The Economics of War

WHAT IS THE CAUSE OF WAR?

The Great War has convinced the peoples of Europe and America that a recurrence of the struggle must result in the destruction of the white race. Millions of men, physically the best, have died on battlefields, since Austria and Serbia went to war; millions more are unfitted by wounds or nervous disorder, to carry on the work of the race and raise its standard of physical capacity. The races of Africa are armed by civilised Governments, for participation in wars between nations that have done nothing for the black man, except exploit his labour and steal his land. He has a long account to settle. His masters, for their own ends, instructed him in the business of war! He may learn the lesson too well. He may yet take reparation for the crimes of slavery, and the tortures organised by European agents in the French and Belgian Congo. Though millions are gone and millions more are worthless as carriers of the race, and though the black man is organised to menace the white, science, proclaimed as the saviour of mankind, adds strength to the forces of destruction. What madness1s this that seizes civilised men, compelling them to devote genius and labour to the fabrication of means for human suicide?

"Why do men make war?" asked a German wife in a letter found on the body of her dead soldier husband. On the reply to that question, to be given by the peoples of France, Germany, Russia, America and Britain, depends the life and the future of all mankind. An endeavour to preserve peace without removing the cause of war is bound to fail. Disarmament cannot be achieved while motives are in operation that drive nations to scatter their resources in war. Neither is it likely that wars will cease because an appeal is made to the "heart" of man. Indeed, there is much in the mind or "heart" of man that finds satisfaction in the tinsel ​glories of war. For a thousand years the institutions of orthodox religion buttressed the rich and powerful. In our own day (1917) there is no evidence that the Churches do not share Father Vaughan's belief that the tenets of Christianity will prevail, provided that Germans are killed in sufficient number. Official Christianity in Germany and Austria exhibits similar characteristics of secular militancy, which it shares with primitive man. The act that ends war cannot come from the organised Churches, full of the hubbub of prayers for victory. Nor will the death knell of war be struck by descriptions of the horrors of the battlefield. Masters of literature depict the brutalising, bestial nature of war, but opposed to them, and destroying the atmosphere they create, are the most formidable forces. All national systems of education teach that the soldier is a hero, whereas in fact he is a martyr. The popular press, now an instrument for the maintenance of Governments, employed and controlled by Governments, announces that a particular nation—with whom alliances were formerly contracted, with whose ruling class marriages were effected—is composed of murderers, ruffians addicted to rapine, and · militarists. Nothing suffices but the extermination of the moral lepers. By daily agitation the desire to destroy millions of fellow men is translated into a moral necessity, sanctified by all that is holy. Forthwith the common people, their pulse now furiously beating with indignation, skilfully manufactured, fly to arms, and deeming themselves the instruments of divine justice, are immolated upon the bayonets of their foes. Be it remembered, their foes were the friends of yesterday.

In seeking the cause of war we must search also for the power that summons and largely compels science, religion, education, literature and morals, to aid the pursuit of war.

In the discussions of to-day it is held that wars arise from one or other of the following causes:

(a) FREEDOM VERSUS DESPOTISM.

The contention that war is the outcome of unavoidable conflict between the principles of Freedom and the principles ​of Autocracy or Despotism, is the reason most frequently assigned as the cause of war. Under tutelage of the press, and burdened by the traditions of education framed for the encouragement of nationalist sentiment, all nations reason in the same fashion. No matter the form of government, whatever the extent of political or social liberty won by the democracy, in the first flush of war the nation persuades itself that it fights for freedom. In this sense freedom is universally understood to mean the right of a people to determine its own method of government and develop its industrial resources. All organs of opinion, the Press, Parliament, the Pulpit, exert their utmost power to convince the nation that it fights, first for self-preservation, and secondly to destroy a foreign Power menacing the world's peace.

RUSSIA AND JAPAN.

The war between Russia and Japan arose from Russia's refusal to abide by her undertaking to evacuate the southern part of Manchuria. Russia tore up her treaty obligations because a section of Russian financiers wished to resist the advance of Japanese trade and influence in Manchuria and Korea. In his Memoirs, General Kuropatkin explains that in the territory through which the River Yalu flows, in Northern Korea, a financial group at the Russian Court had established a vast timber enterprise. For centuries Korea, a small kingdom on the eastern coast of Asia, was a vassal state of China. With the rise of Japanese power it was agreed with China, that neither country should send troops into Korea without the consent of the other. In 1894 there was a rising in Korea, generally understood to be the result of certain political manœuvres by Japan. Immediately, Japanese troops were despatched to Korea, and the kingdom declared independent of China. In 1896 the Emperor of Korea, no longer able to resist the Japanese pressure in the administration and the financial control of his diminutive kingdom, sought refuge in the Russian Legation at Seoul. There he met one Bezobrazoff, an intimate of the Czar, to whom, in return for a promise of Russian protection, the Emperor granted a concession to the Russian capitalists, authorising them to exploit the timber resources of the Yalu district. General Kuropatkin relates that the late Czar had investments in the company formed to work the concession, amounting to not less than £200,000.

​Of the several commercial factors operating to cause the war between Japan and Russia, one was the determination of Russian finance to hold on to the Yalu timber business. The Czar, personally receiving profit from the enterprise, in his declarations to the Army and the Russian people, on the outbreak of war, summoned them to a conflict on behalf of Holy Russia, menaced by the Yellow Peril.

BRITISH AND BOER.

In less than twenty years the majority of Englishmen_have changed their opinions on South African affairs. The mineowners made the war. On their behalf, Lord Milner, the Governor-General, influenced opinion at home by writing up the hardships of the "helots" on the Rand. Concentration camps, the burning of Boer farms, the seizure of stock and crops, the devastation of the Transvaal, were justified by the British Press on grounds of necessity in order that freedom should prevail. If qualms entered the minds of Englishmen; if they questioned whether the use of military power would not benefit the mineowners more than the miners, vivacious journalism leaped to freedom's aid. Forthwith the public were alarmed by stories of poisoned wells and explosive bullets. In the early days of the twentieth century, contemporary journalism convinced the people of England that the murder of wounded British soldiers was an invincible habit of the Boers. How could South Africa be free beside a tyranny like Kruger's, which found expression in denial of all the laws of war?

POLITICS AND FREEDOM.

When the position of Germany in the Great War is considered, we find the mass of her people holding tenaciously to the idea that they fight an external Power wishing to destroy the German right of self-development. Within a nation, the social freedom of its members depends mainly upon their right to freedom of speech, and their right to form associations for the acquisition of further liberties. Individual or private 1iiberty is affected by the extent to which the law allows the citizen to participate in making his country's laws. It is now the custom in civilised communities that all, or a part of the people, have the right to register votes for the selection of Paliamentary representatives. This custom is falsely regarded as an unfailing method by which each citizen participates in the making of laws. It may be stated ​broadly, that in modern political democracies, the weight or influence of the elector is in inverse ratio to the number of electors. It is not contended that this need be so; universal suffrage in the hands of an intelligent working class determined to abolish the legal status of capitalism, would become an instrument of emancipation. But in the political democracies of to-day every extension of the suffrage is rendered innocuous. Having no purpose or object in casting their votes other than to secure a mere change in the persons entitled to draw salaries, the people acquiesce while a small, compact group of prominent politicians, acting in the interests of capitalism, whittle away every vestige of popular control over the machinery of government. Hence, in Great Britain, Parliamentary institutions remain, but Parliamentary control does not exist. The consequence of this negation of popular authority is seen in the similarity, for all practical purposes, of the conditions of working class life in all European nations and America. Substantially, the workmen of Germany are as free as the workmen of England—or to state the case more accurately, the workers of both countries lack freedom to an equal degree.

HOW MANKIND CAN BE MADE FREE.

The Socialist maintains that freedom for the workers must be won by the workers of each nation gaining their rights from their own ruling class. The Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century placed tremendous wealth in the hands of the English middle class. Manufacturers became unwilling to occupy a position of political subserviency beneath the landed aristocracy, then the ruling class in British. They claimed the power to rule. To establish their rule they did not wage wars abroad for the erection of political systems of liberty. When they made war they aimed at establishing their commercial supremacy in the markets of the world. Ultimately their right to rule was worn by waging conflict with the governing class at home—the landed aristocracy. Historically, there is no foundation for the idea that a country, with its own settled forms of government, custom, language and literature, can be made free by the armies of a foreign power. If a people cannot emancipate itself, it can never enjoy liberty.

If every nation, on going to war, maintains that it fights for freedom, or the right to govern itself as it will, it is evi​dent that the cause of war is not a conflict between political freedom and some form of despotism. If the people of a nation desires to live under an autocracy, they are not free if their neighbours do not permit them to do so.

(b). MONARCHIES.

Another reason advanced as the cause of war is the existence of monarchies. By the advocates of this theory kings are supposed to be the masters of mankind. For them, history ceased when Louis XIV. died. The superstitions of this school are held by Radical politicians, who seize with avidity upon every scandal that gathers round royalty. They hold the notion that by proving the vices of kings and courtiers, kinship with common folk is demonstrated. Though not so much in fashion as in days gone by, there are some who affirm that if kings were dethroned, and all governments republican, wars would be fought no more. This doctrine was for long a favourite in the United States. President Wilson may contend that America would not have entered the war if the German people had overthrown the Kaiser. The fact that the Kaiser is not yet dethroned is emphatic evidence that he efficiently represents very powerful forces in the German Empire. In fact, he remains Kaiser for the same reason that Mr. Wilson was re-elected President. Both men in their respective countries carry out a policy to the general advantage of the rich and powerful classes. If the Kaiser ceased to serve the interests of German capitalism, it is conceivable that the German Junkers would consult with President Wilson on the best form of Republic for the German Confederation. Provided German trade would not spoil the market for American goods, American capitalists would insist upon their President accepting the invitation. A Republic may be "too proud to fight"; like a monarchy it is never too debased to sell.

THE FRENCH COLONIES.

Indissolubly bound up with the cause of war is the question of Colonial policy. Reference has been made to the fear of the German people that their rights to economic development were frustrated. After defeat by Prussia in 1870, the rulers of France, seeing the impossibility of extension in Europe, turned to the acquisition of an imperialist empire in Africa. Already in occupation of Algiers since 1830, the new French Republic made an agreement with ​Great Britain for the management of the Egyptian finances. To pay the interest due to the Rothschilds and their clients, the French Republic and the British Monarchy co-operated to enforce the payment of taxes in advance. But French diplomacy was outwitted in Egypt. Leaving England to break up the rising movement for Egyptian self-government, France seized the opportunity presented by British preoccupations in Egypt and the Soudan. The French annexed Tunis and claimed the Sahara; occupied Madagascar; from the West they struck into the Niger region and organised expeditions for the appropriation of British trade with the interior. Agreements were made with native chiefs, and taxes imposed. Wherever the French troops marched the territory was claimed as in the sphere of French influence. The fiscal system adopted fo1lowed the lines of French Colonial policy, by erecting a prohibitive tariff against imports not of French origin. For ten years France and ourselves were on the verge of war, and only the heavy engagements of Britain in other parts of the world kept the peace between the rival trading nations.

THE PACIFIC REPUBLIC?

The history of the growth of the French African Empire shows that republicanism can be as bellicose as the most strident monarchy. Entering late in the day into the scramble for colonies, Germany became mistress 0£ the least desirable parts of Africa. Saddled with territories in which white men could not live, her goods excluded from French possessions, Germany turned to Morocco as a possible field for German capital and enterprise. The mountains of Morocco contain an abundance of iron ore that caught the longing eyes of the Frankfort financiers. When Europe was divided on the question whether German controlled capital should employ men and machines to dig for iron in Morocco, we were engaged in a discussion of the fundamental issues in present-day politics. Whether Greece shall be ruled by a monarch or a President is of no importance to the mass of men. However she is ruled, being a small nation, she will dance to the tune called by the Government that gives its capitalists authority to lend money to Greece. Whether Germany or France shall own the potash fields of Alsace, is an issue of such magnitude, that a million lives can be lost in war before the question is decided. Yet it makes no difference to the ​majority of men where the potash goes. It makes a great difference to the French investor if the profits on the working of Moroccan iron ore go to Germany instead of Republican France!.

MOROCCO.

Those who contend that Republicanism is a more pacific form of government than a Monarchy, must prove that had France been a kingdom during the Moroccan dispute, she would have shown less regard for German interests than the Republic actually displayed. What was the origin of the dispute over Morocco, that brought Europe to the brink of wax in 1911? France withdrew from the dual control of Egypt, giving Britain a free hand in that country, on the understanding that we did not interfere with the French claims in Morocco. No one in Morocco was consulted at any time. A secret clause in the agreement bound Great Britain to give diplomatic support to France, if she deemed it necessary to occupy Morocco. At an earlier date the Sultan had borrowed money from a German firm, and in discharge of the debt, gave a concession to the lenders authorising them to work mines in Morocco. Ordinary trade—goods manufactured abroad exchanging with Moroccan produce—is of the smallest possible dimensions. The exploitation of the mines and the transmission of minerals abroad, yields no return to the unhappy natives, except the possible payment of meagre wages. If the mines of Morocco were to be exploited, no sound reason van be advanced why the capitalists of all nations should not share in the process. But the French conceived their claim to be superior to all others, and relying on the assurance of British support, proceeded to establish a military occupation. Germany insisted that Great Britain and France could not rightly decide the future of Morocco without consultation with the European Powers. In 1910 the dispute seemed to approach settlement. An arrangement was made between France and Germany that the finance of both countries should take an equal share in the development of ports, mines and railways. A year elapsed without the undertaking being applied, and at last Germany sent a gunboat to Agadir. Immediately Great Britain intervened, demanding the withdrawal of the Panther, and announcing that non-compliance would be regarded as an act of war.

​Briefly, the foregoing is a summary of events that almost precipitated the Great War. It would be difficult to maintain that the Republic acted in a manner more pacific than any of the Monarchical States involved in the quarrel. Clearly, the peace of the world would not be preserved more easily if kings were dethroned, and there remained in the control of republics those who rule them now.

(c) MILITARISM.

Numbers of people are of opinion that Militarism, or the militarist spirit, is the cause of wars. In the controversies of the day, Militarism comprises every social movement that endows the State with positive power to determine the acts of individuals. Militarism extols war as an instrument of culture and liberation; its ethics are the doctrine that Force establishes the Right to Govern. Militarists contend that success in war proves a nation to be endowed with a divine mission to impose its will on other nations. In practice, Militarism depends, upon the State conscription of all men for military service, the propagation of discipline by the limitation of personal liberty, and the promotion of uniformity among citizens. Socialism is the antithesis of Militarism. Socialism does not depend on compulsion of the positive order. Working towards the Socialist outcome of capitalist society, the Labour movement says to the owner of capital, You shall not use capital for the exploitation of your fellow men, unless the rights of workmen are recognised. Ultimately, the community will assume ownership of the means of production. Meanwhile, the Labour movement strives to raise the social standard of the working class. It demands rights of association and the observance of rules affecting the health of workers, as conditions to be observed before industrial capital can operate. But it does not say how capital shall be employed. Neither does Socialism or the Labour movement stipulate that this workman shall be an engineer, or another workman a gardener. No compulsion of that kind is required in the Socialist Commonwealth. On the other hand, the Militarist State compels all men to be soldiers. The Militarist State denies the right of its citizens to hold opinions on the efficacy or righteousness of any war. The Militarist State claims the minds and bodies of all its subjects. Against that tyranny working class Socialisin maintains an unceasing struggle.

​WHAT IS CULTURE?

Socialism denies that war aids the dissemination of culture. The nations organised for bloodshed suspend their interests in civilisation. Devastation and misery is the evidence of war. Not culture, but the debasement of morals; not refinement, but the suspension of the arts, follows on the clash of arms. Culture, in current speech, may be taken as the "genius" of the race, a vague state of the collective mind, striving towards a higher destiny. It depends essentially upon the free passage of opinion between diverse nationalities, which constitutes the intellectual life of civilised peoples. It is not the product of a nation's mentality, apart and distinct from foreign thought. In war, every element in culture contributing to human welfare, is subordinated to the desire for victory. The Socialist believes that by the partnership of men human welfare is best advanced. By conquest, by victory, nations do not prove their mission to overlord peoples speaking another language, and having institutions of their own. They prove their economic strength and sow the seeds of future wars.

ARE THERE ANY BRITISH MILITARISTS?

The average Englishman believes that Germany is the natural home of militarism. He does not see that the British militarist school deliberately pursues an elaborate campaign for the conquest of Britain. The average Englishman contends that Prussian militarism is due to certain vital differences between the German character, and the character of other nationalities. He argues that the Prussian Junkers, the German ruling class, hold ideas that are not shared by the ruling class in any other nation. He holds it to be impossible that the conception of iron discipline for the common people that marks the Prussian militarist, could in any way gain acceptance or application in Britain, or among her Allies. Yet the progress of the Great War has shown that modern nations cannot make war without adopting the Prussian model of military organisation. War is no longer an affair engaging small numbers. Waterloo was fought and won between sunrise and sunset. Now a battle may last for half a year. And all the nation makes war. Germany foresaw that modern war is only limited by the capacity of modern industry. Every nation is compelled under ​pressure by the demands of war, to turn its factories, mines and agricultural land into extensions of the battlefield. To make war effectively, organisation on the Prussian model is absolutely necessary, as every nation has discovered. How them, can it be argued that militarism is peculiar to the German mind?

Moreover, until recently, the British workman was remained that he could have the German discipline with advantage. Just as German methods in commerce and industry were applauded by English professors, so were the advantages of conscription, and the absence of "softness" among German workmen, said to be desirable for British workers also. We were to emulate the Germans and to copy them in their efficiency. The Germans, we were told, were more nearly allied to ourselves in race and blood, than any other of the peoples of Europe. Issuing from a common origin, the two nations preserved many points of agreement. In speech, the German and the Englishman used almost the same words to connote the simple things of life. In social life, in moral outlook, on the relations of the sexes, English and German shared common views. Twenty years ago every Englishman would have said we were more akin to the German people than to the French. The Frenchman remained the traditional enemy to all but a few Englishmen who periodically went to Paris—somewhat to the moral consternation of their friends and neighbours. A study of the writings of German militarists shows their pronounced affinity with Englishmen of the militarist school. The German Bernhardi, declares war to be desirable in itself. He describes it as "God's test of the nations." Neither Bernhardi nor any other German writer, penned a more thorough eulogy of war than John Ruskin, who said, "All great nations learned their truth of word and strength of thought in war; they were nourished in war and wasted by peace; taught by war and deceived by peace; trained by war and betrayed by peace." Lord Roberts did not labour under the delusion that the German militarist differed from, or was more wicked than our own. In his "Message to the Nation," Lord Roberts says:

"How was this Empire of Britain founded? War founded this Empire—war and conquest! When we, therefore, masters by war of one third of the habitable globe, when we propose to Germany to disarm, to curtail her navy diminish her army, Germany naturally refuses."

​The War revealed the fact that all nations have their militarists. Militarism, instead of being the cause of war, is a necessity of war. If war is made why should it not be absolute war? "For people in this country to talk of the sanctity of international law is nothing but hypocrisy or ignorance," writes Major Stewart Murray. It is childish to suppose that all the men of any nation love war for its own sake. Every ilati0n making war must apply the methods of militarism, though their application is repugnant and detestable to the mass of mankind. The ultimate strategy of militarism has been said to involve that, "the people must be left with nothing but their eyes to weep with over the war." We have seen that the force that can readily and consciously reduce mankind to such depths of brutality and anguish, is not in itself the cause of war. It is the necessary and indispensable instrument of war. Why do the nations bear the burden of armaments and organise for mutual destruction? Not because some are good and others morally inferior. Substantially, the morality of nations is on a footing of equality. The nations are armed because the few have much to defend, and having economic power, are masters of the majority. Being armed, and as war is a science, they have perforce advanced from the simple stage of organisation when war is a leisurely affair, to the complex and highly developed stage we know as militarism.

(d) CAPITALISM.

On the acquisition of Colonies and the pursuit of war in protection of trade, capitalist opinion in Great Britain has undergone a radical change. Until forty years ago, though all through the nineteenth century Britain waged a succession of minor wars against Asiatic and African races, the dominant opinion in Liberalism favored peaceful penetration for the encouragement of trade. The destruction of self-government in Egypt by British arms, in the avowed interest of the Bondholders, is the point when capitalist pacific Liberalism of the nineteenth century, passes over to the Imperialist capitalism of our own day. The reasons for that change explain the course of world politics during the last four decades.

In capitalist society,—that is to say, in a society like our own, where land and the instruments of wealth production—tools and machines—are the private property of persons who ​use that capital for their, own profit, the working class produces far more than it consumes. Indeed, the working class in capitalist society produces far more than all classes can consume. Though they be madly extravagant, the propertied class of economically advanced countries like Britain and America, have no need for the mass of surplus commodities remaining after every conceivable requirement is satisfied. Competition between the workers for employment at wages, restricts their effective demand for commodities to narrow limits. This ever increasing surplus of unconsumed wealth in capitalist communities, side by side with the persistence of poverty, is the characteristic distinguishing the society of to-day from all forms of social organisation in the past. The motive directing the use of the instruments of production is the desire for profit. Unless the sale of the surplus product can be effected, profit cannot be realised. The home market is already satisfied. Though millions may want some of the commodities composing the surplus product, those millions belong to the working class. As they have no more money available for purchases, they drop out of the capitalist market. Their labour made the goods, but the goods are the property of their masters. With every development of technique and industrial efficiency, capitalism increasingly depends upon the foreign market. The market abroad is as necessary for the acquisition of profit by the capitalist, as the labour of the workers at home. A foreign or colonial market having produce of its own, offered in exchange for the products of Lancashire or Birmingham, is of no service in absorbing the surplus product. Foreign markets of that order, pursuing trade as understood in the era of Free Trade Liberalism, are still essential to the capitalist economy. But the disposal of the ever accumulating surplus produced by the titanic forces of current capitalism, demand markets that are absolute absorbents of the wealth that finds no use in the place of manufacture.

BRITAIN CHALLENGED.

At the end of the eighteenth century the exportation of manufactured goods by Britain assumed great dimensions. Th great inventions that transformed methods in the textile trades, thee application of steam power to industry, the demand for coal, made Britain the first among the nations to apply the moder processes of production. Britain became ​the workshop of the world. Steeped in materialism of moneymaking, saturated in a philosophy that idealised success and justified trampling on the poor, the master manufacturers of the first half of the nineteenth century had many points of agreement, in economics and morals, with the militarist in our own time. The other nations were still at hand labour, while England by the aid of her machines decreased the cost of production, and undersold the world. Just as it is impossible or an Alexander to remain in the forefront for ever, or emerge unscathed from the struggle with his fellows, so must a nation meet the day when its supremacy is challenged. Other nations, prolific, industrious, reached that point in social development when they, too, had a surplus product to market abroad. America and Germany challenged the economic hegemony of Great Britain. One by one, all civilised nations entered the field of capitalist production, passed through the same process as Britain and emerged with a surplus product to sell. Henceforward, international politics and facilities for trade were synonymous terms.

THE SURPLUS PRODUCT CHANGES.

With the growth of the surplus product its constituent elements change. At the beginning of the capitalist era Britain exported woollen goods. At the hey-day of her economic supremacy her exports were mainly cotton goods. Then machines, tools, and the smaller implements of production; and lastly, iron and steel in the magnitude required for great works of construction and manufacture, become the major elements in the exports of highly developed capitalist countries. At first the exporting nations clothe and feed their customers; then they supply their customers with the means of production required to clothe and feed themselves. The impossibility of permanence in the capitalist market is revealed by the contradiction that in satisfying the market abroad, the exporting nation, ultimately destroys the demand for its own products. The surplus product accumulates, and the industrial capitalists of all countries are compelled to sell or be ruined. New markets must be created, and it so happens that the products most profitably produced on a great scale, are the very commodities required for the development of backward countries in Asia and Africa. Steel and iron take the place of wool and cotton as leading voices in the chorus of exporting capitalism. But before railways, ​roads or bridges cap be made, or mines and oil fields developed, capital, more sensitive to risk than the tender dove, requires guarantees. When a group of capitalists resolves that a railway in an economically backward country would be an excellent business proposition, steps are taken to secure a concession. The native authority gives the guarantees against loss. Those guarantees may take the form of a gift or lease of lands or mines to be owned and exploited by the railroad concessionaires; or a grant of monopoly rights to trade in certain articles, a share in the taxes levied, or a direct money subsidy from the native government. As a matter of fact, most concessions comprise all these guarantees. It is not unusual for native authorities to decline the offer to become the victims of concessionaires. Then bayonets and machine guns are used as instruments of persuasion. The development of French and Italian capital in Africa, Japanese capital in China, British and American capital 1n Mexico, are examples o.f the direct association of Governments and armaments with private capitalist enterprise.

The same forces are in operation driving capitalist governments to acquire colonies as exclusive preserves for their own larger capitalism. The economic policy of equal rights for all nations—the open door—was profitable when trade was merely the exchange of goods mutually required. But British and German capital cannot both make aqueducts, lay railways, work mines, build bridges, from the Cape to Cairo. Vast capitalist enterprise demands that before risks are taken, the government's colonial policy shall preserve the profitable undertakings for exploitation by the financiers and manufacturers at home. Hence, France made her colonies an exclusive field for French capital, and Britain "pegged out claims for posterity."

THE CAUSE OF WAR.

Jere is the cause of war. This is the meaning of capitalist Imperialism, the definite union of finance and government. The imperative necessity of disposing of the surplus product, the need for trade and mastery 9f the trade routes, demands armies to sustain capitalist rights against competitors. The supreme requirement of money capital that it be afforded complete protection for its operations in economically backward countries, entails perpetual readiness for war and un​remitting improvement in militarism, which is the instrument of war. Whether the capitalists of Germany or Britain shall be masters of the Eastern trade, is fought by the British worker in khaki suffering the agonies borne by the expedition in Mesopotamia, and contending with the Turk who moves by the compulsion of German finance installed in Constantinople. Whether Germany shall have equal, rights in Africa with Britain and France, whether the bankers of Berlin or Paris shall control Alsace-Lorraine, is fought out by millions of men brigaded for slaughter. All the finest manhood fighting in the armies of the Great War, braced itself with hope that the battle was for freedom. As their blood fell it was distilled info profits for their masters. The guilty promoters of war were in their counting houses reaping a harvest of dividends from destruction. They were interested in the fate of small nations just so far as the little peoples could be made buffer States to thwart the economic development of rival Great Powers. For property, for the profits of trade, for economic power, for the imperialist tyranny of capitalism, the manhood of all nations are torn, from home and severed from the beloved; disciplined into submission, drilled into the military machine, armed to kill for causes that are not theirs, the manhood of all nations are shot, mutilated, blown to a thousand fragments, or left as rotting corpses unburied, a repast for the long-beaked carrion vulture. Without soul, or pity, or mercy, capitalism tramples on its course. No power can arrest or overturn it, but the workers internationally organised. They alone can make peace lasting and durable. In becoming masters of the world, by assuming ownership and control of the forces of production, by distributing wealth that is needed rather than making wealth for profit, the workers will end war. When the economic conflict between nations comes to an end, the peoples can live in, everlasting peace. Until co-operation and a partnership of men supersedes the economic conflict, wars will recur and be added to in horror.

The world's peace, therefore, rests, and depends upon the unity of the workers in all nations combined to cast down capitalism, which is the cause of war.