Edward Carpenter

“ For have not the lords of every nation set before themselves the same goal, the goal of world-ambition and glory and 'empire' and plunder? And have not the mass-peoples of every nation stood meanly by and acclaimed the fraud, nor spoken out against it, silently consenting to these things in the prospect of some advantage also to themselves? ”

“ They are beginning to see that if courage, devotion to an Idea, love of the Father- or Mother-land, Fidelity of comrade to comrade, Efficiency, daring in Adventure, exactness in Organization, and so forth, are the qualities which in the past have made the profession of arms great and glorious, it is these very qualities which will be demanded and evoked for all future time in the great free armies of Industry. ”

“ By the five or six million actual combatants already slain; and, the strange spectacle of millions of Women (over half a million in Britain, more in France, multitudes in Germany and America) manufacturing man-destroying explosive shells in ceaseless stream by day and night; (And it is estimated that on the average some fifty shells are expended for every one man slain) By the terrified faces — as of drowning men — of those suffering in countless hospitals from shell-shock; by their trembling hands and, limbs and horrible dreams at night — pursued by an ever-living horror ”

“ Meanwhile let us remember how important it is for the future of the world that each nation and people should be free to contribute its special quality and character to the whole; nor be ridden-over roughshod by the others;
That each should contribute, in Trade or otherwise, its special gifts or facilities; and that the Internationalism which already rules in labour affairs and in Commerce and Science and Fashion and Finance and Philanthropy and Literature and Art and Music, should at last be recognized in Politics. ”

“ The point is that the vast majority of them believe this to be true; and they too, dear children, are giving their lives for their hearths and homes — they too are leading this hateful existence in trenches and mines, called to it by what seems to them a good conscience, and carried onward (in company with those they have left at home) in the mad millrace of public opinion.
However we may, blame the German High Command — and certainly we must blame those in power, who over such a long period deliberately prepared this war, and at the last so suddenly launched it upon Europe. ”

“ When one thinks of what a Paradise all this ingenuity, all this expenditure of labour and treasure, might make of our mortal Earth — if it were only decently employed;
That Great Britain alone has already spent on the War enough to provide every family in the whole kingdom with a comfortable cottage and an acre of land ”

“ To think that the longer such a war goes on, the less heroic and generous it becomes, and the more dominated by hatred and revenge — by the wish to score a military victory or the desire to secure mere political and commercial advantages. ”

“ On the other hand who can doubt that the rapid growth of interchange and understanding among the peoples of the world is daily making Warfare itself, and the barbarities inevitably connected with it, more abhorrent to our common humanity? ”

“ Let us recognize the falsity of Science divorced from the Heart, and begin to-day to create a political, an economic, and a material world which shall be the true and satisfying expression of the real human soul ”

“ Simultaneously with this peeling off, of the Old, and disclosure of the New, will of necessity appear — indeed it is taking shape already the blossom of international solidarity and federation — the common cause of Humanity and of Labour liberated over the world. ”

“ Have not all the nations without exception acted meanly and dastardly towards the out lying black races, and even towards those more civilized peoples whom they thought weaker than themselves — and now in the stress of war are they not finding that their own rights and liberties are being slowly filched from them? ”

“ It right reasonably be no more dominant or meddlesome than the military system of China has been during the last thousand years in comparison with the massive imperturbability of the great Chinese Empire itself. ”

“ This is a question which the mass — peoples of Europe in the future — and not merely the Governments —- will have seriously to ponder and decide.
That bodies of men — as has happened a hundred times in the trenches in Northern France and even on the Eastern Front — should exchange morning salutations and songs in humorous amity, and then at a word of command should fall to shooting each other ”

“ For with the cessation of Militarism as the leading principle of national life must inevitably come the liberation of Industry — else the last state of our societies will indeed be worse than the first. ”

“ The rapid and enormous growth of scientific invention makes it obvious that Violence ten times more potent and sinister than that which we are witnessing to-day may very shortly be available for our use — or abuse — in War. ”

“ Truly there is nothing very exhilarating about Industry as it has in modern times been conceived, and one does not altogether wonder that all down the centuries the man with the sword has despised the man with the hoe, since the latter has generally been little better than a slave. ”

“ That human beings should use every devilish invention of science with the one purpose of maiming, blinding, destroying those against whom they have no personal grudge or grievance; All this is sheer madness.
Only a short time ago a private soldier said to me: "Yes, we had got to be such friends with those Bavarians in the trenches over against us that if we had returned there again I believe nothing could have made us fight with each other ”

“ When further one thinks of all the mass of human material there is, such as we have already described — of the very finest quality, and fit to build the most splendid races and cities "the sun ever shone upon" — and then that it is being used for these utterly senseless purposes ”

“ By the cry of the black and coloured peoples of the Earth who have for long enough already said how hard and cruel the faces of the white men seemed to them, and who now think how black their souls are ”

“ Let us further remember how important it is that every man and woman should insist on the rights of Personality to preserve sacred his or her most intimate sense of selfness and duty the very, essence of Freedom. ”

“ By the habitual betrayal, through long periods of 'prosperity' and `peace,' of men by their fellows — of the weak by the powerful, of the generous by the mean, of the simple and thoughtless by the crafty and selfish ”

“ Though I do not, for instance, think that a refusal to fight under any condition or circumstance can reasonably be maintained to its logical conclusion, and though I certainly would not engage myself to refuse to fight in any and every case. ”

“ It will only come with the determination of the workers (that is, of everybody) to produce things useful, profitable, and beautiful, in free and rational co-operation — things useful because deliberately made for use, things profitable for all because not made for the gain of the few, and things beautiful because of the joy and gladness wrought into their very production. ”

“ They talk of a battalion "covering itself with glory." But the men themselves do not talk so. They know too well what it all means. They see no glory in covering themselves with the blood of their brothers of the opposing trenches ”

“ To think that nations who consider themselves civilized should be thus acting: so contrary to the natural laws and instincts of humanity that often in order for a bayonet charge men must be primed with liquor to the verge of intoxication . ”

“ A hundred times this or something similar has happened, and a hundred and a thousand times these 'enemies' who have madly mutilated each other have — a few minutes later — been only too glad to dress each other's wounds and share the last contents of their water-bottles. ”

“ He is told that he is fighting for his country, but he finds that his real privilege is to die at the foot of a Trespass-board on some rich man's estate, singing bravely to the last that "Britons never, never shall be slaves!" ”

“ That peasants and artisans, and shopkeepers and students and schoolmasters, who have no quarrel whatever, who on the whole rather respect and honour each other, should with explosive bombs deliberately blow one another to bits so that even their own mothers could not recognize them ”

“ I think we may see that the new conception of life will only come through the peeling off in the various nations of the old husks of the diplomatic, military, legal, and commercial classes, with their antiquated, narrow-minded and profoundly. irreligious and inhuman standards — those husks which have so long restricted and strangulated the growing life within. ”

“ Such Federation when firmly consolidated might, it is not unlikely, still retain for a long period a military system, of some kind, if only for its own protection against outlying and non European dangers ”

“ Of the shells themselves varying from a few pounds to nearly, a ton in weight, and so delicately fashioned that the moment of their explosion can be positively timed to the tenth part of a second:
When one thinks of the ingenuity put into aeroplanes and airships, and almost entirely with a view to the destruction of life ”

“ They have been told they are fighting to save their Fatherland. And as far as our argument is concerned it does not matter how falsely they have been instructed or what grain of actual truth there may be in the contention. ”

“ Think of that quaint story (Between The Lines, by Boyd Cable, pp 188 ff) of the German Burschen in their trenches, singing with pious enthusiasm the Song of Hate (probably commanded and compelled, poor devils, to sing it) and our men for days secretly listening, learning the words, practicing the tune on their muffled, mouth-organs ”