The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 21: The Recent Days (1910-1914)
History
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 21: The Recent Days (1910-1914)
World history
And here is the peculiar tragedy of Militarism. The mere threat of that
great "Unfought War" cost Europe billions of dollars. Moreover, as a
result of Germany's discontent at what she rather regarded as her
defeat in this Morocco affair, she in 1913 enormously increased her
army and more than doubled her already heavy military tax upon her
people. Then France and Russia felt compelled to meet Germany's move by
increasing their armies also, extending, as she had done, the time of
compulsory military service inflicted upon their poorer classes.
Norman Angell, an English writer, has recently stirred all thinking
people by a remarkable book of protest against Militarism. He here
discusses the Moroccan imbroglio under the title of "the Mirage of the
Map." Sir Max Waechter is an authority of international repute upon the
same subject.
NORMAN ANGELL
The Press of Europe and America is very busy discussing the lessons of
the diplomatic conflict which has just ended. And the outstanding
impression which one gets from most of these essays in high
politics--whether French, Italian, or British--is that we have been and
are witnessing part of a great world movement, the setting in motion of
Titanic forces "deep-set in primordial needs and impulses."
For months those in the secrets of the Chancelleries have spoken with
bated breath--as though in the presence of some vision of Armageddon.
On the strength of this mere talk of war by the three nations, vast
commercial interests have been embarrassed, fortunes have been lost and
won on the Bourses, banks have suspended payment, some thousands have
been ruined; while the fact that the fourth and fifth nations have
actually gone to war has raised all sorts of further possibilities of
conflict, not alone in Europe, but in Asia, with remoter danger of
religious fanaticism and all its sequelae. International bitterness and
suspicion in general have been intensified, and the one certain result
of the whole thing is that immense burdens will be added in the shape
of further taxation for armaments to the already heavy ones carried by
the five or six nations concerned. For two or three hundred millions of
people in Europe life, which with all the problems of high prices,
labor wars, unsolved social difficulties, is none too easy as it is,
will be made harder still.
The needs, therefore, that can have provoked a conflict of these
dimensions must be "primordial" indeed. In fact, one authority assures
us that what we have seen going on is "the struggle for life among
men"--that struggle which has its parallel in the whole of sentient
existence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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