WHAT THE ATTITUDE OF A RADICAL SHOULD BE TOWARD THE WAR

• AUTHOR: Prince Peter A. Kropotkin
• DATE: c1917.03.00
• ORIGINAL PUBLICATION: CURRENT HISTORY: A Monthly Magazine of the New York Times, Volume V, October, 1916--March, 1917, Page 109
• SOURCE: N/A
• NOTE: N/A

There has recently appeared in Russia a brochure entitled "Prince Kropotkin on the War." Excerpts from it are here translated for Current History Magazine. Kropotkin is the lender of the theoretical anarchists and his earlier writings are widely known in America.

SERBIA was not the cause of the war, nor was German fear of Russia, but the fact that, with the exception of an insignificant minority, the class that is in control of Germany's political life was intoxicated by its former triumph over France and its rapidly developing military power on land and sea. This class considered it an offense to Germany that her neighbors had interefered with her desire to capture the rich colonies along the Mediterranean, in Asia Minor, and in part of China; that they were in advance of her in planning to control the Adriatic, the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, and that they had prevented her from establishing her hegemony over Europe, Asia, and Africa.

The rapid extension of Germany's home industries in the last forty years and the failure of a simultaneous growth in wealth among the peasantry, creating no market (such as exists in the United States) for manufactured products, made it possible for the enormous mass of the German proletariat to become infected with the same designs for conquest and to dream of the rapid development of a powerful capitalism through this conquest. As a consequence we have the German admiration for the idea of an all-powerful military State, the worship of the army, and the amazing unanimity of the people on these points.

Freedom of people? Ideals of peace? Progress? Nothing of the sort is inscribed on the banner of the German Empire. It promises only war, it is a guarantee for future conflicts only, for the subjugation of free nations, for a centralized military State wherein the entire life of the country shall be dominated by the military ideal, the ideal of which Wilhelm, who styled himself the "rod of God," is the incarnation.

Just try to imagine in reality what the triumph of Germany in the present war would mean:

The subjection of all Belgium, or at least the major part of it; in any case, the establishment of Germany in Antwerp and, in all probability, in Calais.

The forcible annexation of Holland to the German Empire.

The menace of annexing Switzerland, which would no longer be defended by France and Great Britain.

The addition to Germany of part of France, and, consequently, the appearance of a line of German forts within a few miles of Paris; the prohibition of French fortifications; an enormous, exhausting indemnity to be spent mainly on the further expansion of the German Army and Navy, (already Bismarck regretted that he had not exacted a $3,000,000,000 instead of $1,000,000,000 indemnity.) The result would be the debasement of France to the position of a third-rate power; it would no longer dare to take any steps in the direction of social progress because of fear of Germany. Belgium has been in such a position all these years. France would be in a like plight, and England also would fall to an approximately similar condition.

Now, when there are transports capable of accommodating several thousand persons, when submarines, aeroplanes, and dirigible airships are become part of armaments, England's immunity to German invasion is no more. Experts concede the possibility of such an invasion now, and should the Prussian helmet dominate the northern coast of France, an invasion of England would merely become a question of the convenient moment. The entire order of life and the further development of the country would have to adapt themselves to such a possibility, as was the case in France.

As to the consequences of Germany's triumph over us in Russia, one does not even like to think, so terrible would they be. What would become of the internal development of our country if on the Nieman, at Riga, and possibly in Revel, German fortifications on the order of Metz were erected--not for the defense of the captured territory, but for further offensive purposes? Fortifications from which armies fully equipped could be moved on Petrograd the first day after a war declaration?

On the whole, the triumph of Germany in this war would mean the enslavement of the entire European civilization by military ideals. Her triumph of 1870 had already given us forty years of such slavery with the arrest of universal progress. Her victory over France, Belgium, England, and Russia would give us now half a century or more of a similar retardation of progress throughout Western Europe and all the Slavonic world. * * *

To all who will not shut their eyes at the events transpiring around us, it is sufficiently clear why no one to whom the progressive development of humanity is dear, and whose mind is not clouded by personal attachments or by sophisms of official patriotism, should be in doubt as to the side one ought to take. One should not remain neutral, as neutrality in the present case means support of the iron fist.

The vast majority of the people understand this, and on all sides we hear the words: The Allies will win, and this struggle will be the last European war. The rights of all nationalities to free development will be recognized, the federation idea will be applied in remaking the map of Europe. The ugliness of war and the failure of armed peace to prevent war have clearly demonstrated that a period of general disarmament is approaching. The union among the advanced nations, which is being enhanced since the arrival of a common danger by the extraordinary united efforts of all concerned, will inevitably leave its traces on every nation. The foundations of a new life in all the strata composing the modern State are already being laid. * * *

In all the activities of the anti-militarists, the opponents of war, there was a fundamental error. They thought that by their propaganda against war they could prevent it in spite of the fact that all the causes that make war inevitable were still in full force.

They wrote that the cause of modern war is European capitalism and its accompanying phenomena. They believed that a general strike in all the countries about to enter into a war would render the expected conflict impossible.

But by some kind of miracle all the tremendous powers of capitalism and its dependent forces vanished, crumbled away and became paralyzed at the outbreak of the war. And they vanished not only in France but also in that other country--Germany--the country which saw in the conquest of part of France, in the weakening of her, and in the annexation of her colonies, a "necessary step" toward the development of Germany's own capitalism!

A patent incongruity was, then, the result. And I now ask myself if the majority of the anti-militarists ever realized fully the organic bond seen by them between war and European capitalism. Did they not attach too much importance to the evil will of individuals? * * *

So long as there are States the peoples of which are ready, in expectation of personal benefits, to support a movement for conquest, war cannot be averted by preaching. Those anti-militarists who, in the name of opposition to all war, refuse to support either of the warring sides, are, in my opinion, making a serious mistake. They have omitted from their view one thing--the present war is creating new history. It introduces to all the peoples new conditions of social reconstruction. And when this reconstruction shall have begun, it will pass by those men who had refused to act at a time when the fortunes of the century were being decided on the fields of battle.

The end of German hegemony, the disintegration of the Austrian Empire, the dawn of a new life for the Slavonic peoples, a united Poland again contributing her own national creations to the treasury of science and art--all this and much more may be expected from this war.

When old Garibaldi called together in 1870 his old and new comrades and went to fight for the French Republic against Germany, he did not seek world aims to justify his action. He did not overestimate the import of the war. But he saw in France liberty struggling against autocracy, and considered it his duty to come, as he had always done, to the defense of the former against the latter. * * *

Right and progress were on the side of France. To you and many others all this is not enough. You doubt. You want to know definitely if this war will be a war of liberation. But this question cannot be answered in advance. All depends on its conclusion and the circumstances incident to it. Only one thing is certain. If Germany is victorious, then the war will not have been a war of liberation. It will bring on Europe a new slavery. * * *

It is necessary that the whole German Nation shall see in reality into what an abyss of destruction and moral degradation its Kultur, wholly devoted to conquest, has hurled it.

Last Updated 2007.12.26