remitting improvement in militarism, which is the instrument of war. Whether the capitalists of Germany or Britain shall be masters of the Eastern trade, is fought by the British worker in khaki suffering the agonies borne by the expedition in Mesopotamia, and contending with the Turk who moves by the compulsion of German finance installed in Constantinople. Whether Germany shall have equal, rights in Africa with Britain and France, whether the bankers of Berlin or Paris shall control Alsace-Lorraine, is fought out by millions of men brigaded for slaughter. All the finest manhood fighting in the armies of the Great War, braced itself with hope that the battle was for freedom. As their blood fell it was distilled info profits for their masters. The guilty promoters of war were in their counting houses reaping a harvest of dividends from destruction. They were interested in the fate of small nations just so far as the little peoples could be made buffer States to thwart the economic development of rival Great Powers. For property, for the profits of trade, for economic power, for the imperialist tyranny of capitalism, the manhood of all nations are torn, from home and severed from the beloved; disciplined into submission, drilled into the military machine, armed to kill for causes that are not theirs, the manhood of all nations are shot, mutilated, blown to a thousand fragments, or left as rotting corpses unburied, a repast for the long-beaked carrion vulture. Without soul, or pity, or mercy, capitalism tramples on its course. No power can arrest or overturn it, but the workers internationally organised. They alone can make peace lasting and durable. In becoming masters of the world, by assuming ownership and control of the forces of production, by distributing wealth that is needed rather than making wealth for profit, the workers will end war. When the economic conflict between nations comes to an end, the peoples can live in, everlasting peace. Until co-operation and a partnership of men supersedes the economic conflict, wars will recur and be added to in horror.
The world's peace, therefore, rests, and depends upon the unity of the workers in all nations combined to cast down capitalism, which is the cause of war.
Buck Bros. & Harding, Ltd., Printers, West Ave., Walthamstow.
