LITMIR.BIZ

      Shall There Be Peace?

       December 1917

      Only recently Wilson and Lloyd George proclaimed their unswerving will to fight on till final victory. In the Italian Chamber the Socialist Mergari was treated like a madman because he had spoken a few natural, human words. And today, with what wooden self-righteousness a Wolff dispatch denies the rumour of a new German peace proposal: ‘Germany and its allies have not the slightest reason for repeating their magnanimous offer of peace.’

      In other words, everything goes on as before, and if anywhere a peaceful blade of grass tries to pierce the ground, a military boot is quick to trample it.

      Yet at the same time we read that peace negotiations have begun in Brest-Litovsk, that Herr Kühlmann has opened the session with a reference to the significance of Christmas and has spoken, in the words of the Gospel, of peace on earth. If he means what he says, if he has even the faintest understanding of those tremendous words, peace is inevitable. Unfortunately, our experience of Bible quotations in the mouths of statesmen has not thus far been encouraging.

      For many days now the eyes of the world have been focused upon two places. In those two places, it is widely felt, the destinies of nations are coming to a head, the future beckoning, and disaster threatening. With bated breath the world is looking eastward, to the peace negotiations in Brest-Litovsk. And at the same time it is watching the western front in dire anguish, for everyone feels, everyone knows that, short of a miracle, the most dreadful disaster that has ever befallen men is there impending: the bitterest, bloodiest, most ruthless and appalling battle of all time.

      Everyone knows it and everyone, with the exception of a few sanguine political orators and war profiteers, is trembling at the thought. Concerning the outcome of this mass slaughter, opinions and hopes vary. In both camps there is a minority who seriously believe in a decisive victory. But one thing that no one endowed with a vestige of good sense can believe is that the ideal, humanitarian aims, which figure so prominently in the speeches of all our statesmen, will be achieved. The bigger, the bloodier, the more destructive these final battles of the World War prove to be, the less will be accomplished for the future, the less hope there will be of appeasing hatreds and rivalries, or of doing away with the idea that political aims can be attained by the criminal instrumentality of war. If one camp should indeed achieve final victory (and this purpose is the one justification offered by the leaders in their incendiary speeches), then what we abhor as ‘militarism’ will have won out. If in their secret heart the partisans of war mean so much as a single word of what they have been saying about war aims, the absurdity, the utter futility of all their arguments staggers the imagination.

      Can a new massacre of inconceivable scope be justified by such a jumble of hopeless fallacies, of mutually contradictory hopes and plans? While all peoples with even the slightest experience of war and its suffering are awaiting the outcome of the Russian peace negotiations in prayer and expectation, while all of us are moved to love and gratitude for the Russians because they, first among nations, have attacked the war at its root and resolved to end it, while half the world is going hungry and useful human effort has been halved where it has not ceased altogether – at such a time, preparations are being made in France for what we shudder even to name, a mass slaughter which is expected to decide, but will not decide, the outcome of the war, for the final senseless mustering of heroism and patience, the final hideous triumph of dynamite and machines over human life and the human spirit!

      In view of this situation it is our duty, the one sacred duty of every man of good will on earth, not to sheathe ourselves in indifference and let things take their course, but to do our utmost to prevent this final catastrophe.

      Yes, you say, but what can we do? If we were statesmen and ministers, we would do our bit, but, as it is, we have no power!

      This is the easy reaction to all responsibility – until it becomes too pressing. If we turn to the politicians and leaders, they too shake their heads and invoke their helplessness. We cannot sit back and put the blame on them.

      To blame are the inertia and cowardice of each one of us, our obstinacy and reluctance to think. In response to the excellent Mergari, Sonnino refused to say ‘anything that might give aid and comfort to the enemy’; the Wolff dispatch I have just mentioned declares that Germany has ‘not the slightest reason’ to make another move on behalf of peace. But every day we ourselves give evidence of the same attitude. We accept things as they come, we rejoice in victories, we deplore the losses in our own camp, we tacitly accept war as an instrument of politics.

      Alas, every nation and every family, every single individual in all Europe and far beyond it, has more than enough ‘reason’ to give his utmost on behalf of the peace for which we all yearn. Only a vanishing minority of men truly want the war to go on – and beyond a doubt they deserve our contempt and sincerest hatred. No one else, only a very few morbid fanatics or unscrupulous criminals are in favour of this war, and yet – inconceivable as it seems – it goes on and on, with both sides arming indefatigably for the allegedly final holocaust in the West!

      This is possible only because we are all too lazy, too easy-going, too cowardly. It is possible only because somewhere in our secret hearts we approve or tolerate the war, because we throw all the resources of our minds and souls to the winds and let the misguided machines roll on! That is what the political leaders do, and what the armies do, but we ourselves, the onlookers, are no better. We all know that we can stop the war if we want to in earnest. We know that whenever men have felt an action to be truly necessary they have performed it against all resistance. We have looked on with admiration and beating hearts as the Russians laid down their arms and manifested their will to make peace. There is no people on earth that has not been profoundly moved in its heart and conscience by this marvellous drama. But at the same moment we reject the obligations such feelings imply. Every politician in the world is all in favour of revolution, reason, and the laying down of arms – but only in the enemy camp, not in his own! If we are in earnest, we can stop the war. Once again the Russians have exemplified the ancient and holy doctrine that the weak can be mightiest. Why does no one follow them? Why do parliaments and cabinets everywhere content themselves with the same dreary drivel, the same day-to-day trivialities, why do they nowhere rise up to champion a great idea, the only idea that matters today? Why do they favour the self-determination of nations only when they themselves hope to profit? Why are people still taken in by the false idealism of official phrasemongers? It has been said that every nation has the rulers it wants and deserves. Maybe so. We Europeans at all events have the bloodiest and most ruthless of all rulers: war. Is that what we want and deserve?

      No, we don’t want it. We all want the opposite. Apart from a small number of profiteers, no one wants this shameful and dismal state of affairs. What then can we do? We can bestir ourselves! We can take every opportunity to manifest our readiness for peace. We can desist from such useless provocations as the above-mentioned Wolff dispatch, and stop talking like Sonnino. At the present juncture a slight humiliation, a concession, a humane impulse can do us no harm! How, when we have befouled ourselves so thoroughly with blood, can we worry about petty national vanities?

      Now is the time to oust those statesmen who conceive

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