On the War Effort 1917

“Win the War”

Never since the beginning of the present war have I for a moment doubted the final victory of the Entente Allies. I fully believe that there are good reasons why they should win, and equally good reason why they will. Some of them I shall endeavor to set forth. But before doing so it may well be well to offer some suggestions as to why a certain government measure now under consideration, known as the Military Service Bill, should not meet with the approval of any person in Canada who does not wish to see democracy destroyed and liberty mocked.

The reasons why every wealth producer, either farmer or wage worker, should be opposed to conscript military service may be set forth in few words. No worker can be driven to charges and scandals; to the Hughes-Borden dispute; and to the evidence of all the parliamentary commissions. They were at last so humiliated that they were in a temper to condemn someone. They had seen enthusiasm killed; and graft growing great, and profiteering shameless. And their patience was exhausted. And they showed it all at the provincial polls. Therefore, said the Tory campaign manager—that natural impatience and that patriotic indignation must either be stopped or given vent. Ah! If it could only be turned against one political party instead of against the government. If all the provinces of Canada which in their discontent had all ceased enlisting could only have that anger turned against the one province—which had merely ceased a little earlier; and against the one man whose high character and pure record and distinguished talents made him the most dangerous and redoubtable adversary to all false patriots and demagogues.

The Plan

Well, it might be done. It should at least be tried. And so, for a year past the effort has been in preparation through press and platform. The people, at all cost, must be given a false scent. And sent upon a paper-chase. And the great Canadian Conservative Mot-de ordre was to be—“Down with the French!” And drive the old mother province out of confederation. Nothing less. That is the fine, statesmanlike inspiring cry. Not that anyone has really rebelled against any law enacted. Though they might be goaded to it. Not that peaceful agitation against any proposed enactment is ever illegal or unconstitutional. No! But “down with Quebec!” Death to Sir Wilfrid, and to millions of other good Canadians who dare ask of a moribund parliament for a popular vote before enforcing one of its own expiring enactments. No. Let us read the Liberals out of confederation. This is to be a war of loyal Tories only. All others must be subdued or absorbed, or ostracized. And thus, in a desert of peace and harmony they propose to “win the war.”

Revolution

There is a sane and sensible socialism to which all right thinking men are tending; and to which most of us can subscribe. There is a peaceful and constitutional revolution which is coming, in our affairs, and which alone can prevent the other, and the violent one. Call it what you may. It means—radical reforms. The present, rotten system of this Rogers campaign shows that we are ripe for it. And the call for that reform, and the need for it today; must be heard and felt, I am sure, in every corner and constituency in Canada, by every right thinking man and good citizen of his country.

Impudence

Sir James Lougheed tells us, with all the impudence of the parvenu, that they are the cowards and the slackers who are to decide this election. The electors of Canada will thank the Tory leader of the senate very much for this complimentary qualification, at the very first opportunity.

Of course there are some. And they vote both ways.

The Temper of the People

I think I know my Canada fairly well, from sea to sea. And what this country is capable of, in men and in resources, if they are properly mobilized, and honestly led and seriously administered. I think I know something of the fine audacity of Canadians; and what any great prime minister could have done with them, at the very outbreak of this war, in every province, without exception.

And I am convinced that there lingers still in the breasts of every son of this free soil of ours, of every province, and of both races and tongues, some sparks of that fire which burned in the hearts of the heroes who fought for our freedom and [illegible—gave?] us their fame. [text missing] service in industry without sooner or later realizing that he is not a free man. The power that drives him to work is also the power which he produced by his labor. This logically follows. There is no getting away from it. No individual or combination of individuals, could have any other motive for driving others to labor, except that of profiting thereby. Therefore, whether workers are either coaxed or driven to produce wealth for others, and [word missing] not get a full equivalent for that which they are thus forced to produce, they experience all that ever lay behind human slavery. It does not matter whether that slavery was the open and above board chattel slavery of the olden time, the semi-hidden slavery of the feudal age termed serfdom, or the wage slavery of today, that is so completely disguised ’neath the garb of apparent freedom, that millions of slaves never realize that they are such.

A slavery under which the slave is exempt from service at the repugnant business of human slaughter and devastation, except he sees fit to voluntarily offer himself for such employment, is eminently preferable to one under which he may be ruthlessly driven to the brutal business at the word of command by his masters and rulers. Under the former he enjoys the privilege that is of inestimable value to him, as it exempts him from a service that must be exceedingly repugnant to a really civilized being. If, however, occasion should arise when it becomes necessary to resort to arms and violence in order to defend himself and his fellows against those would take their lives or dispossess them of their privileges and liberties, there is nothing to prevent him from so doing. In such event it is beyond question that the average man will respond to the requirements of the case and do all that is humanly possible without solicitation, threat or compulsion. Any cause worth fighting for, and of such a nature as to clearly disclose its worth to those who should support it, will find no lack of supporters when the hour strikes for its defence. Any cause compelled to resort to compulsion in order to find defenders, is a cause of very doubtful virtue indeed.

Up to now Canadians have been exempt from military service against their will. That is a privilege that perhaps many have failed to assess at its true value. There may be some among us still who will thoughtlessly surrender it under the influence of sophistry and smooth talk peddled by those who are employed for the purpose. Later they may wake up to the sad fact that it is far easier to give than to get. If we are wise we will do all in our power to hold whatever privileges we now possess and under no circumstances, surrender anything without a desperate struggle.

Industrially the workers of Canada, as of the rest of the world, are slaves. Politically they are at least theoretically free, because they possess the franchise upon a supposed equality with their industrial overlords. As workers they may quit their employment whenever they choose. Once they have been brought under the ignominy of enforced military servitude it is but a short step to enforced industrial servitude and from which they can not escape except at the expense of perhaps more terrible and bloody struggles than marked the journey of their forebears from the status of abject slavery to that of political freedom.

The pretence that the surrender of liberties now possessed is necessary in order that the war may be brought to a victorious conclusion is too ridiculous to be worthy of a moment’s consideration. The further pretence that liberties or privileges now surrendered will be restored after the war is concluded, should carry no weight except with those who are not familiar with the intrinsic value of ruling class promises. The value of such promises may be easily estimated if one only realizes that the very basis of all rule is the robbery of those over whom such rule is held. The trade itself affords an excellent and reliable photograph of the probity of those who work at it, and the confidence that may safely be placed in their promises.

It is inconceivable that the surrender of any rights and privileges now possessed by the Canadian people can in any manner strengthen the Entente Allies in their struggle with the enemy. There is nothing to show that they are short of men or are likely to become so. On the contrary there is much to show that the shortages of men is the least of their troubles. Out of nearly 450,000 men enlisted in Canada, and of which Borden stated no longer since than last May, 350,000 are said to be now on the firing line and the total casualties are given as approximately 110,000 to date. This should still leave a balance of something like 290,000 to be accounted for, and the enlistments still continue at the rate of about 6,000 per month. And it has been openly charged in the House of Commons recently and has not been convincingly denied, that every imaginable effort short of downright prohibition has been made by the Borden government to so discourage recruiting as to make it appear that voluntary enlistment was a failure. If this be true and still there are volunteers to the number of some thousand per month, it may reasonably be assumed that had recruiting been properly and wisely encouraged, the number of men enlisted would have been much greater. These matters and figures should be pondered well by Canadians before they allow themselves to be carried off their feet by glib-tongued scare-mongers who may be actuated by motives doubtful if not positively ulterior.

Lloyd George recently stated that Britain had raised and equipped “the greatest army the world ever saw,” amounting to nearly 7,000,000 men. It has recently been stated in the House of Commons at Ottawa, that Britain still has over 3,000,000 men under arms at home that have never yet been out of the country. The 7,000,000 referred to does not include the Colonial troops. Now, there is something in these figures that may well give that part of the Canadian people that is too decent to deserve to get stung and has sense enough to exercise due caution in guarding against such a possibility, food for serious and careful reflection. With these facts staring us in the face, we are justified in asking, from whence comes this alarming cry about a shortage of men to maintain our fighting strength at the front? What is the real motive lying behind it? With this vast body of men under arms already, with the millions of other allies, and the prospective millions of the United States yet to come, and on top of all this the wealth of the world outside the “iron ring” to draw upon for sustenance and fighting strength—and that is the boast—why all of this zeal upon the part of the government to rivet the chains of Prussian militarism upon the limbs of the wealth producers of Canada and thereby strike down and destroy the few privileges of democracy and freedom they now possess?

The statements made and the questions asked can not be satisfactorily disposed of by silly accusations of “pro-Germanism,” “sedition” or loudly shouting “I. W. W.” The war must be fought to a finish and it ought to be. It can not stop until the cause from which it sprung has been removed by the crushing defeat of that semi-feudal survival from the middle ages, that autocratic rule that still holds sway in the Teuton Empires of Central Europe. The struggle is to the death between that feudal survival of autocracy and absolutism, and the capitalism of today, with its ruling class political democracy. The two sides to the conflict are politically some centuries apart. The political concept of the former is that of the 14th century. Its sway is measured by territory. No other conquest can fit in with the autocratic concept of rule. The political concept of the latter is that of government by a class democracy, a democracy of industrial and financial lords. Its domain is not so much territorial as it is trade and market. Its conquests are the conquests of trade and commerce. Its weapons are cheap goods, long credits, the cash book and the ledger. It can not tolerate autocracy and its impudent interference with industry and sequestration of its fruits to the swashbuckling military display of the rattling sabre, the mailed fist and the shining armor.

The skinning of slaves and trading in their hides all over the earth is altogether too prosaic and simple a purpose to make any effective appeal to the autocratic spirit. The ledger and cash book can afford no satisfaction to the autocratic ambition, nor bring the flesh of pride and conquest to the autocratic ego? But out of the loins of that feudal absolutism, with its “divine right of kings” as a political philosophy, came forth modern capitalism with its potent ledger and cash book and its class democracy. But this birth of a new order did not take place without the accompaniment of “labor pains.” The birth means death to the mother from whom it was delivered. That is just now being finished off upon the bloody fields of Europe. If the child is to live the mother must die. If the mother survives the child must perish. The child will not perish.

But narrow though the capitalist conception of democracy may be confined as it is to mere political lines, it is a step forward along the path of social evolution and progress. It is an advantage gained to the working class because it blazes the trail leading to industrial democracy and capitalist production creates and drills the proletarian army that will be forced by the sheer pressure of circumstances to follow that trail. Industrial democracy placed upon the production of the things requisite to human existence, by a free people and for their own use instead of for the profit of others, is the haven of hope to the exploited victims of the capitalist civilization of today. That even the poor boon of political democracy has come to the workers as a privilege bestowed upon them by their capitalist overlords, rather than as a result of their own conscious efforts, in no manner detracts from the words, and afford no reason why they should supinely relinquish it at the request or behest of those who assume the authority to do so.

Let the war be fought out to a sweeping and conclusive victory of the side whose political and economic development is abreast of the times, and which at least measures an advance step along the pathway of human progress away from the brutal tyrannies of the narrow political autocracy of the bloody feudal age. Whatever aid may be given to the Entente Allies, from those western shores should be given as the voluntary contribution of those who would be free, to a cause that in their judgment makes in the direction of that freedom they so ardently desire. Let neither jot nor tittle of the poor privileges now be possessed be surrendered under any pretence whatsoever. Let it not be made possible for the future to say of us: “They fought the good fight in order to destroy military autocracy and ‘make the world safe for democracy,’ only to find themselves in the hour of their supposed victory stripped of all democracy and liberty and hopelessly enmeshed in the coils of that autocratic military curse which they had fought to destroy.” Let the war be won, but let it be won by and for the forces that make for human progress, for democracy and a better and higher civilization, and not by those forces that make for reaction, the destruction of democracy, the death of liberty and the triumph of “Prussian kultur,” with its shackles of autocratic damnation in the way of military servitude riveted upon us.

E. T. Kingsley