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Updated: May 4, 2025
To preach anti-militarism to a British people is to insult their intelligence. Britain alone of all nations has brought peace with her sword. The interests of Christianity, of humanity and of civilization demand that she be always a great military power.
A short war, with huge indemnities, seemed to German financiers a promising speculation. If such were the rotten foundations upon which anti-militarism in this country was based, the Churches cannot be blamed for giving the peace-movement a rather lukewarm support. In Germany there was no internal anarchy, such as prevailed in England; there was also no illusion about the imminence of war.
I was becoming known, and smiled at mockingly, for my earnest devotion to the extreme of the Daily Gazette's policy, which, if it made for anything, made, I suppose, for anti-nationalism, anti-militarism, anti-Imperialism, anti-loyalty, and anti-everything else except State aid by which was meant the antithesis of aid of the State.
We stopped and drew breath again; and on the gloomy edge of this gulf some soldiers even amused themselves by inciting Termite to speak of militarism and anti-militarism. I saw faces which laughed, through their black and woeful pattern of fatigue, around the little man who gesticulated in impotence. Then we had to set off again.
The most preposterous thing in connection with the German program was the propaganda of anti-militarism preached among the British people, and the most amazing thing was that the British were so lacking in self-respect that they would listen to such doctrines. A noble and unsullied past has given the British people the right to be in the highest sense a military nation.
Indeed, he lived long enough to see the beginning of the deadliest wars in which France ever engaged. The French were then the most military people in Europe. Now they are the leaders in the great modern civilising movement of Anti-Militarism. To what predominant influence are we to attribute that movement? To Christianity? Most certainly not. To Humanitarianism?
Had she not listened to the pro-German pleas of the so-called anti-militarists, Austria-Germany would not have dared to dream of conquering the world. Much suffering would have been avoided, and life and treasure would have been saved. This war is fairly laid at the door of those who practised and preached anti-militarism in the British Empire.
We are going to fight for our immediate security, and at the same time for the security of the world for the life of the weaker nations. If this were a war of aggression, of mere vanity, of conquest, then we Socialists would bethink ourselves of our anti-militarism. But this is self-defense, and the government has not been at fault. Since we are attacked, we must be united in our defensive."
Probably the betrayal was not so shameful as it seemed, because the fact was not made known in this country that the German Socialists had but imitated Bismarck's policy with Russia and Austria. During a quarter of a century, German Social Democrats have been the most ardent and insistent pioneers of internationalism and anti-militarism.
A few of our working-men have given colour to this charge by exclaiming petulantly that they could not be worse off under the Germans; but in this they have done themselves and their class less than justice. The anti-militarism and cosmopolitanism of the masses in every country is a profoundly interesting fact, a problem which demands no superficial investigation.
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