War and Peace Under Capitalism.

I.

War.

NGLAND is still echoing the past summer's discussion of a possible or probable war with Germany. The discussion was precipitated by Mr. M. H. Hyndman, the veteran socialist leader; and his presentation of the German danger was ably supported by Mr. Robert Blatchford, editor of "The Clarion", and Mr. Harry Quelch, editor of "Justice". It was further enhanced by the rather brutal presentation of a like point of view to the House of Peers by Lord Cromer. The brunt of the question, however, fell upon Mr. Hyndman. He aroused the indignation of the British Liberals, whose obtuse hypocrisy he exposed to ridicule. But more especially, and most unfairly, was he attacked by the leaders and organs of the British Labor Party. It was through these Liberal and Labor Party misrepresentations that the reports of the discussion went into the American and European press; and upon these misrepresentations, have both socialist and capitalist editorials been written.

Now Mr. Hyndman is the farthest removed of any man from the jingoism of which he has been accused. He has been a life-long advocate of peace, and the most consistent and hated enemy of British imperialism. When others quibbled and compromised, he risked life and limb in opposing the Boer War. For a quarter of a century he has labored, with disastrous consequences to himself, for the freedom of India.. No other man has so faithfully borne the banners of the oppressed peoples of the world in the face of the English ruling class. At all times, and through all lands, have the years of his life been spent in inciting the enslaved to manhood and revolt. Of all men, he is the last against whom the charge of jingoism should be brought. And this his opponents in the discussion perfectly well knew.

But Mr. Hyndman knows, as probably no man has known since Joseph Mazzini, what is taking place in the Cabinets of Europe; and the present Anglo-German war discussion is due. to his effort to get International Socialism to face the European political fact. It is not because he wants war, but be

cause he wants to avert war, that his warning has been sounded; it is because he would avert a war that might turn far backward the dial of the world's progress. And his warning is in strict accord with the economic interpretations of history. He is urgent with a knowledge which so few socialist leaders really seem to possess-the knowledge that the wheels of the world are increasingly turned by capitalist control, and in no wise regulated by professional presentations of moral sentiments, or by the idle resolutions of dilettante Peace Congresses.

Now the present dominant European fact, upon which Mr. Hyndman based his warning, is the economic necessity of political expansion on the part of Germay. Next to the United States, Germany has reached the highest stage of development in her productive machinery. The German. population is also increasing more rapidly than that of any other nation of capitalist Europe; and, under capitalism, the growth of population means that labor's ability to buy the things it produces decreases in ratio to its increased power of production. Thus industrial Germany necessarily reaches out for new markets. It must possess itself of yet unexploited lands, and found colonies therein, in order to make place for its surplus goods and surplus workers. It must have free course with savage peoples in Africa, with yet unindustrialized peoples in Asia, and with the islands of the seas, that it may compel these populations to buy its products. Either the collapse of German capitalism, with ten million workers in the streets, and with the social revolution at the Kaiser's doors, or else German political expansion,-this is the logic, the sheer economic necessity, of German industrial development.

But it is England that bars Germany's way to possession of more of the earth. England either owns the earth that Germany wants, or controls the ocean highways and island outposts thereto. If the continued existence of capitalism is inevitable, then just so inevitable is the Anglo-German conflict for the possession of these highways, and the markets to which they lead. It is not a question of what Hyndman wants in England, or what Bebel wants in Germany, or of what the Peace Congresses resolve; it is a question of what the capitalist control finds necessary for its continued existence and increase. Nothing but the swift establishment of the cooperative commonwealth in Europe, predicated upon an immediate social revolution, could prevent the great war between Germany and England for possession of the remaining unpillaged lands and peoples. And there is not the slightest sign of the establishment of socialism, in either of the two

nations concerned, in time to avert the world-changing war. If the socialist movement were now fully aware of itself, if it were strong and alert through a mature and vivid international experience, it might hold the strifes of nations in abeyance until labor's triumph and order should end all war by removing its economic cause. But the psychological contradictions of capitalist society still endure in the movement that makes for the overthrow of that society. The socialist movement is not yet a living world-soul, inhabiting a well-informed and harmonious world-body. We have not yet entered the longopened door of international command; we have not been trained to treat the world as a whole, and to seek the fulfillment of the interest and freedom of each individual, each distinct people, each human type, in this wholeness of view and purpose.. International Socialism might speak, even today, the word that would prevail against its enemies. It might say, Let there be peace; and there would be peace. we do but babble before our matchless opportunity.

Yet

But coming back to Germany, we may see her as a potent cause of wars apparently not her own. It is well known that the red imbecile ruler of the Russias might have resisted the grand ducal ruffians, and might have compromised with Japan, had it not been for the treacherous encouragement of the Kaiser. The first step in German expansion was the weakening of Russia on the east, and the bullying of France on the west, preparatory to the decisive conflict with England. From the same source springs the embroilment of the Balkans, with the aggressions of Austria and Bulgaria, at the moment when they serve to paralyze the hand of Young Turkey; for a free Turkey would prove an effectual barrier to the German commercial and political occupation of Asia Minor. Besides all that, the program of Young Turkey looks toward a common well-being of the Ottoman peoples, toward a progressively free federal organization, that exceeds anything that either Prussia or Russia desires in neighboring states. Some of the most effective leaders of the reform movement in Turkey, as well as in Persia and India, are intelligent revolutionary socialists. political revolution being but the first step in their program. Of this fact the Prussian and Russian spies keep their respective governments well informed. And though carefully concealing its real dread, European diplomacy is fearfully engaged in quenching the springs of freedom that break forth in the deserts of Oriental despotisms. And it is to the interest of capitalist Germany to restore and protect the crumbling despotisms of Asia and Africa, in order that its own economic despotism may be established in their shadow. To even such

measure of freedom as the English and French colonial systems supply are the interests of German capitalism utterly antagonistic.

But Mr. Hyndman's warning against German purposes was not that of the mere English patriot; his concern is infinitely vaster than that. What he dreads, more than all else, is the effect of German expansion upon the socialist movement. With the hand of the German giant upon European Capitols, the Prussianization of Europe and of nearer Asia quickly follows. And the Prussianization of civilization means its recession into practical barbarism, with the long postponement of the social revolution. Let us be under no illusions about the essential Prussian spirit; it is still the spirit of the savage, ruthless to the last degree; it is preeminently the spirit of capitalism in its culminating and most devastating stage. Compared with the dominant Prussian, the Turk is a kindly and heavenly-minded human animal. It is in Prussia, more than elsewhere in the so-called civilized world, that the peasants might envy the swine they tend; and there, rather than in primitive savagery, that the women are kept in the condition of mere breeding animals and beasts of burden. From the time when the Teutonic knight stole Prussia from the Poles, and spread massacre over eastern Europe in the name of Christ; from the time when the princes and barons made with Luther one of the blackest bargains of history, taking for themselves the comparatively happy lands of the Catholic Church in exchange for their support of Luther's religion-a bargain that put some eleven millions of German peasants beneath their ravaged and untilled earth at last; from the time. when Bismarck, cynical, Satanic, and the prince of perjurers, changed Germany into Prussia, every Prussian advance has been destructive to all that is free or fine in the human spirit. The German Kaiser, braggart, brutal and cowardly, and the horrible monstrosities of modern German art, are revealing types of Prussianism. Let this Prussianism once gain the hegemony of Europe, and the result will be a barbarian renaissance, followed by an abysmal human decadence; and this, notwithstanding the present strength of German social democracy. Such is Mr. Hyndman's view of the matter; and it is a view which he does not hold alone. It is because he would prevent so overwhelming a catastrophe to what is worth preserving in civilization, that he has warned English socialists, and the socialists of all nations as well, to prepare against the present European fact. And his words become the more urgent, when it is known that he has good reason for believing that the English aristocracy would welcome a German invasion sooner than a social revolution at home.

Nor is it any answer to say that the German people do not want war with England, and that the English people do not want war with Germany. Up to the present moment, historic peoples have had precious little to do with the decisions to fight, or to make peace. We have only to rightly read our histories, as far back as their first dim conjectures go, to see how world-wars are continually recurring under some form of economic pressure; to see how wars are really fought for no other reason; and to see how wars will continue to waste the earth so long as economic control is private and not social. A study of the psychology of war, especially in the light of capitalist development, also shows how little the previous sentiments of a nation have to do with any particular military struggle. And the rulers of the world know that, in case of war, they may still discount the socialist movement, notwithstanding its latent power to compel international peace; they know that they may still count upon the old appeals to patriotism, and upon the hypnotism exercised by the possession of power. With the possible exception of Italy, the governments can still throw obedient armies against revolting workers. The governing class of Germany knows, just as certainly as the governing class of the United States knows, that the black magic of war, even in the worst possible cause, can still arouse a maudlin national feeling; can still make the people senseless and delirious. Upon this knowledge will the Kaiser and the Hamburg American Steamship Company act, should the psychological moment for war with England arrive. And not Bebel, with all his superb influence, nor the German socialist movement, with all its discipline and strength, could stay the German nation an hour, in the event of such a war.

The American people did not dream of empire, when the war with Spain began. Nor did they need to fight for the freedom of Cuba; it is well known that Spain would have granted our demands on Cuba's behalf. But the knowledge was concealed from the people, in order that the governing class might secretly precipitate its imperialistic program. We really went to war with Spain, in the first place, that the financiers who had preempted Cuba might come into unbridled possession of that beautiful and unhappy island; and, in the second and larger place, the war was planned in order that American capitalism might make the Philippine Islands the door in to the great market of China. Never was a war more inexcusable, or more disgusting and cowardly in all that pertains to it; and never did war bring swifter or deeper degradation to a nation. The best leaders of the republican party were opposed to it, and so was the body of the demo