188 189 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THE LOGIC OF INSANITY annexations of territory and peoples, they demand mines and natural resources for capitalist exploitation. They have no thought of the future. Like primitive savages they live only for the present. After us the Deluge. deluge of blood and tears.
And yet this nationalist insanity too, has its logic, a logic that is irrefutable so long as one considers it from the premises furnished by these four years of horrible slaughter. For, after all is said and done, Germany and her allies did attack innocent and unarmed peoples. And, in the logic of war and the capitalist class, the defeated violator of defenseless nations must be made to atone for his wrong doings. Shall the victims pay the price of Germany wrong doing? Shall not the incendiary pay for the damage the fire has wrought? And since the havoc exceeds even the wildest flights of imagination, shall not the price of his atonement be equally bitter?
It is natural that the majority socialists, having made the historical philosophy of the capitalist class their own during the war, should be somewhat embarrassed now that the time has come when they must draw the practical conclusions of their process of reasoning during the war. The guilty must pay, and the guilty are to be found only on one side.
It is by no means a new problem that the world is being called upon to face. Bismarck and his band, in 1870, reasoned not a whit differently. According to the author of the Ems despatch France alone bore the responsibility of the war, was the aggressor. And though, after the battle of Sedan, the French envoy, General de Wimpfen, showed the implacable victor that it would be a political blunder fo continue to aggravate the French nationalist sentiment, although Bismarck was warned of the frightful consequence for the future, the iron soldier, drunk with the wine of victory, answered with the irrefutable logic of madness, No war indemnity, no matter how huge the sum may be, can compensate us for our enormous sacrifices. We must protect Germany on the South, the most vulnerable point exposed to French attack. We must put an end forever to the pressure that France has exercised, for two centuries in the past, upon German peoples, at the expense of the whole German nation Baden, Wuerttemberg and the other southern states must no longer live in fear and terror of Strassburg.
In place of the southern states place the phrase Paris is too near the border and you will find that we have adopted the same process of reasoning, in favor of the opposite side. But with far greater consequences. During the last one hundred and fifty years, reasoned the blood and iron Chancellor, France has waged more than a dozen wars against south western Germany. The attempt has been made to acquire certain guarantees against such attacks, but whatever these states obtained was a snare and a delusion The real danger lies in the incurable arrogance, in the tireless ambition of the French character (just as to day our annexationists speak of the German character. We must protect ourselves against this peril, not by attempting to placate French susceptibilities, but by insuring ourselves of an adequate borderline. France, in its ceaseless attacks upon our western border, has again and again penetrated southern Germany with relatively small forces, before help could possibly be sent from the North.
These invasions have been repeated, time and again, under Louis XIV. under the Republic and the first Empire, and the German states have constantly been forced to pit their strength against that of France.
Bismarck knew that the annexation of a slice of territory would be bitterly resented by the French. But the Great Statesman, intoxicated by victory, formally declared this consideration to be of little importance.
Not that Bismarck failed to foresee the campaign for revenge.
But he stilled his anxiety with logic, and this same insane logic, in all its dangerous plausibility, is being echoed and re echoed to day by our block headed press. An enemy who can never be made into a friend must be fought to the bitter finish. Only the complete surrender of the eastern fortresses of France can guarantee our safety.
One almost feels that Bismarck must have been a constant reader of to day le Matin. And since the strangling of a vanquished nation must always be accomplished in the light of pacifism and idealism, the reasoning beast of prey adds: Everyone who is desirous of international disarmament must desire that the neighbors of France act in this light, for France alone endangers the peace of Europe. See les Memoirs, by Maurice Busch, of 1898. History repeats itself. atrociously and stupidly. However, there are some variations. In face of the unlimited demands of the Prussian super militarists, who, together with Count Waldersee, the same, we believe who in 1900 commanded the Allied troops as well as the French in the Chinese Expedition, demanded the eternal destruction of the Paris Babel. The Statesman, more clearsighted, after all, than the pride maddened Junkers, here