Hendrik Willem Van Loon

“ The stress of war, the anxiety about the safety of their own land, will keep their mouths shut as long as the struggle lasts; but the day will come when the last gun will be fired. Then the millions of armed men will return to their homes, and they will demand that their children be spared a repetition of this inexcusable waste of human life and happiness.
When peace comes back to earth, what will happen? Twenty million men will return to their homes. They will be asked to go back to their old tasks and take up the work which they left when they went to the war. ”

“ Indeed, as I see the future, the men who will come to the front will resemble the old Huguenot chieftains. They will be men of a serious purpose, they will be men of deep religious feeling; only now their religion will be a socialism of the future.
Of the events in Russia we can speak with certainty. Every foreign war in which the empire has ever been engaged has meant a prelude for a bitter revolution. ”

“ For the first time in their history the Slavic people will work out their own salvation, and will live as they want to and not as somebody thinks that they ought to want to. For eleven centuries Russia has obeyed foreign masters and has allowed her own destinies to be shaped by outside influences of one sort or another. The war, which is breaking the iron bonds which have kept the old system together, means the emancipation of the Slavic people. Hereafter we shall hear less of an ever-growing Russian Empire. ”

“ The war is the strongest and most effective ally of those who strive for an improvement in the fate of women. When I speak of women, please do not think of those happy creatures who can spend thirty-five cents to read this magazine. Think of the millions who are obliged to feed and wash and clothe a family on this same amount. Think of the women in the greater part of Europe who pull their husband's plow together with his ox, who carry his bundles and bear his children and wash and cook and clothe and wait upon his entire family without receiving the wages or treatment of a servant. ”

“ But during the last years of our era the forgotten masses working at the bottom of coal-mines and sweating in the bowels of gigantic factories have come to a realization of their own importance in the cosmos of human beings. Under the guidance of strange leaders they set deliberately to work to accomplish their own emancipation. They were in a fair way to succeed when the war broke out and forced a momentary interruption of their activities. In this war the masses of England have had much of which they may righteously complain. ”

“ Try to imagine what the war means to these unfortunate creatures. For the first time in their dreary lives they have known what it was to be their own masters. They have tasted of liberty. Their lord and master has gone and has left them to manage for themselves. ”

“ The citizen has become a soldier, and loyalty, that commonest of virtues in the world of simple-minded people, forces him to stick to the cause to which he once gave his support. He must stick it out until victory or defeat brings about peace.
But after the war! Then we shall have to deal with different men and in very different circumstances. The German workman understands that this war, even if it is victorious, can never repay him and his people for what they have lost and suffered. ”

“ Yet we have a great deal of material about the past upon which we can base some of our contentions about the future.
Above all, keep in mind the fact that the great European War is not a struggle which is popular with the masses. Their ancient loyalty keeps the soldiers in the trenches, but their minds and their hearts are at all times with those whom they left at home. ”

“ That excellent gathering of enlightened humanity will follow that band to hell provided it keeps on playing popular airs. Against the age-old traditions—traditions of valor and courage and honor and love for the colors of the fatherland and devotion to the ideals of empire—all the doctrines of the sublime Marx are effaced. These men assembled to uphold reason are at once swept away by some mysterious force which is much stronger than reason. They fall victims to the traditions of countless generations. ”

“ Science, which is to decide the future of man, was a neglected quantity. In many instances it was a despised attribute of little value except as a means of livelihood in some smelly factory. Thousands upon thousands of good British lives have been lost because the leaders were ignorant of the work before them. When the end of the struggle comes there will be a very persistent and serious demand for an accounting. The pent-up discontent of years of silent suffering will break forth with a violence which has not been seen in the British Isles for many a century. ”

“ The system which the masters of Russia had forced upon their subjects at the time when two hundred years of Tatar domination had entirely broken the spirit of the people will disappear amid much bloodshed and violence. The old order of things, which was merely a system of "organized anarchy" for the benefit of those who were in power, will be replaced by a new anarchy, which will not even have the saving grace of a systematized purpose. ”

“ Ask the wives of the men who spend their lives in the drudgery of some industrial center whether they have not had visions of a new world now that they have some time in which to breathe and to be masters of their own minds and bodies. ”

“ As the men of thoughts began to meditate upon the future of themselves and of those who dwelt below in the miserable caves of countless unsanitary cellars, they constructed fine theories and played with the Chinese rockets of their brilliant wit until one day a few sparks of their theoretical fireworks dropped into the cellar. ”

“ It is merely a question of months and perhaps of weeks before there will be a repetition of those events which occurred immediately after the Japanese War. The Slavic people, ruled by a system which was originated by Tatars and Byzantines and which was hammered into shape by German drill-masters, will once more make an attempt to rid itself of this unbearable yoke.
Their task will not be an easy one. Revolutionary propaganda is difficult in a country which can neither read nor write, but the chances for victory are better than they were in the year 1900. ”

“ They hypnotized the blinded creatures of the cellar with a display of brilliant colors which they waved madly in the air. They promised to place golden spangles upon their ragged clothes if only the men would come and fight, and they promised them lovely colored ribbons in case they should suffer damage to life or limb. They rattled off every convincing argument that ever had served the purpose of forcing men into battle. ”

“ Parliamentarism as France has known it for almost half a century, the haggling of small politicasters for the benefit of their own little interests, will be a thing of the past. In the tremendous struggle for national existence a new leadership is being born—the leadership of the capable men from among the masses.
Is n't this remark too Utopian? Can a neglected class suddenly produce men capable of leadership? For answer I refer you to the leaders who guided France through the days of the Revolution. ”

“ In our highly systematized world we often forget the great influence which the small subconscious sentiments have upon our deeds and our words. Socialism is a comparatively new doctrine. It has no traditions. It is not provided with an imaginary background in the minds of the true believers. On the other hand, the idea of state and of empire is based upon ancient tradition, mellowed by age.
Suppose the German Socialists had decided to oppose the war. ”

“ In this war he has been taught something which his many strikes and his labor warfare did not make clear to him. Before the year 1914, if in an encounter with his masters he used violence, he was regarded as an enemy of the law and was treated accordingly. This time he has with his own eyes and with his own hands noticed that organized violence is the best way to accomplish the desired results of his country. He has been trained to take from his enemy by violence what could not be obtained by arguments of reason. ”

“ People will have to decide this time about the future of their own race. Will it develop as it has done hitherto as a combination of two separated classes, or will it give to all men the chance of developing their own powers to the best of their ability in the most favorable circumstances for all? ”

“ In France, in less than twelve months' time, the spirit of the people has undone the harm of forty years of bad government by and of and for the lawyers who fought for the possession of her political spoils. ”

“ Ten years of a semblance of popular government, however primitive, have done their work better than most people know. There will be more cohesion and more system in the attempts of the man who will stir up the masses.
Of course, in Russia, which is not preponderantly a manufacturing nation, but an agricultural one, the ever-present question is that of the division of the land. ”

“ When they are mortally wounded, they feel that they lose their lives in a cause which might have been avoided if the powers that still rule the world had been inspired with greater foresight and with greater ability to lead the affairs of men. ”

“ In the great conflict which now rages in eastern Europe Russia has seen her best armies wasted, her fleet doomed to inactivity, the richest part of her territory surrendered to an invader, and all of this because of a lack of foresight and the indifference of the ruling class. ”

“ There will be a terrific burden of taxation, and all men will be obliged to work harder than before. At the same time they will receive less money than they did formerly. Year in and year out they must pay the ever-increasing interest upon a capital the principal of which was destroyed in the form of dynamite, powder, nitroglycerin, war-ships, Zeppelins, cannon, machine-guns, and other unproductive investments. ”

“ But when he comes home from the war he will not be given this food unless he goes to dig coal out of a little black gallery half a mile beneath the surface of the earth or performs the dreariest of tasks in that dreariest of modern inventions, a factory. ”

“ Never was a time so favorable for an uprising of all the discontented elements. It is not going to be a charming affair, and there will be much in the nature of the horrible peasant uprisings of the late Middle Ages. ”

“ During times of peace the inefficient bureaucracy of Russia can find ways and means by which to perform the strictly necessary tasks for the management of the empire, meanwhile trusting to a kind Providence to take care of any possible emergencies. ”

“ The ignorant peasant, without books or learning, knows through the ancestral legends of the olden times when the land belonged to him and not to his masters. He feels the injustice of the slavery to which he was condemned during the first years of the seventeenth century. ”

“ Is it likely in those circumstances that the mass of men will return peacefully to their unpleasant tasks when they know that they are possessed of the power with which they can obtain for themselves all they wish? ”

“ Now behold what the war has done for him. It has fed him better than he has ever been fed before. It has put him into decent clothes. A heavy winter coat goes with the equipment of every soldier, and often he never saw such a garment before. Without sufficient food and shelter he is of no use as a fighting man ”

“ And the poor fellows, drunk with the artificial excitement, painfully climbed out of their miserable holes, took the arms that were pressed into their hands, set out to murder one another, and fought like demons. ”

“ The revolutionary outbreak in Russia will be of a rural nature. In the large cities, where the undesirable elements from the country districts have been gathered into a hopeless proletariate, there will be violence such as we know from our own strikes and labor struggles. But the main issue in Russia will be fought out far away from cities, on the land. ”

“ In many instances they discover that they can handle affairs much better than their men, who used to treat them as domestic animals, little less valuable than a good cow. Visit the central part of Europe, countries like Hungary and East Prussia, and you will find that a new spirit has descended upon these strong and healthy beings who thus far were accounted of no value except as propagators of the race and busy workers in their master's vineyard. ”

“ That cellar, that horrible and unspeakable cellar of which I have already spoken, will be filled up with the debris of the war, and in this way an evil thing may yet work for the good of us all.
Thus far I have mentioned the influence of the war upon the men of the race. It will affect the position of women to an even greater degree. ”

“ Economists shake their heads, and tell me that what I now state is an utter impossibility; but the time will come, probably within two generations, when the citizen, disgusted with the hard work forced upon him by the stupidity of a forgotten ancestor, will simply wipe this debt off the national slate. ”