Towards an enduring peace : $b A symposium of peace proposals and programs 1914-1916
History
Towards an enduring peace : $b A symposium of peace proposals and programs 1914-1916
Peace; World War, 1914-1918 -- Peace
The idea of a federalized Europe, regulated by an Areopagus, involving
the disappearance, or substantial reduction, of standing armies and
navies, and the submission of all disputes to a Central Council, is not
to be dismissed. It is the ultimate goal to aim at. But it cannot be
attained until the constitutionally governed democracies of the West are
brought to realize how impossible it is that their moral and spiritual
development and their happiness and well-being can be secured under a
system of government which leaves them at the mercy of the intrigues
and imbecilities of professional diplomatists and of the ambitions of
military castes; helpless, too, in the face of an enormously powerful and
internationalized private interest dependent for its profits upon the
maintenance of that “armed peace” which is the inevitable prelude to the
carnage and futility of war.
[Sidenote: Democracies in the different countries must cooperate.]
To awaken these sentiments among the democracies of this and other
countries, to instil into them these convictions, to ensure the
cooperation of all forces in all countries working to that end—is the
task to which we must all turn our attention.
Potentates, diplomatists, and militarists made this war. They should not
be allowed to arrange unchecked and uncontrolled the terms of peace and
to decide alone the conditions which will follow it. The mass of the
people who suffer from their blunders and their quarrels must claim the
ineradicable right of participating in the future settlement.
And, when peace has come, the democratic parties of Europe must set
before themselves a new province of political effort. That peace will
be permanently preserved only if our artisans and industrialists keep
up with the artisans and industrialists of other countries a constant
and deliberate communication through their political parties and other
organizations which will prevent misunderstandings and subdue the hatreds
out of which war ultimately comes.
_“The Morrow of the War,” Union of Democratic Control,
London, Bulletin No. 1._
NO PEACE WITHOUT FEDERATION
[Sidenote: The war has betrayed mankind.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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