The working men of the civilized world and their friends in the other classes ought to induce their Governments entirely to abandon the idea of armed intervention in the affairs of Russia—whether open or disguised, whether military or in the shape of subventions to different nations.
Russia is now living through a revolution of the same depth and the same importance as the British nation underwent in 1639-1648 and France in 1789-1794; and every nation should refuse to play the shameful part that Great Britain, Prussia, Austria and Russia played during the French Revolution.
Since death ends all of consciousness, the most inhuman of all inhumanities and the most immoral of all immoralities is the shortening of human life; and next to it is the diminishing of its happiness.
War shortens many lives and fills more with misery; hence its essential inhumanity and immorality.
A large part of the world has just passed through the furnace of war—a war between the German and English nations with their respective national allies. All international wars are contests for supremacy in the markets of the world, or at least for advantage in some among them. This one was no exception.
The furnace of this war was seven times larger and seven times hotter than any other has been. According to the latest estimates (September, 1920) its fierce flames directly and indirectly killed thirty million young men and wrecked totally twice and partially thrice as many more.
Yet the fire by which the world upon the whole and in the long run suffers most is not the intermittent, flaming one of the hell of international war, which is always kindled and sustained by the capitalists of the belligerent nations for the purpose solely of securing commercial advantages over each other; but the greater suffering is by the permanent, smoking fire of the hell of the inter-class war which is always kindled and sustained by the capitalist class in each nation for the purpose solely of robbing the labor class of the fruit of their toil.
These national and class wars (hells, flaming and smouldering) are due to the same matter-force law, the law of self-preservation, and, paradoxical as it may seem, this law is equally operative on both sides in each war.
Both hells exist as the result of the working out of the same law of animal preservation by competition—the law of capitalism, and both hells will be done away with as the result of the working out of the same law of human preservation by co-operation—the law of socialism.
One proof of the rightness of the co-operative system is the fact that it necessarily operates for the whole people and not for a class, whereas the competitive system as necessarily operates for a class and not for the whole people.