Page 10 - All India Magazine Oct-2025
P. 10

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
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