unyielding determination that the Germans shall lord over and shall
exploit the rest of the world.
In itself this feeling of intense nationalism is a fine thing, and we
would admire it if it had not been perverted into an assault on all
the rest of mankind, and especially on liberty-loving civilized
mankind. There is in Germany an immense sense of solidarity, which
makes the German Socialist, the German middle-class capitalist, and
the German junker work side by side with enthusiasm for the
subjugation and exploitation of all the Allied countries. The
Socialists have cynically announced that their job is to encourage
pacifism in other countries, and thereby to lessen the resistance of
these countries to German militarism. The Socialists have worked for
the conquest of other countries in the interest of German capitalism,
because they feel they will get some share in the profit, and because
they have been schooled, in common with the rest of their country, to
a brutal cynicism concerning the wrongs and sufferings of other
countries, so long as Germans profit by them. In consequence the
German Government, aided by the German Socialists, has encouraged in
every way the forces of disorder in every hostile country--the
Socialists in France, the "independent" Labour men in England, the
Bolshevists in Russia, the Sinn Feiners in Ireland, the Reds in
Finland, and the most fanatical murderers of Christians in Turkey. It
is for this reason that Germany tries to use the I.W.W. in the United
States, and plays on the foolish American politicians who have
believed that the Russian Bolshevists would be able to infect Germany
with their revolt, or who have believed that they by fine words could
arouse the spirit of German revolt and separate the German people from
the German Government--a thing which can only be done by the breakdown
of Germany's military strength.
Germany has no fears as to her own ability to suppress disorder. The
minute she conquers a Russian province she puts down disorder with an
iron hand. But in the Ukraine, in Great Russia and in Finland she
encourages the party of the Reds, she encourages the Bolshevists; and
the poor, ignorant, gullible peasants follow the lead of the men,
however criminal--sometimes rather more lunatic than criminal--who
would throw them under Germany's feet. The American Bolshevists would
tear America to pieces, exactly as Russia has been torn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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