ideas of disarmament, began at the end of the war to talk about it. But nothing came out of all the talk.
At the end of the war the leaders of international politics could not simply deny the idea of disarmament, they are not so foolish as not to use to the limit the specific pacifist feeling created in the masses by the reformists. The idea of disarmament was not denied, but a committee was created by the League of Nations, which from time to time meets and talks over the usefulness of disarmament. To this committee comes representatives of the Amsterdam International trying to prove to the representatives of the governments the usefulness of disarmament, painting those brilliant perspectives which will come about after disarmament is accomplished.
It is characteristic of all parts of the Amsterdam International and also for the International itself that in the question of disarmament their practical proposals never went beyond the borders of the League of Nations.
When we see that every day armaments are growing and that the competition between the former Allies is sharpening, that not only in the line of land or sea forces, but also in the air service, all is being done in preparation for a new war, to appear at such a time before the Commission on Disarmament for the League of Nations with proposals for disarmament is just the same as to preach to wolves the usefulness of vegetarianism. How can we explain such a point of view? With personal lack of comprehension?
We are very little interested in the political foolishness of this or that political leader. After all there is no lack of fools in the world. But, to our regret, in this pacifist ideology of disarming through the League of Nations, which is itself a tool of armed-to-the-teeth imperialism, this certainly proves that there is an influence of the bourgeoisie over the working class. In this ideology are reflected the dim hopes and expectations of a certain part of the proletariat: Somehow to avoid the future war; dodging the class struggle without straining every revolutionary force and without those sufferings with which the social revolution is usually accompanied.
All this is a reflection of the dim pacifist hopes which exist in the working class, and it is the fault of the leaders of the Amsterdam International that instead of destroying these dangerous pacifist illusions in the masses, they were preaching them, giving the question of disarmament, not a revolutionary class character, but a purely bourgeois pacifist one.
For everyone who even slightly understands the existing situation, it is clear that it is impossible to have a voluntary disarmament, that it is possible only to force disarmament. There are two ways of doing this last.
