The 50 Years Ago column from the January 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard
Now it must be obvious that if Britain is to retain her gigantic navy other countries are going to provide themselves with instruments of defence. The American Naval Secretary soon showed this when he declared that “It was his firm conviction that if the Versailles Conference did not result in a general agreement to put an end to the naval construction the United States must bend its energies to the creation of incomparably the greatest Navy in the world. (Star 31.12.18.)
"If Germany had waited a single generation she would have had a commercial empire of the world.” Thus spoke President Wilson in Rome, January 3rd.
Strange, is it not, how our opponents and apologists for the war prove the correctness of our statements regarding the root cause of the conflict and belie their own beatitudes concerning the high ideals which have actuated the Allies.
Can it possibly be that they find, when the bill is finally presented, and shows ten million naval and military deaths alone, to say nothing of the millions of other deaths for which the war is responsible, that the old shallow bunkum of honour and the like is really too absurdly inadequate, and that it had better rely on the truth—that it was an economic war?
(From an unsigned Editorial "What will he do with it? in the Socialist Standard, January 1919).
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