upward, lead them along the downward path. But we of this present time
have fixed our faith firm as a rock upon our righteous cause, and upon
the superior power and the inflexible will for victory that abide in the
German nation. Nevertheless the deplorable fact remains, that the
boundless egotism already mentioned has for that span of the future
discernible to us destroyed the collaboration of the two nations which
was so full of promise for the intellectual uplift of humanity. But the
other party has willed it so. Upon England alone rests the monstrous
guilt and the responsibility in the eye of world-history."
"ERNST HAECKEL.
"RUDOLF EUCKEN."
* * * * *
FROM THE MANIFESTO OF PROFESSOR EUCKEN.
"Let us hope that our German weapons will show the Englishmen that they
were entirely wrong in their reckoning; but first let us point out the
wide discrepancy between their motives and ours.
"With them it is self-seeking, envy, calculation; with us the conviction
that we are fighting for the holiest possessions of our people, for
right and justice."
* * * * *
NIETZSCHE ON DISARMAMENT.
The following extract from _Nietzsche_ may be worth quoting as
presenting one aspect of his many-sided thought:--
"Perhaps a memorable day will come when a nation renowned in wars and
victories, distinguished by the highest development of military order
and intelligence, and accustomed to make the heaviest sacrifices for
these objects, will voluntarily exclaim, 'We will break our swords,' and
will destroy its whole military system, lock, stock, and barrel. To make
ourselves defenceless (after having been most strongly defended), from
loftiness of sentiment, is the means towards genuine peace.... The
so-called armed peace that prevails at present in all countries is a
sign of a bellicose disposition, that trusts neither itself nor its
neighbour, and, partly from hate partly from fear, refuses to lay down
its weapons. Better to perish than to hate and fear; and twice better to
perish than to make oneself hated and feared."--_From "Human all too
Human," vol. ii. (translated by P.V. Colm, 1911)_.
* * * * *
THE EFFECT OF DISARMAMENT.
"Just as the growth of armaments increases the common danger, so a
policy of reduction would have the opposite effect, and were one
European country boldly to adopt disarmament it would strengthen
incalculably the forces making for peace in all countries. The armaments
of European nations are interdependent, and were such a policy pursued
by one nation it would be followed, if not by immediate disarmament in
other nations, at any rate, by very considerable reductions. It is very
easy to underrate the feeling which for some time past has been growing
throughout Europe against the colossal waste of armaments. Even in
Germany, whose geographical position from a military point of view is
weak, the Socialist vote, which is cast strenuously against armaments,
has grown at each election until it now represents some 35 per cent, of
the total electorate. The great weapon with which reaction has attempted
to combat Socialist growth has been an appeal against the 'unpatriotic'
opposition to armaments. What effect would this appeal have in face of
disarmament abroad? The Socialist party, with its anti-militarist
programme, would sweep Germany and compel the Government rapidly to
follow suit. Sooner or later the internal pressure of public opinion
would force the adoption of a similar policy upon the Government of
every civilized country in Europe."--_From "Why Britain Should Disarm"
by George Benson (National Labour Press, 1d.)_.
* * * * *
THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONALITY.
"Now the war has come, and when it is over let us be careful not to make
the same mistake or the same sort of mistake as Germany made when she
had France prostrate at her feet in 1870. (Cheers.) Let us, whatever we
do, fight for and work towards great and sound principles for the
European system. And the first of those principles which we should keep
before us is the principle of nationality--that is to say, not the
conquest or subjugation of any great community or of any strong race of
men, but the setting free of those races which have been subjugated and
conquered; and if doubt arises about disputed areas of country we should
try to settle their ultimate destination in the reconstruction of Europe
which must follow from this war with a fair regard to the wishes and
feelings of the people who live in them."--_From the speech of Mr.
Churchill, September_ 11, 1914, at the London Opera House.
* * * * *
CONSCRIPTION.
"If we, in a moment of unthinking panic, adopt the advice of our
militarists and develop an Army based on universal service, we shall
prepare for ourselves the very situation in which Germany finds itself
at this moment. However much we may protest that our aims are pacific,
and that our Army is intended only for defensive purposes, foreign
nations will view it with alarm, and will reflect that, by the help of
our Navy, we can land an armed force in any country that has a sea
coast. We shall thus incur the risk of a coalition against us. It is
said that if we had had a conscript Army, the present war would not have
taken place. But it is not realized that a different and far more
dangerous war would have been probable, a war in which we should have
had no continental Allies, but should have been resisted, as Germany is
being resisted, in order to relieve Europe of an intolerable terror....
"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, Japan, and
the United States, if Germany and Austria are shattered in this war, to
forbid the further building of any more ships 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 classes have always said that masses
were incapable of understanding foreign policy. The masses understand it
now. They understand that in spite of very earnest efforts in various
Cabinets, the ruling classes have failed to avert the most terrible
disaster in history. The masses will say to themselves, 'At any rate we
couldn't have done worse than that.' The masses 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 institution. 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 fictitious--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
Dickinson, "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 assemble
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 masses 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 worshippers of tribal war-gods 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 classes 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 massacre 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 noble 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 friendship and compassion 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
pawns.
"The People must everywhere resist such territorial aggression and
national abasement 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 CLASS.
"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 bloody 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 bloody regime of modern
Capitalism and its institutions, 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
_Vorwärts_ which was suppressed by the German Government. It reads:--
"The comrades abroad can be assured that the German working class
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 circumstances permit.
The comrades in foreign lands can be assured 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
pronouncements 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:--
"A rapid peace, one which does not humiliate anybody, a peace without
conquests, this is what we must demand. Every effort in this direction
must be favourably received. The continuous and simultaneous affirmation
of this desire, in all the belligerent countries, can alone put a stop
to the bloody massacre before the complete exhaustion of all the peoples
concerned. A peace based upon the international solidarity of the
working class and on the liberty of all the peoples can alone be a
lasting peace. It is in this sense that the proletariats of all
countries must furnish, even in the course of this war, a Socialist
effort for peace.
"But my protest is against the war, against those who are responsible
for it, against those who direct it; it is against the capitalist policy
which gave it birth; it is directed against the capitalist objects
pursued by it, against the plans of annexation, against the violation of
the neutrality of Belgium and Luxemburg, against military dictatorship,
against the total oblivion of social and political duties of which the
Government and ruling classes are still to-day guilty. For this reason,
I reject the military credits asked for."--_From the "Daily News,"
December 14, 1914._
"KARL LIEBKNECHT.
"BERLIN, _December 2_."
* * * * *
DANGER OF RUSSIA.
The following is the text of the resolution passed by the Central
Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Party in reply to M.
Vandervelde's appeal on behalf of the Allied cause:--
"We recognize the anti-democratic character of the Prussian hegemony,
but as Russian Social Democrats we cannot forget another enemy of the
workers, and no less dangerous--Russian absolutism. In home affairs this
enemy remains what it always has been, a merciless oppressor and an
unceasing exploiter. Even at the present moment, when we should have
thought this despotism would be more cautious, it remains the same and
continues the political persecution of the democracy, and of all subject
nationalities. To-day all Socialist journals are stopped, all working
class organizations are disbanded, many hundreds of members are
arrested, and our brave comrades are sent to exile just as before.
Should this war end in victory for our present Government, it will
become the centre and mainstay of international reaction.... Our
immediate objective should be the convocation of a Constitutional
Assembly. We demand this in the interests of the same European democracy
on whose behalf you appeal. Our party is a very important section of the
world's democracies, and by fighting for our interests we are at the
same time fighting for the interests of all democracies, enlarging and
strengthening them. We hope that our interests are not considered as
opposed to those of other European democracies which we esteem as highly
as our own. We are persuaded that Russian absolutism is the chief
support of reactionary militarism in Europe, and that it has bred in the
German hegemony the dangerous enmity towards European democracy."
* * * * *
LETTER ON RUSSIA FROM P. KROPOTKIN.
"'But what about the danger of Russia?' my readers will probably ask.
"To this question, every serious person will probably answer, that when
you are menaced by a great, very great danger, the first thing to do is
to combat this danger, and then see to the next. Belgium and a good deal
of France _are_ conquered by Germany, and the whole civilization of
Europe is menaced by its iron fist. Let us cope first with this danger.
"As to the next, Is there anybody who has not thought himself that the
present war, in which all parties in Russia have risen unanimously
against the common enemy, will render a return to the autocracy of old
materially impossible? And then, those who have seriously followed the
revolutionary movement of Russia in 1905 surely know what were the ideas
which dominated in the First and Second, approximately freely elected
Dumas. They surely know that complete Home Rule for all the component
parts of the Empire was a fundamental point of all the Liberal and
Radical parties. More than that: Finland then actually _accomplished_
her revolution in the form of a democratic autonomy, and the Duma
approved it.
"And finally, those who know Russia and her last movement certainly feel
that _autocracy will never more be re-established in the forms it had
before_ 1905, _and that a Russian Constitution could never take the
Imperialist forms and spirit which Parliamentary rule has taken in
Germany_. As to us, who know Russia from the inside, we are sure that
the Russians never will be capable of becoming the aggressive, warlike
nation Germany is. Not only the whole history of the Russians shows it,
but with the Federation which Russia is _bound to_ become in
the very near future, such a warlike spirit would be absolutely
incompatible."--_Quoted in "Freedom," also in the "Manchester Guardian,"
October, 1914_.
* * * * *
THE FUTURE OF EUROPE.
_Portion of a letter written by P. Kropotkin to Mr. R.J. Kelly, K.C., of
Dublin, December 15, 1915._