Editorial: Councils of the "Peaceful." (1922)

Editorial from the June 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some time ago there was great jubilation (for the worker's benefit!) in the papers over America's advocacy of reducing or abolishing armies and navies. A conference was held in Washington and all powers agreed to reduce armaments—so long as each was left better armed than any of the others! Throughout the business America was hailed as an advocate of peace.

During the discussions, however, America was significantly silent on the question of aerial armament. A little while after we learned that American chemists had devised a method of using deadly germs whereby aerial machines could drop small quantities (germ bombs) on to cities and destroy thousands of the inhabitants more efficaciously than by the cruder method of ordinary explosive bombs.

From the Daily News (10/5/1922) we learn that America has progressed still further in her peaceful pursuits. American inventors have now devised an almost noiseless and invisible aeroplane.

  “The significance of such experiments was revealed the other day, when a huge ‘ bomber,' carrying a load equivalent to enough missiles to lay streets in ruins, climbed—thanks to the special preparation of its engines—until it was at a height impossible during the raiding of the war.”
   "Here is seen the full menace, the winged monster, which, with devices able to silence the roar of its high-flying motors, has added to its terrors laboratory secrets which—applied to a machine already high in the air against a vast elusive background—confer on it the power of a virtual invisibility.”

In face of such things as this workers are still being deluded into supporting campaigns for the reduction of armaments and the abolishing of war. Those who control such campaigns have the object in view of reducing the expenses of running the Capitalist system. The success of such campaigns would increase unemployment but would not materially assist in preventing future wars.

The pretty little game of political chess that is going on at Geneva, and the recent stir over the action of one of the competitors in the Russian oil scramble, should make it obvious to anyone that war is never likely to be a remote contingency so long as capitalism lasts.

Comparatively small wars have been going on ever since “peace ” was established! But another one of the gigantic kind has already been foreshadowed by no less a person than Lloyd George—the man who was so emphatic about the last big struggle, signifying the end of all wars. More humorous still it is the Allies that are falling out now—falling out. over the spoils of “victory.”

Commenting on the general situation the Daily News (10/5/22) says :—

   "Nobody will deny that the danger of war, of war on a vast scale, within the life's span of those who have survived the tremendous slaughter of recent years, is real and formidable.”

Once more let us press the question: What concern of the working class is any war except the class war? All wars outside of the class war are waged in the interests of the Capitalists. Although the workers do the fighting the only reward they obtain is that obtained by the survivors of the too recent carnage in Europe—homes that require heroism to live in.