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An essay in universal history
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| bet | 39/43 | | Sana | 22.11.2020 | | Hajmi | 0,7 Mb. | | #12762 |
“However,” writes O.F. Soloviev, “at the very beginning Germany made clear her lack of desire even to consider the central question of disarmament, in spite of the intentions of the other participants. Kaiser Wilhelm II made a sensational speech in Wiesbaden in which he declared that the best guarantee of peace was ‘a sharpened sword’.491 Then, for the sake of consensus, the remaining delegates, at the suggestion of the Frenchman L. Bourgeois (1851-1926), a former president of the council of ministers and a Mason, limited themselves to accepting an evasive formula on the extreme desirability of ‘limiting the military burdens which now weigh on the world for the sake of improving both the material and the moral prosperity of mankind’.
“After this the attention of delegates was concentrated on the third commission, which discussed problems of arbitration under the presidency of the same Bourgeois, with [Jacques] Decan [a member of the Grand Orient of Belgium], as secretary. As a result of these efforts, which were supported by other governments, success was obtained in paralysing the attempts of the Germans completely to exclude the application of arbitration procedures in the regulation of conflicts. In the preambule to the convention on ‘the peaceful resolution of international conflicts’, which was unanimously accepted, it was noted that the conference had been convened on the initiative of ‘the most august monarch’, Nicholas II, whose thoughts it was necessary to strengthen by an agreement on the principles of right and justice, on which ‘the security of states and the prosperity of peoples’ rested. The first article of the first section ‘On the Preservation of Universal Peace’ made the following provision: ‘With the aim of averting, if possible, the turning to force in the mutual relations between states, the signatory powers agree to apply all their efforts to guarantee a peaceful resolution of international disagreements.’… Decan in his report to the commission was apparently the first to use the term ‘League of Nations’ to apply to the union of state approving of similar documents. Later the term was more and more widely used long before the creation, after the First World War, of an international organization of that name.”492
The Tsar’s initiative was a noble one, as the American President Warren Harding officially acknowledged in 1921; and it was not without long-term consequences that are discernible today. Nevertheless, the fact was that there was no way in which the two great opposing ideological forces of Europe – Russian Orthodox Tsarism and Continental Freemasonry – could work together for long. The idea of a League of Nations was essentially a way of limiting the power of sovereign nations, and this could not be in the long-term interests of Russia – or of the world as a whole, insofar as such a League was in essence the embryo of a world government which the Freemasons with their anti-monarchist and anti-Christian ideology would have a much better chance of controlling than Russia. Already in 1899, the tsar found himself having to fend off some undesirable suggestions on arms limitation493, and within six months he had evidently cooled towards the idea of arbitration – he sent large numbers of troops into Manchuria without presenting his dispute with China to the court. Nor did the British think of arbitration before launching their war against the Boers. The fact was, “no European government would accept the idea of arms reduction.”494
It was not only the nationalists that hindered the attempts of tsars and statesmen to stop the arms race and prevent war. Socialist workers also consistently placed national pride above the international solidarity of the working class. Thus the Second International’s numerous attempts to force governments to reduce armaments and stop fighting were undermined by the conflicting nationalisms of French and German workers, Bulgarian and Serb workers, Austrian and Italian and Czech workers.495
Only the Russian socialists appeared to have no difficulty in placing class above nation – perhaps because so many of them were Jews… On the eve of the First World War, the assassination of the great French socialist and internationalist Jean Jaurès symbolised the failure of socialism in the face of nationalism. But when the nationalists had exhausted themselves, the path would be open for the only completely consistent internationalist – because he hated all nations equally – Vladimir Lenin….
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