EUROPEAN CATACLYSM OR DEMOCRACY-WHICH?
Gompers, Samuel
European Cataclysm or Democracy- Which? By SAMUEL GOMPERS President, The American Federation of Labor THE centuries that have passed have witnessed the breaking down of. artificial barriers that...
...Such men are responsible for the practically universal war that is turning land and sea into places for butchering human beings and is desolating hearts and lives...
...In Austria-Hun-gary a movement was developing for the purpose of securing the working people the right of association and of the free exercise of activities to better their conditions...
...Autocratic government sought to overwhelm these democratic movements by international war...
...What manner of civilization is this that orders men whose marvelous music has gained them entrance to the hearts of all peoples, men who by word of pen or mouth can shape the thought of the world, men who by stroke of brush can bare the depths of the human soul, men who understand even the secrets of life, men who give bone and sinew to industry and commerce, men who bear the weary burdens and injustice of society—orders all these and more to march out to be targets for the most destructive and perfect guns mind has devised...
...The conditions that made this devastating conflict possible are autocratic power in the hands of agents not responsible to the people governed and competitive armament among nations—both conditions are survivals of ages when men's thoughts were less wide and their understanding less complete...
...But a few weeks ago the trend and the impulse of the peoples of the civilized world were to discover the highest development, physical, material, and social, and to stimulate the realization of that possible development for all the people...
...The proof that it brings of the imperfections of our civilization is chastening...
...A day will come when bullets and bombshells will be replaced by votes, by the universal suffrage of nations, by the venerable arbitration of a great, sovereign senate, which will be to Europe what the Parliament is to England, what the Diet is to Germany, what the Legislative Assembly is to France...
...Newer and better, ideals supplanted primitive methods by institutions established to secure to all society such protection and justice as accord with the most intelligent concepts...
...But reactionary autocracy can not permanently stay progress...
...in the olden times individuals depended upon brute force and swords to enforce their claims t# justice...
...In our saner moments we have held it truth that the degree of civilization of a people may be judged by the valuation it places upon human life...
...But the war lords were in the saddle...
...Money, the medium that gives life to the markets, responds to international influences and laws...
...A day will come when a cannon will be exhibited in public museums, just as an instrument o£ torture is now, and people will be astonished how such a thing could have been...
...Better that the globe should be tenanted by brutes than by brutalized men...
...A day will come when these two immense groups, the United States of America and the United States of Europe, shall be seen placed in presence of each other, extending the hand of fellowship across the ocean...
...Consider the worth of the men who serve as targets for these life destroying machines...
...This war will constitute a more urgent reason to destroy monarchical institutions, autocratic power, and to abolish militarism—a reason forced upon consciousness of all by maimed and dead bodies of fathers and sons, husbands and brothers, by the starved underdevelopment of women and children, and by terrible desolation brooding over the continent like an evil spirit...
...The Cossacks were suppressing strikes for greater freedom...
...The cruel stupidity and the brutality of this war are appalling...
...Despite our boasted political ability and progress, yet a few men have power to say unto millions "Follow me, I demand your service even unto death...
...When the working people finally determine that International war shall cease the world will be forever rid of fratricidal strife...
...BUT what manner of civilization is this that so recklessly sacrifices the work of centuries to the terrible destructiveness of modern warfare and wastefully orders the mobilization of the heirs of all the ages...
...All of Europe has quickly abandoned intellectual dissent from war and reverted to animal instincts and lower ideals...
...And yet there is encouragement in the fact that those two countries that have made greatest progress in democratizing their political institutions were most unwilling to be drawn into this needless war...
...Such institutions would be a big step toward the abolition of war...
...artificial barriers that separated the nations of the world and the welding together of human hearts and minds through common interests and interrelated influences that affect the lives of all peoples...
...None of these is the exclusive possession of any nation...
...The expression of this conviction in practical form has resulted in world-wide organizations such as the international organiza-tions of the workers and of students, international associations of hygiene, social insurance, medicine, and fraternal organizations...
...Then and then only will be realized the ideal of William Lloyd Garrison: "my country is the world...
...War was ever brutal but it has been made a thousandfold more so by inventions and modern skill...
...As war touches them to the quick they are most earnest and most vehement in opposition to it...
...This is what skulks behind 'a splendid charge.' This is what follows, as a matter of course, when our fellows ride at them in style and cut them up famously...
...Political institutions to serve international purposes have not yet developed much beyond the em-bryonic state...
...All the thought and the knowledge of the ages were devoted to the highest development of individual ability that the individual might contribute his greatest service to society and to civilization...
...For the accomplishment of this great ideal, the establishment of justice in all the relations of all people, no power is so potent as the organized labor movement of the universe...
...A world federation is no idle dream...
...In Germany the working people of Prussia were conducting a systematic campaign for free speech...
...Knowledge, culture, education, recognize no national barriers in amassing their priceless stores...
...my countrymen are all mankind...
...The quickening of the social conscience has been in response to a keener appreciation of the value of human life...
...They realized the meaning of this statement by the greatest warrior the world has ever known, Napoleon Bonaparte: "The more I study the world, the more I am convinced of the inability of force to create anything durable...
...Regardless of the protests of those whose backs were already bending under heavy burdens and whose lives had been made joyless by sordid cares and privations, national resources have been squandered upon agencies of destruction...
...It has lagged behind the intellectual and moral development of the peoples...
...The intellectual life of the peoples is concerned with universal interests...
...This butchery of men is vividly descried in the words of Charles Dickens: "There will he the full complement of backs broken in two, of arms twisted wholly off, of men impaled upon their bayonets, of legs smashed up like bits of firewood, of heads sliced open like apples, of other heads crunched into soft jelly by the iron hoofs Of horses, of faces trampled out of all likeness to anything human...
...What manner of civilization is this that takes no heed of the priceless value of human lives...
...In England social insurance and home rule for Ireland had been accomplished, demonstrating the, constant tendency toward further democratization of British institutions...
...No longer do the people of one country live unto themselves alone...
...Human life means sacrifice, suffering, effort at every stage of its development and advancement...
...The waste and the suffering it entails are sickening...
...International political strain or emergency affords an opportunity to men without consciences to set the nations aflame...
...They were planning the destruction of forces that were democratizing the laws and governments...
...Yet war is not necessary as William Ellery Channing has well stated: "The doctrine that violence, oppression, inhumanity is an essential element of society is so re-volting that, did I believe it, I would say let society perish, let man and his works be swept away and the earth be abandoned to the brutes...
...Such effort will bring about that day of which Victor Hugo wrote: "A day will come when the only battlefield will be the market open to commerce and the mind opening to new ideas...
...Consider the issues involved—are they of sufficient moment to justify the butchery of so many men...
...The waste and the suffering from militarism and war are most keenly felt by the working people...
...What affects one affects all in some degree...
...THE TIME to avert war Is the time of peace by educating the peoples to the horrors and futility of war, and by creating a universal demand for international peace and for political agencies to perpetuate it...
...The Church Peace Conference to he held at Constance vanished before the sound of musketry...
...Had the nations of the world endorsed the naval holiday policy proposed by Winston Churchill, the first Lord of the Admiralty of England, and urged by the American labor movement, there would have been set up a tendency to counteract the eternal preparedness for war which is an incentive to unnecessary conflict...
...But political organization has not kept pace with the newer and larger concepts...
...The peoples of Europe will emerge from the carnage and smoke of battle with renewed determination to establish principles and institutions that are in harmony with industrial, political, and social development...
...They were insisting upon democratic principles in the Reichstag...
...Men and women were devoting their time and their ability to the quest for knowledge that mental and physical health might be conserved and that disease and death might be robbed of their former rich harvests...
...The markets in which we buy and sell are organized on a world scale...
...Military and naval armament is now so highly developed and so diabolically destructive that its effectiveness precludes prolonged war...
...Large accessions had been made to the labor representations in the national legislatures...
...And the affairs of the whole world are stayed that men may go to shoot and to be shot...
...TO BOLSTER UP tottering thrones and policies of self-aggrandizement, European monarchs have sacrificed social and economic welfare to the ominous waste involved in militarism and competitive armament...
...Though the war is in a sense a racial struggle yet it was planned arid precipitated by the representatives of autocracy who saw the forces of democracy constantly displacing the power and institutions of reaction that have fastened themselves on the backs of the peoples of Europe...
...The organizations of the workers are practically the only organizations that continue their protest even in the presence of war...
...The time has now come for establishing permanent political institutions which shall stand for peace and justice between nations...
...Russia was confronted by open manifestation of discontent among her working people...
...In this twentieth century he who understands the things that are must speak and think in world terms...
...There is developing an international morality that will be satisfied with nothing less than world federation...
Vol. 6 • November 1914 • No. 45
