Was it not a great victory? Yes.
It was a great victory for the capitalists of the world who lent money to both belligerents. (But it was not a great victory for the workingmen of both countries, who, through weary, weary years, will be shorn of part of their earnings to pay the interest upon the war bonds.)
It was a great victory for the capitalist group who plunged for plunder and got it. (But it was not a great victory for the capitalist group that lost its plunder.)
It was a great victory for the generals, who, from a safe distance, directed the fighting. (But it was not a great victory for the workingmen who, at close quarters, fell before the guns and were buried where they fell.)
It was no sort of a victory for the working class of either country. At least, any victory that came to the working class of either country was merely incidental. Great Britain whipped the Boers, but the British people did not get the gold mines and the diamond mines. The Japanese whipped the Russians, but the Japanese workingmen did not get any of the plunder for which the war was fought. The Japanese capitalists got all of the plunder. The common people of Japan were so poor, after they had fought a “successful” war against Russia, that, within six months of the termination of the war, the Mikado urged the sternest self-denial upon them as the only means of saving the country from bankruptcy. And, notwithstanding the victory of the British over the Boers, the common people of England were never before so poor as they are to-day.
What is the use of blinking these facts? They are facts. Nobody can disprove them. They stand. They stand even in the face of the further fact that some wars have helped the working class. The American Revolution helped the working class of America. But the American working class would not have been in need of help if the English land-owning class who ruled the British government had not been using the government to plunder and oppress the people of America.
But that is only one side of the story. Let us look at the American side. The common people of America gained something from the war. They slipped from the clutches of the English grafters. But they did not get what they were promised. Read the Declaration of Independence and see what they were promised. Read the Constitution of the United States and see what they were given. Between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States there is all the difference that exists between blazing sunlight and pale moonlight. No finer spirit was ever breathed into words than that which appears in the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson wrote it, and he wrote splendidly, though the Declaration, as it stands, is not as he first wrote it. Jefferson was so afire with the idea of liberty that his associates upon the committee that drafted the Declaration shrank from the light. They compelled him to tone down his words. But the Declaration as it stands spells Liberty with a big “L.” And, Liberty with a big “L” can be nothing but a republic in which the people, through their representatives, absolutely rule.
The people, through their representatives, have never ruled this country and do not rule it to-day. The Constitution of the United States will not let them. It will not let them vote directly for President. In the beginning, the people did not even choose the electors who elected the President. State Legislatures chose them. No man except a legislator ever voted for the electors who chose Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison and some others. To this day the Constitution denies the right of the people to choose United States Senators and Justices of the United States Supreme Court. In the few states where the people practically choose United States Senators they do so only by “going around the end” of the Constitution. They exact a promise from legislative candidates to elect the senators for whom the people have expressed a preference. But this is wholly extra-constitutional. If the legislators were to break their promises, the United States Supreme Court would be compelled to sustain them in their constitutional right to do so.
Now, here is the point. Granted that the American Revolution was of value to the American working class. Granted that the ills that followed from American rule were not so grievous as the ills inflicted by the ruling class of England. Grant all this and more. Still, is it not true that if it had not been for the ruling class of England, there would have been no occasion for a war? Is it not true that the English people, if they had been in control of their own government, never would have harmed the people of America? When did the English people, or any other people, ever harm anybody? When did a thievish, murderous ruling class neglect to harm any people whose plunder seemed possible and profitable?
The idea that the people of one country, if left to themselves, would ever become embittered against the people of another country, is absurd. Test this statement by your own feelings. Are you so angry at some Japanese peasant who is now patiently toiling upon his little hillside in Japan, that you would like to go to Japan and kill him? Is there any person in Germany whom you never saw that you want to kill?