Читать книгу The World War and What was Behind It; Or, The Story of the Map of Europe - Louis Paul Bénézet - Страница 7

Table of Contents

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.

¹In 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: