Page 10 - All India Magazine Oct-2025
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thought that war s are in their nature dynastic and aristocratic;
greedy kings and martial nobles driven by earth-hunger and battle-
hunger, diplomatists playing at chess with the lives of men and
the fortunes of nations, these were the guilty causes of war who
drove the unfortunate peoples to the battle-field like sheep to the
shambles. These proletariates, mere food for powder, who had no
interest, no desire, no battle-hunger driving them to armed con-
flict, had only to become instructed and dominant to embrace
each other and all the world in a free and fraternal amity. Man
refuses to learn from that history of whose lessons the wise prate
to us; otherwise the story of old democracies ought to have been
enough to prevent this particular illusion. In any case the answer
of the gods has been, here too, sufficiently ironic. If kings and di-
plomatists are still often the movers of war, none more ready than
the modern democracy to make itself their enthusiastic and noisy
accomplice, and we see even the modern spectacle of govern-
ments and diplomats hanging back in affright or doubt from the
yawning and clamorous abyss while angry shouting peoples impel
them to the verge. Bewildered pacifists who still cling to their prin-
ciples and illusions, find themselves howled down by the people
and, what is piquant enough, by their own recent comrades and
leaders. The socialist, the syndicalist, the internationalist of yes-
terday stands for war d as a banner-bearer in the great mutual
massacre and his voice is the loudest to cheer on the dogs of war.
CWSA 25:607-08
Courts of Arbitration and War
Another recent illusion was the power of Courts of Arbitration
and Concerts of Europe to prevent war. There again the course
that events immediately took was sufficiently ironic; for the in-
stitution of the great Court of international arbitration was fol-
lowed up by a series of little and great wars which led by an in-
exorable logical chain to the long-dreaded European conflict and
10 All India Magazine, October 2025
