The Witches’ Cauldron. (1920)

From the September 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

  The International Financial Conference, which has been called by the League of Nations, is now fixed to take place in Brussels on Sept. 24th: All members of the League have been invited to send delegations, and all but a few have accepted. Invitations have also been sent to ex-enemy countries. —, “Star,” Aug. 31.

I wonder what is in the wind?

Has the League of Nations (which the ordinary worker was led to believe was formed to prevent wars) got so far on the road to the preservation of peace as to have discovered that financial interests are the cause of all modern wars?

Is it going to preach “brotherly love” to those attending ?

Is it going to plead with them to improve the conditions of the poor all over the world ?

Is it going to show those financiers a royal road to reduced armaments ?

Will it concern itself about alleviating the distress of the poor dupes who suffered in and because of the last great war for markets ?

According to what we have been told by Mr. Horatio Bottomley and a few more of the kidney who make a fat living out of doing the workers’ thinking for them, the League of Nations was half dead when born and sure of being quite dead very shortly.

Yet it appears that the League of Nations is such a vigorous and healthy thing that it can call together our capitalist masters for a Conference !

  It is clear from the personnel of the delegations that the Conference is to be of an authoritative kind. In many cases Ministers of Finance will represent their countries. — Same capitalist rag continued.

One can hardly imagine “Ministers of Finance” “representing their countries” for the benefit of the workers of those countries, although those workers have been taught that it is their country.

  In other countries, as, for instance, in the case of Great Britain, a delegation has been appointed composed of ‘experts calculated to represent the different aspects of British finance,’ one being a late head of the Treasury, another a Governor of the Bank of England, and a third the head of one of the great joint stock banks. —As before.

Whatever has a conference of financiers to do with ensuring peace throughout the world ?

AS SOCIALISTS, understanding the system we live under, we say—EVERYTHING! The peace you will get through the League of Nations is only the peace of death.

In all probability the venue of the next great war will be decided at that conference.

We Socialists, who know that peace is only a concern of those “pawns on the chessboard,” the workers of the world, would rather believe that the conference will decide on how to restore Russia—to the grip of the capitalists completely.

No doubt the methods employed to do so will include a “kindly” desire to see a “settled and constitutional form of democratic Government in Russia.”

Russia has oil.

Russia has enormous wheat-growing areas.

Russia contains enormous natural reserves of wealth.

AND THE HAND OF THE CAPITALIST ITCHES TO GET AT IT! ! !

Selim.