an organization of exploiters help the exploited? Will a league of capitalist empires benefit wage slaves?

V

A LEAGUE OF ROBBER NATIONS

The "Big Five" control the brute force of the world. They have all of the important naval power; they have most of the important military power, and they dominate the manufacturing industries upon which the success of warfare depends. The union of the "Big Five" is brute force enthroned.

The record of the "Big Five" is a record of conquest, and in too many cases a record of tyranny.

The people of the United States took this country from the American Indians, for the most part by conquest. From Mexico, they took the southwest by conquest. From Spain, they took Porto Rico and the Philippines by conquest, and from Colombia, by the same method, thinly disguised, they took the Panama Canal Zone.

Japan took Korea by conquest and she holds it by a reign of military terror.

France and Italy took their African colonies by conquest, and they hold them with armies and with navies.

Great Britain has laid her conquering hand on one quarter of the territory of the Earth's surface. Today she holds Ireland under her domination with tens of thousands of British soldiers. Egypt is being controlled with machine guns. Forty-five million people in the British Isles, are ruling over the destinies of three hundred million people in India, and crushing out in the most arbitrary and tyrannous manner, every effort of the Indians to liberate themselves. Her record in South Africa during the Boer War is no better than the record of the United States in the Philippines, during our conquest of those possessions.

The "Big Five" have secured their empires by resort to force. All are champions of the right of

might. They rule their dependent peoples with battle ships and artillery. At home they rule the working population with policemen's clubs and constables' batons, and where necessary, they use rifles and machine guns.

Five capitalist empires have set themselves the task of making peace. In order to do so, they have drawn up a Covenant which shall bind these five empires together.

Why did not the Peace Conference invite delegates from the Socialist countries of Europe? Did they refuse to seat envoys from Germany, Austria and Hungary, because they were "enemy" Socialist governments? On what ground, then, did they exclude Russia, an "allied" Socialist government?

Capitalist empires refuse to deal with Socialist Republics because they have nothing in common with them. A capitalist empire aims to maintain exploitation and industrial slavery. A Socialist Republic aims to emancipate mankind from economic thraldom. The League of Nations turns back the clock of civilization to the age of rule by violence. It shuts out every consideration of national and international democracy. It threatens every revolution and every effort of the working classes to improve their conditions for themselves. The League of Nations is the last stand of capitalism-the last obstacle in the way of the economic emancipation of labor.

VI

THE LEAGUE WILL NOT PREVENT WAR

There is another matter of supreme importance that is inseparably connected with any consideration of the League of Nations. Will the League prevent war!

Plain people everywhere are asking that question. Statesmen have answered that the League could be relied upon as an agency for the promotion of peace. The first words in the League Covenant are:

"In

order to promote international cooperation and to achieve international peace and security.'

The world has passed through five years of anguish; it faces a generation of hardship; the frightfulness of war never has been more clearly demonstrated than during this period. Peoples never make wars; despite temporary outbursts of patriotism, they soon tire of the hardship that war imposes. In every country to-day the peoples are yearning for peace. In every country they are looking to the League as a means of preserving peace.

This is not the first time that people have yearned for peace. The Napoleonic wars ended the sixtyyear struggle between France and Great Britain for the control of the Eighteenth Century world. Peoples in 1815 were yearning for peace as ardently as they yearn to-day. A treaty was signed. A League of Nations initiated by the Emperors of Austria, Prussia and Russia was organized on September 26, 1815, "to protect Religion, Peace and Justice." This "Holy Alliance" had the support of millions then just as the League has the support of millions now.

But the Holy Alliance did not preserve peace. Soon it degenerated into an organization for fighting the new political democracy that was flooding Europe. Since its organization a century ago there have been a score of first class wars ending with the catastrophe of 1914.

The plain people want peace. They look eagerly to the League as a means for its establishment. Their desire, however, will not bring them peace in 1919 any more than it brought peace to their ancestors in 1815. Behind the desire for peace there must be an intelligent understanding of the methods necessary for the establishment of peace.

War has its specific causes, just as typhoid fever has its specific causes. A desire to prevent typhoid is futile unless it is coupled with an intelligent idea of the method to be used in destroying the germ. A desire to prevent war is equally futile unless it is

coupled with an intelligent idea of the methods necessary for destroying the germs of war.

The League Covenant as published in April, 1919, will not prevent war-no covenant drawn by the Paris Peace Conference could be expected to prevent war. Those who rely on the League of Nations as a means of preserving the peace of the world are doomed to the same bitter disappointment suffered by those who expected the Holy Alliance to preserve peace.

There are many reasons behind this assertion. The most obvious one is that peace cannot rest upon victory.

President Wilson explained this point very clearly in his address to the Senate, January 22, 1917.

"The statesmen of both of the groups of nations now arrayed against one another have said, in terms that could not be misinterpreted, that it was no part of the purpose they had in mind to crush their antagonists. But the implications of these assurances may not be equally clear to all. . . . They imply, first of all, that it must be a peace without victory.

Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last. Only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in the common benefit.

That is why no peace can be founded upon victory. Equality and a common participation in common benefits is the only possible basis for a lasting peace.

The hope of peace died on November 11, 1918. The signing of the armistice terms spelled victory for the Allies. The declaration of victory was a declaration of future war. No Covenant, no League of Nations, no organization of that system of world empire which triumphed over the Central Powers can be expected to preserve world peace. Only a peace between equals

can last. The Central Empires are humiliated and beaten. The triumphant Allies, unequal in their wealth and in their military strength, already have displayed the most brutal indifference toward colonials, the inhabitants of dependencies, and toward the smaller nations themselves. The "Big Five" have no other method of keeping the peace of the world than that attempted by Germany in 1914-the appeal to organized might. This appeal is in itself ́a declaration of war.

There is a far more important reason why the League cannot bring world_peace. The causes of modern war are economic. These causes the League Covenant, as it is drawn, ignores utterly.

Markets, trade and investment opportunities are the trinity in the modern commercial world. Each nation seeks to advance itself in these three directions. Each takes such action as is necessary to protect its own investing citizens in their business rights.

The markets and investment opportunities of the world are limited. There is not enough to satisfy the insatiable craving for wealth which capitalism has developed. Therefore, in the scramble for economic opportunity some nations will be left hungry. The scramble, moreover, provokes diplomatic controversy, economic retaliation, and, finally, military conflict.

The part played by these economic considerations in causing modern wars is generally recognized. Professor Seligman of Columbia University, in a chapter entitled "An Economic Interpretation of the War" (Problems of Readjustment After the War, D. Appleton & Co., 1915), makes it very clear—“if I read history aright the forces that are chiefly responsible for the conflicts of political groups are the economic conditions affecting the group growth.

Professor Seligman then explains the struggle for food, for colonies and for trade. He continues: "After national industry has been built up through a period of protection, and after the developed industrial countries have replaced the export of raw mate