Socialism As It Is Part 45

For a number of years the fight against militarism, and incidentally against possible wars, has occupied the chief attention of international Socialist congresses. While the Stuttgart Congress (1907) did not accept the proposal of the French delegates that in case of war an international strike and insurrection should be declared, the closing part of the resolution adopted was definitely intended to suggest such action by rehearsing with approval the various cases where the working people had already made steps in that direction, and by advising still more revolutionary action in the future, as indicated in the words italicized.

"The International," it said, "is unable to prescribe one set mode of action to the working cla.s.ses; this must of necessity be different in different lands, varying with time and place. But it is clearly its duty to encourage the working cla.s.ses everywhere in their opposition to militarism. As a matter of fact, since the last International Congress, the working cla.s.ses have adopted various ways of fighting militarism, by refusing grants for military and naval armaments, and by striving to organize armies on democratic lines. They have been successful in preventing outbreaks of war, or in putting an end to existing war, or the rumor of war. We may mention the agreement entered into between the English and French trade-unions after the Fashoda incident, for the purpose of maintaining peace and for reestablis.h.i.+ng friendly relations between England and France; the policy of the Social-Democratic parties in the French and German Parliaments during the Morocco crisis, and the peaceful declarations which the Socialists in both countries sent each other; the common action of the Austrian and Italian Socialists, gathered at Trieste, with a view to avoiding a conflict between the two powers; the great efforts made by the Socialists of Sweden to prevent an attack on Norway; and lastly, the heroic sacrifices made by the Socialist workers and peasants of Russia and Poland in the struggle against the war demon let loose by the Czar, in their efforts to put an end to their ravages, and at the same time _to utilize the crisis_ for the liberation of the country and its workers.

"All efforts bear testimony to the growing power of the proletariat and to its absolute determination to do all it can in order to obtain peace. The action of the working cla.s.ses in this direction will be even more successful when public opinion is influenced to a greater degree than at present, and _when the workingmen's parties in different lands are directed and instructed by the International_." And finally it was decided _to try to take advantage of_ the profound disturbances caused by every war to _hasten the abolition of capitalist rule_.

The International Congress of 1910 referred back to the Socialist parties of the various countries for further consideration a resolution proposed by the French and English delegates which declared: "Among the means to be used in order to prevent and hinder war, the Congress considers as particularly efficacious the general strike, especially in the industries that supply war with its implements (arms and ammunition, transport, etc.), as well as propaganda and popular action in their active forms."

This resolution is now under discussion. In referring it to the national parties, the International Socialist Bureau reminded them that the practical measure the authors of the amendment had princ.i.p.ally in view was "the strike of workingmen who were employed in delivering war material." The Germans opposed the resolution on the ground that a strike of this kind, guarded against by the government, would have to become general, and that during the martial law of war times it would necessarily mean tremendous violence. They contended that a more effective means of preventing war, _until the Socialists are stronger_, is to vote down all taxes and appropriations for armies and navies. And they accused the British Labourites who supported this resolution of having failed to vote against war supplies, while the Germans and their supporters had. This accusation was true, as against the British Labourites, but did not apply against the French and other Socialists who were for the resolution.

We can obtain a key to this situation only by examining the varying motives of reformists and revolutionaries. The French reformists, followers of Jaures, are so anxious for peace, that, notwithstanding the fact that many capitalists, probably a majority, now also favor it, they are ready to have the working people make the most terrible sacrifices for this semi-capitalistic purpose. (See Part II, Chapter V.) The Germans realize that the capitalists themselves have more and more reasons for avoiding wars, and, being satisfied with their present political prospects, do not propose to risk them--or their necks--for any such object. The French _revolutionaries_, on the other hand, favor extreme measures, not to preserve a capitalistic peace, but to develop the general strike, to paralyze armies, and encourage their demoralization and dissolution. They want to parallel all plans for mobilization by plans for insurrection, and to force armies to disclose their true purpose, which they believe is not war at all, but the arbitrary and violent suppression of popular movements.

Whether capitalism or Socialism puts an end to _war_, Socialists generally are agreed their success may ultimately depend on their ability to find some way to put a check to _militarism_. The chief means by which this is likely to be accomplished, they believe, is by the spread of Socialism and the education of youth and even of children in the principles of international working-cla.s.s solidarity, _always to put the humanity as a whole above one's country_, always to despise and revolt against all kinds of government by violence. Karl Liebknecht remarks that "it is already recognized that every Social-Democrat educates his children to be Social-Democrats." But he says that this is not sufficient. Social-Democratic parents do their best, but the Socialist public must aid them to do better. In other words, the greatest hope for Socialism, in its campaign against militarism as in all else it undertakes, lies in education.

The Socialist movement, even if it becomes some day capable of forcing concessions from the capitalists through their fear of a social overturn, depends first, last, and always upon its ability to teach and to train and to organize the ma.s.ses of the people to solve their own problems without governmental or capitalistic aid, and to understand that, in order to solve them successfully, they must be able to take broad and far-sighted views of all the political and economic problems of the time.

Especially Socialists undertake to enlighten the ma.s.ses on the part played by war in history and in recent times--not because wars are necessarily impending, but because the war talk is an excuse for armies that really serve another purpose. For Socialists believe that the rule of society by economic cla.s.ses, and rule by war or brute force, in the Socialist view, are one and the same thing. No Socialist has expressed this view more clearly or forcefully than Mr. George R. Kirkpatrick, in his recent book, "War--What For?" Addressed to the heart as well as to the head, and based upon all the most important of the previous attacks on militarism war, whether Socialist or not, it may be doubted whether any non-Socialist could have presented as powerful an argument. Mr.

Kirkpatrick gives the following interesting outline of the typical Socialist view of the development of primitive warfare into modern militarism and of slavery into the present industrial system (here abbreviated):--

"For a long time in these intertribal wars it was the practice to take no prisoners (except the younger women), but to kill, kill, kill, because the conquerors had no use for the captive men. When, however, society had developed industrially to a stage enabling the victors to make use of live men as work animals, _that new industrial condition produced a new idea_--one of the greatest and most revolutionary ideas that ever flashed into the human brain; and that idea was simply this: A live man is worth more than a dead one, if you can make use of him as a _work animal_. When industrially it became practicable for the conquerors to make use of live men captured in war, it rapidly became the custom to take prisoners, save them alive, beat them into submission--tame them--and thus have them for work animals, human work animals.

"Here the human ox, yoked to the burdens of the world, started through the centuries, centuries wet with tears and red with blood and fire.

"Thus originated a _cla.s.s_ of workers, the _working cla.s.s_.

"Thus also originated the _ruling_ cla.s.s. Thus originated the 'leading citizens.'

"Thus originally, in war, the workers fell into the bottomless gulf of misery. It was thus that war opened wide the devouring jaws of h.e.l.l for the workers.

"Thus was human society long ago divided into industrial cla.s.ses--into _two_ industrial cla.s.ses.

"Of course the interests of these two cla.s.ses were in fundamental conflict, and thus originated the cla.s.s struggle.

"Of course the ruling cla.s.s were in complete possession and control of all the powers of government--and of course they had _sense enough to use the powers of government to defend their own cla.s.s interests_.

"Of course the ruling cla.s.s made all the laws and controlled all inst.i.tutions in the interests of the ruling cla.s.s--naturally."[281]

With all other international and revolutionary Socialists, Mr.

Kirkpatrick believes that when the ma.s.ses are educated to see the truth of this view and have learned the true nature of modern industry, cla.s.s government, and armies, they will put an end to them. He concludes:--

"The working cla.s.s men _inside_ and _outside_ the _army_ are confused.

"They do not understand.

"But they will understand.

"AND WHEN THEY DO UNDERSTAND, their cla.s.s loyalty and cla.s.s pride will astonish the world. They will stand erect in their vast cla.s.s strength and defend--THEMSELVES. They will cease to coax and tease; they will make _demands_--unitedly. They will desert the armory; they will spike every cannon on earth; they will scorn the commander; they will never club nor bayonet another striker; and in the legislatures of the world they will shear the fatted parasites from the political and industrial body of society."[282]

Here we have both the Socialist point of view and a glimpse of the pa.s.sionate feeling that accompanies it. "War--What For?" has been circulated by scores of thousands among the working people and in the army and navy.

In countries like America and England, where there is no compulsory service, the practical objective of such agitation is to prevent enlistment. In France, Belgium, and Italy, where there is compulsory service, the Socialists for years have been preaching openly desertion and insubordination.

Complaint against this anti-military propaganda is general in United States army and navy circles. Recently a general in Southern California was said by the press to have reported to Was.h.i.+ngton that the distribution of one circular had dissuaded many men from joining the army. The circular, which was published, was attributed, whether rightly or not we do not know, to Jack London. It ran in part:--

"Young men, the lowest aim in your life is to be a soldier. The good soldier never tries to distinguish right from wrong. He never thinks; he never reasons; he only obeys. If he is ordered to fire on his fellow citizens, on his friends, on his neighbors, on his relatives, he obeys without hesitation. If he is ordered to fire down a crowded street when the poor are clamoring for bread, he obeys, and sees the gray hair of age stained with blood and the life tide gus.h.i.+ng from the breast of women, feeling neither remorse nor sympathy. If he is ordered off as one of a firing squad to execute a hero or benefactor, he fires without hesitation, though he knows that the bullet will pierce the n.o.blest heart that ever beat in a human breast.

"A good soldier is a blind, heartless, soulless, murderous machine.

He is not a man. He is not even a brute, for brutes only kill in self-defense. All that is human in him, all that is divine in him, all that const.i.tutes the man, has been sworn away when he took the enlistment roll. His mind, conscience, aye, his very soul, is in the keeping of his officer."

This language will appeal to many as extremely violent, yet it is no stronger than that of Tolstoi, while Bernard Shaw used almost identical expressions in his Preface to "John Bull's Other Island," without anybody suggesting that they were treasonable.

"The soldier," said Shaw, "is an anachronism of which we must get rid. Among people who are proof against the suggestions of romantic fiction there can no longer be any question of the fact that military service produces moral imbecility, ferocity, and cowardice.... For permanent work the soldier is worse than useless; such efficiency as he has is the result of dehumanization and disablement. His whole training tends to make him a weakling. He has the easiest of lives; he has no freedom and no responsibility.

He is politically and socially a child, with rations instead of rights, treated like a child, punished like a child, dressed prettily and washed and combed like a child, excused for outbreaks like a child, forbidden to marry like a child, and called Tommy like a child. He has no real work to keep him from going mad except housemaid's work."

Mr. Shaw's words are identical with those that are preached by Socialists every day, especially on the Continent.

"No soldier is asked to think for himself," he says, "to judge for himself, to consult his own honor and manhood, to dread any consequence except the consequence of punishment to his own person.

The rules are plain and simple; the ceremonies of respect and submission are as easy and mechanical as a prayer wheel, the orders are always to be obeyed thoughtlessly, however inept or dishonorable they may be.... No doubt this weakness is just what the military system aims at, its ideal soldier being, not a complete man, but a docile unit or cannon fodder which can be trusted to respond promptly and certainly to the external stimulus of a shouted order, and is intimidated to the pitch of being afraid to run away from a battle."

Nor is Mr. Shaw less sparing to the officer, and he represents in this case also the most unanimous Socialist view:--

"If he [the officer] calls his men dogs," says Shaw, "and perverts a musketry drill order to make them kneel to him as an act of personal humiliation, and thereby provokes a mutiny among men not yet thoroughly broken in to the abjectness of the military condition, he is not, as might be expected, shot, but, at the worst, reprimanded, whilst the leader of the mutiny, instead of getting the Victoria Cross and a public testimonial, is condemned to five years' penal servitude by Lynch Law (technically called martial law) administered by a trade union of officers."

Like all Socialists, Mr. Shaw recognizes that the evils of militarism rest even more heavily on subject peoples than on the soldiers, citizens, or taxpayers of the dominating races. He says of the officer he has been describing, who is humane and intelligent in civil life, that in his military capacity he will frantically declare that "he dare not walk about in a foreign country unless every crime of violence against an Englishman in uniform is punished by the bombardment and destruction of a whole village, or the wholesale flogging and execution of every native in the neighborhood; and also that unless he and his fellow officers have power, without the intervention of a jury, to punish the slightest self-a.s.sertion or hesitation to obey orders, however grossly insulting or disastrous those orders may be, with sentences which are reserved in civil life for the worst crimes, he cannot secure the obedience and respect of his men, and the country would accordingly lose all of its colonies and dependencies, and be helplessly conquered in the German invasion which he confidently expects to occur in the course of a fortnight or so."

"That is to say," Mr. Shaw continues, "in so far as he is an ordinary gentleman he behaves sensibly and courageously; and in so far as he is a military man he gives way without shame to the grossest folly, cruelty, and poltroonery. If any other profession in the world had been stained by those vices and by false witness, forgery, swindling, torture, compulsion of men's families to attend their executions, digging up and mutilation of dead enemies, all of which is only added to the devastation proper to its own business, as the military profession has been within recent memory in England, France, and the United States of America (to mention no other countries), it would be very difficult to induce men of capacity and character to enter it. And in England, it is, in fact, largely dependent for its recruits on the refuse of industrial life, and for its officers on the aristocratic and plutocratic refuse of political and diplomatic life, who join the army and pay for their positions in the more or less fas.h.i.+onable clubs which the regimental messes provide them with--clubs, which, by the way, occasionally figure in ragging scandals as circles of extremely coa.r.s.e moral character."[283]

It is not surprising that those who view armies in this light preach desertion and insubordination. A recent cable dispatch sums up some of the results of the activity in this direction of the French Federation of Labor with its million members, and of the Socialist Party with its still larger following:--

"Last year there were 13,500 desertions and 53,000 who refused to answer their call to military service. Loss to France in 1910, two army corps. These figures are given by _La France Militaire_, a soldiers' newspaper. In a fund called '_le sou du soldat et des insoumis_,' the idea was to develop antimilitarism and antipatriotism. Five per cent, on the subscriptions of the workmen, belonging to the labor unions, was ordered to be set apart for this fund. The conscripts before departing were requested to leave the name of their regiment and their number so that sums of money might be sent to them for antimilitary propaganda in the barracks. For eight years that sort of thing has been going on, but things never reached to the extent they do now.

"'The comrades of the workshop count on them to spread among those around ideas of revolt and rebellion,' is an extract from a letter read by M. Georges Berry in Parliament, and he added that he had a score of such letters emanating from the unions. In M. Jaures's organ, _L Humanite_, there appeared an article on December 22, 1910, inviting all the conscripts of the Labor Federation to send in their names so that financial aid might be sent to help them in organizing 'insubordination and desertion.'"