War and the Aftermath – Freedom (1914)

_{Mary Spring Rice and Molly Childers on board the Asgard, 1914}

From ‘Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Communism’, August 1914, London, UK, printed and published by T. H. Keell

The criminals who rule the nations are displaying their Christian love for the people (they are all Christians) by entering on a war the end of which cannot be foreseen, and which threatens to destroy the progress of a century. And all this ostensibly for the lives of two persons — one less than our Government is responsible for in Dublin!

The “serene conscience” of the Emperor Francis Joseph, in the face of all the dreadful possibilities before the whole of Europe, only proves the criminal callousness of one who if he followed the teachings of his creed — bad enough as it stands — would be satisfied with “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.”

Again, hardly has the message of war been printed ere the evil schemes of the financier and the profiteer are in full swing. The coming suffering of the people is dreadfully foreshadowed in the immediate rise in the price of necessities, and the fall in credit.

If at the end of all these horrors the people could emerge victorious over the ruin of Capitalism, there would at least be some satisfaction for the price paid; and we can but hope that things may turn against the crowned and uncrowned enemies of liberty and progress, and that a social revolution may be the aftermath of the orgy of blood and ruin with which we are threatened.

Dublin would be enhanced if the secret forces that are working to produce civil war could be exposed. For there can be no doubt in the minds of those who have watched the tactics of the most reactionary and conservative elements in the governing classes that these enemies of the people are prepared to use every possible means to preserve their feudal and aristocratic privileges against popular demands.

When we read of two such black shadows as those of Lord Roberts and the Archbishop of Canterbury haunting Buckingham Palace; when we note the tone of the speeches given forth by Lansdowne, Londonderry, and the Cecils; and last, but not least, when we hear the mouthings of defiance uttered by that Mephistopheles of the Bar, Sir Edward Carson, who is breaking the very law by which he earns his dishonest bread; we can rest assured that no means, however base, and no sum of money, however great, will be spared in their war on the people.

For there need be no mistake in coming to this conclusion: they are the deadly enemies of all popular rights. And if the workers in their disgust at the failures of the Liberal Party should imagine their struggles, their rightful claims will receive more sympathy at the hands of these titled robbers, they will be sadly mistaken. No; if wisdom is to prevail, let the clear, clean-cut path of direct action and Labour solidarity be the one that is followed.

Even politicians are losing all hope in politics.