"But," said one in amazement, "they would not do that in real life?"
"They are doing it every day," I said. "This school is old, badly
ventilated, overcrowded. It is a danger to your health and mine. Yet,
if I asked for a new school, the whole village would rise up against me.
'More money on the rates!' they would cry, and they would treat me very
much as the people in the play treated Dr. Stockmann."
* * *
I find it difficult to discuss the causes of the war with the bairns. I
refuse to accept the usual tags about going to the assistance of a weak
neighbour whom we agreed to protect. We all want to think that we are
fighting for Belgium but are we?
I look to Mexico and I find it has been bathed in blood because the
American Oil Kings and the British Oil Kings were at war. President Diaz
was pro-English, Madero was pro-American, Huerta was pro-English ... and
the United States supported the notorious Villa. Villa's rival,
Carranzo, was pro-English. It is an accepted belief that the American
Oil Kings financed the first risings in order to drive the British oil
interests out of the country. Hence, widows and orphans in Mexico are
the victims of a dollar massacre.
Can we trace the present war to the financiers? It is said that the
Triple Entente is the result of Russia's receiving loans from France
and Britain.
I cannot find a solution. I am inclined to attach little value to what
is called national feeling. The workers are the masses, and I cannot
imagine a German navvy's having any hatred of a British navvy. A world
of workers would not fight, but at present the workers are so badly
organised that they fight at the bidding of kings and diplomatists and
financiers. War comes from the classes above, and by means of their
press the upper classes convert the proletariat to their way of
thinking.
A more important subject is that of the ending of wars. The idealistic
vapourings of the I.L.P. with its silly talk of internationalism will do
nothing to stop war. Norman Angell's cry that war doesn't pay will not
stop war. But a true democracy in each country will stop it. I think of
Russia with all its darkness and cruelty, and I am appalled; a true
democracy there will be centuries in coming. For Germany I do not fear;
out of her militarism will surely arise a great democratic nation. And
out of our own great trial a true democracy is arising. Capitalism has
failed; the State now sees that it must control the railways and
engineering shops in a crisis. The men who struck work on the Clyde are
of the same class as the men who are dying in Flanders. Why should one
lot be heroes and the other lot be cursed as traitors? The answer is
simple. The soldiers are fighting for the nation; the engineers are
working primarily for the profiteers, and only secondarily for the
nation. Profiteering has not stood the test, and the workers are
beginning to realise the significance of its failure.