germany. In other words, to satisfy the wants of one man for one day,
a factory worker with a machine requires only one hour instead of the
ten he formerly worked. For whom was he doing the work of the remaining
nine hours? Why, for rulers, soldiers, and other parasites, who do not
work but have to live.
"When I was a worker in Essen I saw the set lives of the workers--noted
how a new labor-saving device threw out so many men at a time. I looked
back at the development of machinery and saw that a very large part of
machinery is driven by steam-power, which meant largely coal-power, and
I knew with the getting and burning of the coal there was not only a
terrible waste of human labor, but 90 per cent. of the heat generated
escaped unused, and not more than 5 per cent. of the stored energy in
the coal became available for human needs. Even the finest quadruple
expansion engines, with all the modern devices for super-heated steam to
augment their capacity, did not utilise more than 15 per cent. We
engineer workers knew that if an engine were invented to economise this
waste there would be a further reduction of labor--and this device came.
It came in the Diesel motor."
"This wonderful engine meant the production of power from crude oil at a
cost of one-eighth of a penny to a farthing per horse-power, far beyond
the economy of any other form of engine and five times cheaper than the
ordinary steam engine. Its only rival was water-power--and water-power
is not everywhere.
"We could see, at no distant day, nine-tenths of the workers of the
world supplanted by the machine! We could see that new labor-saving
machinery would mean a fearful catastrophe in the labor markets of the
world. Think of it. We could see wonderful engines, put together by the
hands of the workers in the factories, pushing out the useless laborer,
pushing him out into the crowded avenues of unemployed. We could see
this awful Frankenstein of machinery--a huge soulless metal monster,
stalking through the world, bringing starvation, anarchy and destruction
in its wake. 'It should not be--it must not be,' we said, and lots were
drawn."
Then he stopped short and sat upon a bank at the roadside.
I watched him stare in thought at an ant creeping over a twig at his
feet.
"Well?" I said.
He started and looked at me with lowered head. He peered at me beneath
his long grey eyebrows and quietly whispered--"Diesel had to die."
"Then he was killed!" I said, starting up. I remembered he had
mysteriously disappeared in October, 1913.
"Yes," he replied, "and it was my task."
He turned from me and looked across the peaceful Rhine. In the silence
faint booms seemed to come from the western battlefield, but it may have
been the throbbing of my brain. I looked at the man with his hard-set
jaw and quivering lips.
I sat down again at his side, and for many minutes silently scratched
lines upon the road.
Fully ten minutes passed, and he turned his face to me.
"Listen!" he said. "Can you hear those distant guns? They tell me
there's no Socialism in the world to-day. That war came in and smashed
the barriers. At Ghent, not long before the war, an International
Congress met and formed an Association for the best development of the
world's cities; at Paris, one month before the strife broke out, 2000
delegates from Chambers of Commerce, representing 31 nations, met to
ensure the world's commercial peace and commercial prosperity; and just
before the war a World's Congress of Socialists met in Berlin, and
Jaures won every heart with his denunciation of human strife.
"Within a month a city-destroying army passed through Ghent and wrecked
the greatest constructional glories of the world. Within a month the
world's commerce was paralysed. Within a month Jaures was shot and
Socialists the world over became blood-blinded. To-day they 'see red.'
They know not what they are fighting for, but there they fight like
bloodthirsty fiends because they're told to. What are they fighting for?
Will life be any harder for them what flag flies above their city? The
people fight and the people suffer, and when their job is done those
left are given scraps of metal to wear and are sent back to clear up the
mess."
"Stop!" I said. "Don't forget there is such a thing as Patriotism.
Listen!
"'Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land.'"
Then he looked at me for a moment with his grave grey face--and smiled.
"Listen, my boy, I am not a Frenchman, though born in Lorraine--I am not
a German, though living most of my life in Germany--I am a Worldsman. I
am a Christian. To me all men are as brothers. I do not love any country
more than any other. I prove that by making a friend of you. I should,
in the casual order of things just now, hate you with the awful German
hate of England. Patriotism is the love of the land in which you
accidentally happened to be born. Why should any one love a particular
geographical district upon the face of the earth because there he
happened to first see the light?
"Let me tell you," he continued, with a strange fire in his eyes and
slashing at a flower by the way, "God, or Nature if you like, will enact
a punishment to fit this awful crime of the murder of five million men,
and the heartbreaks of mothers, wives and children. This, the greatest
tragedy the world has ever seen, will call for a fearful atonement. I
foresee, in this war, with its daily expense of three million pounds,
and the additional waste, a general bankruptcy of the world, the
downfall of classes, of wealth, the wrecking of privilege. I foresee,
when peace is declared, the fruitless return of millions of men to jobs
that have vanished, and to employers shorn of all power to employ them.
Mark me! The world to-day is on the verge of a mighty cataclysm far
greater than the present awful clash of armies. Wise are the man and
country that are preparing."
He paused awhile as if in deep thought.
"Listen, my boy, you quoted me some verse just now, let me quote you
lines from the new version of the 'Watch on the Rhine':
"Dear Fatherland, we'll soon be free,
From Prussian Kings' autocracy:
The world shall see all the battles cease,
With dawn of universal peace.
Each German worker has to pay
One-fourth of what he earns per day
To keep two million marching feet
And please a Kaiser's mad conceit.
Oh God! we're punished bitterly
For Kaiser Wilhelm's blasphemy;
Three million of our sons are slain,
Let sacrifice be not in vain!"
He rose abruptly, grasped his stick, and set off down the road.
I stood for a moment half-dazed; then I followed him.
[Illustration: "If soldiers only had their own way, this war would be
short lasting."--Chapter XIII.
(The Cartoon, "An International Conference that would bring about
Peace," by Bradley, in the "Chicago Daily News.")]