10. OPINION OF PRINCE L. E. OBOLENSKI1

Now that the high ideal of general peace and disarmament is approaching realization after seeming, even so recently, only a Utopia in the imagination of some men of genius-friends of humanity—it is of the utmost importance to examine this problem, the most beneficial of all, with regard to the conditions surrounding its practical execution.

I shall limit myself to presenting a single one of these conditions, which is the most important of all, if it be only because it will serve as the probable basis for the more important objections which will be made against the high ideal.

What, then, is this condition?

As recognized in the declaration of our Minister of Foreign Affairs, in our day the larger portions of labor and capital are diverted from their natural purposes and wasted in an unproductive manner. We spend hundreds of millions to purchase terrible means of destruction, etc. It follows, therefore, that according to the laws of political econony and the most simple logic, disarmament, that is the stopping of industries manufacturing materials for war, will produce an immense multitude of several millions of unemployed workmen and as large a number of capitalists with no employment for their capital.

The number of unemployed workmen will increase even in the following two ways, viz.: not only because the enormous enterprises exclusively designed for military purposes (including equipment, preparation of food supplies, etc.), will go out of business over night, but also because the millions of workmen who earned a livelihood therein in all countries will be obliged to search for work as ordinary laborers. In other words, the number of workmen in search of employment in one line of work will double, or perhaps treble at a stroke.

Now, all the world knows that every increase of those who demand work lowers the value thereof, that is the wage-level. The enormous influx of workmen without work created by disarmament would be of such a character as to lower the level of wages even below the plane which it has occupied in recent times in Europe, and which, however, was already so low that according to the statistics, the average length

1Extract from the Novosti (St. Petersburg News).

Leonid Egorovich Obolenski (1845-), Russian philosopher, journalist and critic.

of life of the working classes in Western Europe was already considerably less than that of the other strata of the population.

That is the principal objection, the principal obstacle against which we have already struck in the literature of the question we are considering, and it will inevitably be raised again.

I believe that this so-called insurmountable obstacle does not withstand a serious examination, and that it is possible to indicate now the cutline of the theory by which it may be avoided.

However, I do not blind myself to the efforts which partisans of a general peace will be called upon to exert to explain the possibility and even beneficial character of the plan which I propose. Until the possibility thereof is, so to speak, made evident (especially to Europeans) we shall behold an enormous theoretical and practical resistance to general peace, a resistance which will come not only from the side. of the capitalists interested in the maintenance of the former industries intended directly or indirectly for the needs of war and the maintenance of armies, but from the working class in general whose interest it is to see the level of wages maintained on the same plane. In order to realize the force of the resistance which these two classes will be able to present, it must be remembered that they exert a considerable influence on the legislative and political movement of the West.

What, then, is the remedy under discussion, how can we escape from the cursed circle in which humanity is struggling at the present time?

The remedy is very simple, in reality, and partial allusion is made. thereto in the economic literature of Western Europe.

States should plan in advance a series of productive public works in which the liberated capital and the unemployed workman may both find employment.

It is necessary that the capitalist and working classes be advised in advance that they will find plenty of channels ready to receive their superfluous activity and savings.

However, it is understood that the public works into which capital and muscular energy will be poured must be entirely new; I mean that they should not compete with industries which already exist: otherwise they will serve no purpose, because they will only give to some what they take from others.

But is there any way to create industries of public usefulness out of whole cloth? Are there any needs which the State may take the burden of assisting, as Russia for instance has assumed charge of the sale of

alcohol, of the construction of railroads, of the working of certain mines?

There is no doubt that such needs exist. If they have not been noticed before, if we have not yet dreamed of satisfying them, it is simply because we have not had at our disposition either the immense capital which will now be out of employment, or the quality of labor which the new industries will be able to call upon after the disarma

ment.

It is, of course, the task of specialists to work out the details of the question.

But now, looking at the question only in a very superficial manner in its novelty, who does not see, at least in Russia, needs such as roads to be laid out, deposits of sand to be removed, streams and rivers to be deepened and cleared, land to be replanted with forests,. steppes to be irrigated, marshes to be drained, etc., etc.?

All of those needs, and I pass by many which are at least as important, are capable of furnishing work enough for immense bodies of laborers and enormous reserves of capital.