A demonstration was held on Thursday October 13th at the Central Hall, to further the agitation for disarmament. It should be obvious that the capitalist governments of the world arm against each other because they must, war being the logical and necessary outcome of their economic rivalry. While, therefore, the prospect of economising, by mutual agreement to limit expenditure, is attractive to the employing class who have to bear the burden, to appeal to a national group of capitalists to give up their only defence against their like-minded predatory neighbours and against the workers from whose robbery the privileged position of the capitalist class arises, is to ask them to commit suicide, and will naturally be given the amount of consideration such a proposal would deserve. Is it to be expected that our capitalist rulers, armed to the teeth to defend their private property, will scrap their armaments and voluntarily sacrifice their hold on the world's wealth merely.in response from muddle-headed reformers?
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The Bishop of London distinguished for his Christianly ferocious thirst for blood in the late war, asked God's blessing on the Washington Conference meaning no doubt that he hopes the Empire would find favour in the sight of the Lord to get a thumping big share of the spoils in the partition of China. The speakers . . . were no doubt doing their duty by the ruling class in talking platitudes about peace in .the present interlude between the 'last war’ and the next ‘last war’, because at the moment it is desirable to distract working class attention from the lining-up for the conflict to decide the mastery of the Pacific.
(From an article The Peace Society’, by E.R.H., Socialist Standard, November 1921).
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'E.R.H.' was one of the first pen-names used by Edgar Hardcastle in the pages of the Socialist Standard. He would have been 21 or 22 when this article was first published in the Socialist Standard.
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