The Crime Against Europe | Page 4

aggression, but of wars of defence and unification. Since it
was welded by blood and iron into the great human organism of the last
forty years it has not been employed beyond the frontiers of Germany
until last year.
Can the same be said of Russian militarism or of French militarism or
of British navalism?

We are told the things differ in quality. The answer is what about the
intent and the uses made. German militarism has kept peace and has
not emerged beyond its own frontier until threatened with universal
attack. Russian militarism has waged wars abroad, far beyond the
confines of Russian territory; French militarism, since it was
overthrown at Sedan, has carried fire and sword across all Northern
Africa, has penetrated from the Atlantic to the Nile, has raided Tonquin,
Siam, Madagascar, Morocco, while English navalism in the last forty
years has bombarded the coast lines, battered the ports, and landed
raiding parties throughout Asia and Africa, to say nothing of the well
nigh continuous campaigns of annexation of the British army in India,
Burma, South Africa, Egypt, Tibet, or Afghanistan, within the same
period.
As to the quality of the materialism of the great Continental Powers
there is nothing to prefer in the French and Russian systems to the
German system. Each involved enormous sacrifices on the people
sustaining it. We are asked, however, to believe that French militarism
is maintained by a "democracy" and German militarism by an
"autocracy." Without appealing to the captive Queen of Madagascar for
an opinion on the authenticity of French democracy we may confine the
question to the elected representatives of the two peoples.
In both cases the war credits are voted by the legislative bodies
responsible to French and German opinion. The elected representatives
of Germany are as much the spokesman of the nation as those of France,
and the German Reichstag has sanctioned every successive levy for the
support of German armaments. As to Russian militarism, it may be
presumed no one will go quite so far as to assert that the Russian Duma
is more truly representative of the Russian people than the Parliament
of the Federated peoples of Germany at Berlin.
The machines being then approximately the same machines, we must
seek the justification for them in the uses to which they have been put.
For what does France, for what does Russia maintain a great army?
Why does Germany call so many youthful Germans to the colours? On
what grounds of moral sanction does Great Britain maintain a navy,

whose cost far exceeds all the burdens of German militarism?
Russia stretches across the entire area of Central Asia and comprises
much of the greater part of Europe as well. In its own territory, it is
unassailable, and never has been invaded with success. No power can
plunder or weaken Russia as long as she remains within her own
borders. Of all the great powers in Europe she is the one that after
England has the least need of a great army.
She cannot be assailed with success at home, and she has no need to
leave her own territories in search of lands to colonize. Her population,
secure in its own vast numbers and vast resources has, for all future
needs of expansion the continent of Siberia into which to overflow.
Russia cannot be threatened within Russia and has no need to go
outside Russia. A Russian army of 4,000,000 is not necessary to
self-defence. Its inspiration can be due only to a policy of expansion at
the cost of others, and its aim to extend and to maintain existing
Russian frontiers. As I write it is engaged not in a war of defence but in
a war of invasion, and is the instrument of a policy of avowed
aggression.
Not the protection of the Slavs from Austria, herself so largely a Slavic
power and one that does not need to learn the principles of good
government from Russia, but the incorporation of the Slavs within the
mightiest empire upon earth--this is the main reason why Russia
maintains the mightiest army upon earth. Its threat to Germany, as the
protector of Austria-Hungary, has been clear, and if we would find the
reason for German militarism we shall find at least one half of it across
the Russian frontier.
The huge machine of the French army, its first line troops almost equal
to Germany's, is not a thing of yesterday.
It was not German aggression founded it--although Germany felt it
once at Jena. Founded by kings of France, French militarism has
flourished under republic, empire, constitutional monarchy, and empire
again until to-day we find its greatest bloom full blown under the mild
breath of the third republic. What is the purpose of this perfect machine?

Self-defence? From what attack?