Twenty-One Years Ago

Twenty-one years ago commenced a war, in which millions of the working class suffered death and mutilation for the greater glory and profit of their capitalist masters. Not that the issue was presented quite so bluntly; the supreme aim, the British working class was told, was to make the recurrence of war forever impossible. And now, twenty-one years after the “War to end War,” the phrase, “the next war,” is beginning to become a commonplace; world expenditure on armaments has reached astronomical figures, and paternal governments seek to instruct civil populations how best to conduct themselves when subjected to poison-gas attacks.

Although ”to end war” was the supreme aim, there were also lesser, subordinate, aims. The ”World was to be made safe for Democracy,” we were told. It was made so safe that most of the post-war democratic constitutions have already given place to dictatorship in one form or another, and where democratic forms of government still survive, ”defence of democracy” continues to provide a basis for solemn pronunciamento and flaming appeals.

Twenty-one years ago Prussian militarism was presented as the implacable enemy of civilisation. To-day, for the time being, the friendliest relations exist between our capitalist masters and the Nazi dictatorship in Germany, dictatorship which, in its laudation of militarism, its cynical disregard of, and contempt for, all that civilisation is supposed to represent, would make a Prussian Junker of the old school blush with embarrassment.

We were also assured that the rights of small nations, of racial and national minorities, were to be safeguarded; to-day Jew-baiting is becoming increasingly popular, the persecution of national minorities goes on apace, while Imperialist Japan plunders a stricken China, and Mussolini prepares to “civilise” Abyssinia.

Twenty-one years ago, at the outbreak of the war, either the utmost confusion prevailed among those parties claiming to represent working-class interests, or, as in the case of the British Labour Party, they openly placed their services at the disposal of the capitalist class. Only the Socialist Party of Great Britain openly proclaimed its firm adherence to the principles of international working class solidarity, and urged the British working class to oppose its own class interests to that of the capitalists by organising together with the workers of all countries for the overthrow of capitalism, here and elsewhere.

To-day, there is every indication that the same people who deluded the workers then, are prepared to do the same again. The Labour Party talks about the need for defending “collective security,” “democracy,” and the League of Nations. Bolshevik Russia proclaims the “indivisibility of peace,” and hastens to recognise the justification of capitalist armed forces to maintain that peace—providing, of course, that the capitalist Power concerned is well disposed towards Russia.

To-day, just as twenty-one years ago, the Socialist Party asserts that as long as capitalism exists, so does the danger of war, and that the only way to abolish war is to abolish the cause of war— a social system based upon the private ownership of the means of wealth production. To that end the Socialist Party appeals to the workers to organise consciously for the overthrow of capitalism, by winning political power for the establishment of Socialism.
A. H. M.