Chapter I: The Great War

The call from Europe.—Friend against friend.—Why?—Death and
devastation.—No private quarrel.—Ordered by government.—What
makes government?—The influence of the past.—Four causes of war.

Among the bricklayers at work on a building which was being
erected in a great American city during the summer of 1914 were
two men who had not yet become citizens of the United States.
Born abroad, they still owed allegiance, one to the Emperor of
Austria, the other to the Czar of Russia.

Meeting in a new country, and using a new language which gave them a chance to understand each other, they had become well acquainted. They were members of the same labor union, and had worked side by side on several different jobs. In the course of time, a firm friendship had sprung up between them. Suddenly, on the same day, each was notified to call at the office of the agent of his government in the city. Next morning the Russian came to his boss to explain that he must quit work, that he had been called home to fight for the “Little Father” of the Russians. He found his chum, the Austrian, there ahead of him, telling that he had to go, for the Russians had declared war on Austria and the good Kaiser,[1] Franz Josef, had need of all his young men.

[1] In the German language, the title Kaiser means Emperor.

The two chums stared at each other in sorrow and dismay. The
pitiless arm of the god of war had reached across the broad
Atlantic, plucking them back from peace and security. With
weapons put into their hands they would be ordered to kill each
other on sight.

A last hand-clasp, a sorrowful “Good luck to you,” and they
parted.

Why was this necessary? What was this irresistible force, strong
enough to separate the two friends and drag them back five
thousand miles for the purpose of killing each other? To answer
these two questions is the purpose of this little volume.

Beginning with the summer of 1914, Europe and parts of Asia and
Africa were torn and racked with the most tremendous war that the
world has ever seen. Millions of men were killed. Other millions
were maimed, blinded, or disfigured for life. Still other
millions were herded into prison camps or forced to work like
convict laborers. Millions of homes were filled with grief.
Millions of women were forced to do hard work which before the
war had been considered beyond their power. Millions of children
were left fatherless. What had been the richest and most
productive farming land in Europe was made a barren waste.
Thousands of villages and towns were utterly destroyed and their
inhabitants were forced to flee, the aged, the sick, and the
infants alike.

In many cases, as victorious armies swept through Poland and
Serbia, the wretched inhabitants fled before them, literally
starving, because all food had been seized for the use of
fighting men. Dreadful diseases, which cannot exist where people
have the chance to bathe and keep themselves clean, once more
appeared, sweeping away hundreds of thousands of victims. The
strongest, healthiest, bravest men of a dozen different nations
were shot down by the millions or left to drag out a miserable
existence, sick or crippled for life. Silent were the wheels in
many factories which once turned out the comforts and luxuries of
civilization. There were no men to make toys for the children, or
to work for mankind’s happiness. The only mills and factories
which were running full time were those that turned out the tools
of destruction and shot and shell for the guns. Nations poured
out one hundred fifty million dollars a day for the purpose of
killing off the best men in Europe. Had the world gone mad? What
was the reason for it all?

In 1913 Germans traveled in Russia and Englishmen traveled in
Germany freely and safely. Germans were glad to trade with
intercourse Russians, and happy to have Englishmen spend their
money in Germany. France and Austria exchanged goods and their
inhabitants traveled within each other’s boundaries. A Frenchman
might go anywhere through Germany and be welcomed. There was
nothing to make the average German hate the average Englishman or
Belgian. The citizen of Austria and the citizen of Russia could
meet and find plenty of ground for friendship.

We cannot explain this war, then, on the grounds of race hatred.
One can imagine that two men living side by side and seeing each
other every day might have trouble and grow to hate each other,
but in this great war soldiers were shooting down other soldiers
whom they had never seen before, with whom they had never
exchanged a word, and it would not profit them if they killed a
whole army of their opponents. In many cases, the soldiers did
not see the men whom they were killing. An officer with a
telescope watched where the shells from the cannon were falling
and telephoned to the captain in charge to change the aim a
trifle for his next shots. The men put in the projectile, closed
and fired the gun. Once in a while, a shell from the invisible
enemy, two, three, or four miles away, fell among them, killing
and wounding. When a regiment of Austrians were ordered to charge
the Russian trenches, they shot and bayoneted the Russians
because they were told to do so by their officers, and the
Russian soldiers shot the Austrians because their captains so
ordered them. The officers on each side were only obeying orders
received from their generals. The generals were only obeying
orders from the government.

In the end, then, we come back to the governments, and we wonder
what has caused these nations to fly at each other’s throats. The
question arises as to what makes up a government or why a
government has the right to rule its people.

In the United States, the government officials are simply the
servants of the people. Practically every man in our country,
unless he is a citizen of some foreign nation, has a right to
vote, and in many of the states women, too, have a voice in the
government. We, the people of the United States, can choose our
own lawmakers, can instruct them how to vote and, in some states,
can vote out of existence any law that they the people have made
which we do not like. In all states, we can show our disapproval
of what our law-makers have done by voting against them at the
next election. Such is the government of a republic, a
“government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” as
Abraham Lincoln called it. In the leading British colonies, the
people rule. Australian citizens voted against forcing men to
serve in the army. The result was very close and the vote of the
women helped to decide it. Canada, on the contrary, voted to
compel her men to go. How is it in Europe? Have the people of
Germany or Austria the right to vote on war? Were they consulted
before their governments called them to arms and sent them to
fight each other? It is plain that in order to understand what
this war is about, we must look into the story of how the
different governments of Europe came to be and learn why their
peoples obey them so unquestioningly.

We must remember that government by the people is a very new
thing. One hundred and thirty years ago, even in the United
States only about one-fourth of the men had the right to vote.
These were citizens of property and wealth. They did not think a
poor man was worth considering. In England, a country which
allows its people more voice in the government than almost any
other nation in Europe, it is only within the last thirty years
that all men could vote. There are some European countries, like
Turkey, where the people have practically no power at all and
others, like Austria, where they have very little voice in how
they shall be governed.

For over a thousand years, the men of Europe have obeyed without
thinking when their lords and kings have ordered them to pick up
their weapons and go to war. In many instances they have known
nothing of the causes of the conflict or of what they were
fighting for. A famous English writer has written a poem which
illustrates how little the average citizen has ever known
concerning the cause of war, and shows the difference between the
way in which war was looked upon by the men of old and the way in
which one should regard it. The poem runs as follows:

The Battle of Blenheim

It was a summer evening, Old Kaspar’s work was done, And he before his cottage door Was sitting in the sun, And by him sported on the green His little grandchild Wilhelmine.

She saw her brother Peterkin Roll something large and round, Which he beside the rivulet In playing there had found, He came to ask what he had found That was so large and smooth and round.

Old Kaspar took it from the boy, Who stood expectant by; And then the old man shook his head, And, with a natural sigh— “’Tis some poor fellow’s skull,” said he, “Who fell in the great victory.

“I find them in the garden, For there’s many hereabout; And often when I go to plow, The plowshare turns them out! For many a thousand men,” said he, “Were slain in the great victory.”

“Now tell us what ’twas all about,” Young Peterkin he cries; And little Wilhelmine looks up With wonder-waiting eyes— “Now tell us all about the war, And what they fought each other for.”

“It was the English,” Kaspar cried, “Who put the French to rout; But what they fought each other for I could not well make out; But everybody said,” quoth he, “That ’twas a famous victory.

“My father lived at Blenheim then, Yon little stream hard by; They burnt his dwelling to the ground, And he was forced to fly; So with his wife and child he fled, Nor had he where to rest his head.

“They say it was a shocking sight After the field was won— For many thousand bodies here Lay rotting in the sun; But things like that, you know, must be After a famous victory.

“Great praise the Duke of Marlborough won, And our good Prince Eugene.” “Why, ’twas a very wicked thing!” Said little Wilhelmine. “Nay, nay, my little girl,” quoth he, “It was a famous victory.

“And everybody praised the duke Who this great fight did win.” “But what good came of it at last?” Quoth little Peterkin. “Why, that I cannot tell,” said he; “But ’twas a famous victory.”

—_Robert Southey_.

Old Kaspar, who has been used to such things all his life, cannot
feel the wickedness and horror Of the battle. The children, on
the other hand, have a different idea of war. They are not
satisfied until they know what it was all about and what good
came of it, and they feel that “it was a very wicked thing.” If
the men in the armies had stopped to ask the reason why they were
killing each other and had refused to fight until they knew the
truth, the history of the world would have been very different.

One reason why we still have wars is that men refuse to think for
themselves, because it is so much easier to let their dead
ancestors think for them and to keep up customs which should have
been changed ages ago. People in Europe have lived in the midst
of wars or preparation for wars all their lives. There never has
been a time when Europe was not either a battlefield or a great
drill-ground for armies.

There was a time, long ago, when any man might kill another in
Europe and not be punished for his deed. It was not thought wrong
to take human life. Today it is not considered wrong to kill,
provided a man is ordered to do so by his general or his king.
When two kings go to war, each claiming his quarrel to be a just
one, wholesale murder is done, and each side is made by its
government to think itself very virtuous and wholly justified in
its killing. It should be the great aim of everyone today to help
to bring about lasting peace among all the nations.

In order to know how to do this, we must study the causes of the
wars of the past. We shall find, as we do so, that almost all
wars can be traced to one of four causes: (1) the instinct among
barbarous tribes to fight with and plunder their neighbors; (2)
the ambition of kings to enlarge their kingdoms; (3) the desire
of the traders of one nation to increase their commerce at the
expense of some other nation; (4) a people’s wish to be free from
the control of some other country and to become a nation by
itself. Of the four reasons, only the last furnishes a just cause
for war, and this cause has been brought about only when kings
have sent their armies out, and forced into their kingdoms other
peoples who wished to govern themselves.

Questions for Review

Why must foreigners in the United States return to their
native lands when summoned by their governments?

How is it that war helps to breed diseases?

Is race hatred a cause of war or a result of it?

Whom do we mean by the government in the United States?

Who controls the government in Russia?

Who in England?

Who in Germany?

Who in France?

In Southey’s poem, how does the children’s idea of the battle
differ from that of their grandfather? Why?

Are people less likely to protest against war if their
forefathers have fought many wars?

What have been the four main causes of war?