Ask any soldiers, be he russian or German, what were they fighting for? For what did they shed the blood of their brothers, the workers and peasants of their neighbouring country? For what did they cripple people? They will not tell you, they will not answer, because they themselves do not really know.
Perhaps they were fighting on behalf of the Serbs, or perhaps it was the Germans who attacked Russia. There was talk of land. At first the Russian peasant-soldiers thought: “We”re going to take the land away from the Germans.”
However, they soon realized that the war was not about land!… What was it about then? There are very few who know, who understand. It is not only the Russians who are fighting “in the dark” without really understanding for what they are knifing, bayoneting, and crippling people. The German, English and French soldiers also have as little idea of the real reason for the war. Ask any one of them-each will cite you a different reason.
The German people were told: “Russia has attacked us. Russian Cossacks are marching on Berlin. We must defend our fatherland. At the same time we will go and liberate Russia from the toils of bureaucracy, from the arbitrariness and lawlessness of the tsar”s officials. We are going to die for the “liberty” of the Russian people! The Russian people themselves are weak and cannot deal with their “internal enemies”, with venal ministers and the rapacious oppressor-landowners. Let”s help them! We will open up for the Russian people the road to popular liberty, to rights and freedom.”
This was the seductive song that the Kaiser and his staff, the German landowners and industrialists, sang to the German people. The people did not understand; they believed. In millions of issues the capitalist newspapers spread lies about the war, governments introduced wartime censorship, did not allow one word of the ruth to be printed, and threw the best friends of the working class into jail. The people were fooled, as the Russian soldiers were fooled when they were assured that it was for “land” that they were marching into Galicia…
In France, the government, the generals, ministers, bankers and industrialists, found another explanation of the war for their people. It was time to take back from the Germans the territory of Alsace and Lorraine, which they had conquered in 1870. “Citizens of glorious republican France!… You live in a free country, you have won all political rights for yourselves at home… But next door, in neighbouring Germany, the people are groaning under the yoke of the Kaiser!… Let us save the German people! We will fight until we have chased the Kaiser out of Germany and have established a republic for the Germans!”
And noble France decided to “liberate” the German people and put an end to the Kaiser. Not a bad cause! Who needs kaisers and tsars? However, if you look a little closer you see that there is something rather odd: the people were living in peace, the Kaiser and the Tsar were friends and paid visits to each other. The capitalists of various countries worked together to set up factories and trading companies, together robed the colonies in Asia and Africa, profited from the production of cannon and armored vehicles. And suddenly all the tsars and all the capitalists of the various countries have apparently been seized by a noble passion: let us go and “liberate” our neighbour! Let us introduce rights and justice, equality and prosperity among our neighbours!
