Translated from the Spanish of the original article that was published in the anarchist newspaper La Antorcha, November 9 , 1923, Buenos Aires, Argentina
The arms craze of the governments that led the European peoples to the ruin of armed peace and then dragged them to war has its imitators also in the countries of the Americas, whose governments, following the game of military supremacy, increase the number of soldiers, acquire more armaments and spend more on the military machine every day.
The military preparations of neighboring nations are watched jealously in order to respond to them with other equal or greater preparations, which in turn will be answered by other no less important preparations on the part of their neighbors.
Following the example of Europe, towards which statesmen look for their high political inspirations, the countries of South America are thus entering into the game of armed peace, driven by the arms craze.
For the time being, in Argentina, five thousand more conscripts have been called to the ranks, the modernization of the squadron has been arranged with the acquisition of new armaments, and several hundred million gold pesos have been voted for, as of late, to be invested in increasing the war potential of the country. This, without regard to pacifist protests or to expressions of willingness to accept the limitation of armaments. The same can be said of Brazil and Chile, who also embarked on this arms competition train.
All this, together with the journalistic campaign made in its support, will create in South American countries a warlike mentality conducive to the imperialist affairs of their rulers, a morbid state of mind, refined by the suspicions and hatreds that are awakened, and predisposed to the outbreak of war.
More than just for the misery it generates – being such a grave evil – armed peace is dangerous for the warlike spirit it creates, for the exaltation of patriotism it provokes, and for the reactionary consequences it determines, which are its natural byproduct, and with which it is preserved in an obvious parallelism. In all countries, reaction can be measured in direct proportion to their armamentism and to the extent that it ceases to be fought by the people.
Even worse fruits of reaction than those suffered at present await the peoples if they do not prepare themselves to combat the growing armamentism which, as much as it arms governments against the people, disarms the people in the face of the advances of authority.
The most important thing is not the investment that is made of money extracted from the people in tax surcharges, but the warlike and reactionary possibilities that armament entails and stimulates, the infesting of the entire social life by the absorbing predominance of militarism.
The nations of the Americas are following the example of Europe, without learning from the results that have been reached and are being reached there by the arms craze, the contagion they are suffering, and by the work of which they will eventually plunge into the same abyss of misery and horror as the European countries.
The difficult ordeal of war and the armed peace which preceded and prolongs it in an unending succession of ills, instead of serving as a profitable lesson, stimulates, on the contrary, national resentment, favoring the designs of governments to arm themselves more and more. War not only leaves corpses and ruins, devastation in the fields and in the cities, but also a warlike atmosphere, saturated with violence, full of threats, that leads to a recrudescence of armed peace, which is the seedbed of new wars. And from this environment created by war comes the consequence of the growing armamentism, into which almost all nations are throwing themselves. And although distant from the theater of war and alien to the conflict, the countries of the Americas also feel the influence of this environment, as is evidenced by the arms competition which they give themselves over to.
Against armed peace – the crisis of which is war – because of the many ills which derive from it, because of the possibilities of reaction which it opens up, because of all that it infects in social life, it is necessary to fight it, knowing that as much as we allow governments to be armed, we disarm the people in the face of their advances, and that national defense itself is secondary for the bourgeoisie to the preservation of their own privileges.