Welsh Journals

WAR AND THE LABOUR MOVEMENT T I "HE Editor has asked me to put in writing my 1 views about the war. He flatters me by saying that I am an intelligent, thoughtful collier, whose opinions are worth having. Alas my intelligence is limited by my defective education, by the news- papers and books in our Workmen's Institute, and by the secrecy which surrounds our foreign policy in times of peace. But I will put down plainly what I think and what is thought by many of my fellow- workmen. 1. I distinguish between the immediate and the remote causes of the war. The Serajevo assassin- ations simply set fire to the mine. The real causes of the European conflagration must be found in the policy of the armed peace, and in the economic and territorial rivalries of which it was the expression. In the last dispatch to Berlin (White Paper No. 159) Sir Edward Grey says We are also informed that Belgian territory has been violated at Gemmenich. In these circumstances, etc. the British Ambassador was to ask for his passports. Behind Serajevo and Gemmenich were the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente. Behind them secret Notes and Conversa- tions and Understandings of which we colliers knew nothing until Sir Edward Grey's speech. On the threshold of war Sir Edward Grey laboured most strenuously for peace, but it was too late then to set up an alliance with Germany-the one power with influence at Vienna. In view of Sir Edward Grey's revelations, we were as honorably pledged to back France as Germany was to back Austria. That, in the crisis, Russia, France, and England worked for peace seems as undeniable as that Germany could have prevented war if she really cared to do so. But behind the swift crisis were the slow years of rivalry and ambition, the doctrine of the Balance of Power, the struggle for a balance of armaments favourable to one group as against the other. There lies the source of the gigantic war which is now threatening our civilisation. If a fraction of the energy which Governments are now showing in sending millions of men to butcher each other had been used to pro- mote a Council of Europe we might have been spared this Armageddon. 2. For all I know Sir Edward Grey, Lord Haldane and others may have worked hard in times of peace for a friendly understanding with Germany, and they may have been so baffled and discouraged as to be convinced that only a war in which Germany suffered defeat would curb the pride of the Prussians and prepare the way for an alliance embracing all the Great Powers. This conviction, if it existed, would have been active in the minds of our Foreign Secretary, inclining him to fight alongside our Allies. The White Paper shows that Germany and Austria were bent on forcing things rapidly to an issue dangerous to peace, and the Cabinet may have felt, behind the problem of Belgium and Servia, the permanent menace of the Prussian military caste, its hatred of England, and the necessity of resisting it at a moment when British opinion was at one with the Allies. How far this reading of the situation is anything like correct, how far this feeling of an inevit- able war sooner or later with Germany dominated the Cabinet, how near we were to war with Germany at the time of the railway strike, how far Berlin counted on civil war in Ireland to precipitate matters now, whether when France was crushed our turn would follow-these are high matters beyond the range of a mere miner. 3. The third thought that occurs to me is the suddenness with which a continent is plunged into war and the helplessness of the lovers of peace when the crisis comes. The one hundred and fifty nine despatches in the White Paper cover sixteen days. In a fortnight some score of diplomats decide to call up ten to fifteen millions of men to shoot each other, and these millions obey. It is a passionless war, I am told. Certainly there was neither passion nor hatred in our colliery. We were simply dumb- founded. There are some millions of Christians in this country and in Germany-where were they at the crisis ? Where were all the leaders of Congresses and Free Church Councils ? What were they telling the diplomats and the Emperors? Apparently nothing that had any effect. And where was the International Labour Movement ? Nowhere. There had just been a Peace Conference at Liege. Jaures went back to Paris and was shot. Ramsay Macdonald made a halting speech in the House of Commons. Herr Haase in the Reichstag declared that in the hour of danger the Socialist party would not leave the Fatherland in the lurch, and for the first time in their