Translated from the Portuguese of the original article published in the anarchist journal Revista Liberal, April 1921, published in Porto Alegre, Brazil
At the outbreak of the conflagration that for four years bloodied the world, the belief was widespread, professed in good faith and from good sources that this was a necessary and inevitable struggle to eliminate the threatening cancer of militarism from the face of the earth.
The war was the natural fruit of this armed peace that nations had been maintaining for years, in the face of the fantastic development of German militarism, menacingly raising above the people the sword of Damocles.
Armed peace had been gnawing at the economies of nations, advancing professional militarism, which, with its aristocratic and imperialist tendencies, had in turn become a serious threat to the democratic achievements of peoples.
It was an obvious regression, which seriously worried all freedom and justice-loving spirits.
The outbreak of war – the most solemn denial of the principle “si vis pace para bellum” [if you want peace, prepare for war] – was therefore received with the idea that with one evil, a greater evil would be avoided in the future.
It was the death of militarism! The annulment of militarism was preached by statesmen, politicians and journalists of all types, and one had the impression that this depended on the crushing of central imperialism, the source of such a dangerously painful infection.
Once the militarists were defeated, militarism would virtually be dead, and there was even talk of the disarmament of nations, this being one of the 14 points of [American President] Wilson’s.
Pleasant delusion! After the end of the struggle which should have resulted in peace and the victory of democratic principles, and consequently the annihilation of the militarism which has borne such sad fruit, all governments are gripped by a fever for armaments and such military activity that the terrible threat of war returns for the people, spreading malevolently through all nations.
France, whose people, in the years leading up to the war, were continuously demilitarizing, as can be seen by the anti-militarist propaganda that was being spread there and by the high number of military service resisters which in 1916 reached an alarming rate; France, the country that marched in the vanguard of those who were going to kill militarism, is today considered by former President Wilson as “one of the most militaristic countries in Europe”!
In all other European countries, militarism is advancing as a constant threat to peace and the freedom of peoples.
And, after the bloody struggle in which the peoples seemed to have fought to rid themselves of a militarism that is absorbing, oppressive, and perilous; after the solemn meeting of the ambassadors that was supposed to dictate peace to the world and proclaim the death of militarism; and when the peoples were supposed to be taught “si vis pace para pacem” [if you want peace prepare for peace], we are back to the starting point: armed peace.