[TO-DAY, when all currents in international affairs are headed so strongly toward peace, it is natural that war prophets should be confined to the Bolsheviki, whose hope of world revolution is largely contingent upon new hostilities. No article like the following has appeared in a responsible journal outside of the Bolshevist press for many months. The author's purely technical citations, of course, are entirely unassociated with responsible international policy.]

WE are betraying no secret in saying that the movement for a disarmament conference started in the United States, and that Washington has exercised powerful pressure to bring such a conference to pass. Every sharp-sighted man sees America's game. She seeks to use her economic supremacy to establish a corresponding military supremacy over the other nations. Therefore a disarmament conference will aim at limiting the armaments of other countries in comparison with those of America. In other words, such a conference from the United States's point of view will be an instrument for augmenting her political influence to a par with her economic influence. Thus, seen in its true light, the coming meeting of the Powers is not for the purpose of eliminating conflicts, but for the purpose of strengthening imperialism and thereby eventually aggravating conflicts.

But the fact that America has ex

1 From Die Rote Fahne (Berlin official Communist daily), January 31

pressed the wish for disarmament, although her motives are so clear, is seized upon by amiable and innocent Socialists, as well as by bourgeois pacifists, to laud America as the fairy godmother of peace. Wonderful theories are spun about the industrial selfsufficiency of the United States. Being possessed of all the blessings of the earth, she is said to have no motive for imperialist expansion. Germany's Social Democratic pundits declare that American imperialism has reached its natural limits. At least, they all agree as to America's pacifist intentions. Therefore it may not be entirely useless, without quoting figures, which are invariably unreliable, to to describe America's military preparations, which show that, quite contrary to popular opinion, that country has to-day the most skillfully organized military organization in the world.

We can gather abundant proof of this from official sources. AssistantSecretary Davis of the War Department published an article in the American Machinist recently upon industrial preparation, in which he described the measures taken by the United States to avoid defeat in the next war. Early this year the same gentleman said in

speech at Philadelphia that America's regular army is merely the nucleus of her first line; that the country can in a very short time put four million men on a war footing. The most important feature of the National Defense Act is the emphasis it lays upon industrial mobilization. In looking over this Act

we are reminded of Marx's saying that war constantly assumes new forms, according to the social organization of the country that conducts it. American industry would pass at once under Government control upon the outbreak of war. Thus Secretary Davis says in effect: The law recognizes the dependence of effective military action upon industrial mobilization, and also that the industrial experts upon whom we shall have to depend for carrying out our industrial-war preparations are normally to be found in industry itself, and not in the army.

Industry as a whole is placed in charge of seven centres of control, one of which is the Chemical Warfare Service, another the Engineering Corps, another the Aviation Service, another the Medical Corps, and so on. The first three questions these seven departments must settle among themselves are: what shall be produced, how much, and when and where.

An elaborate plan has been drafted for mobilizing all the able-bodied men in the country. The rifles, ammunition, and other equipment and supplies for the soldiers assigned to each branch of the fighting service have been calculated. Prospective requirements of all other commodities and articles have been estimated. In this way a schedule of no less than fourteen thousand different kinds of supplies required for maintaining a great army in the field has been drawn up. The whole country is divided into fourteen districts, in each of which the seven departments mentioned have their respective branches. Every factory in each district is listed and classified so that its output will be known beforehand in case of mobilization. In an emergency, the War Department would merely dispatch a few thousand telegrams, and every important manufacturer in the United States would simply take out of his

filing-case his production list, his drawings and specifications, and start to work. Naturally all of these products have been standardized. Forty-three committees exist to see that necessary raw materials are supplied promptly to the factories in question.

This is in outline the plan by which American industry would be transformed overnight into a State-Socialist organization, were war to break out. Mighty little evidence of the pacific intentions of the American nation is visible here. It strikes us that this scheme would make the capitalists the commanders of the next war, instead of its servants, and that we have here the spectre of a tremendous future conflict that will make the catastrophe of 19141918 look like child's play.

Furthermore, the real character of the coming disarmament conference is suggested by the fact that it has such difficulty in starting. It has to wait until bitter animosities and menacing portents all the way from North Africa to China have been dissipated. Russia's participation, which was an alleged reason for the last postponement, is a transparent pretext. If the Great Powers really wanted to disarm and to ensure the peace of the world for all time to come, they could meet to-morrow at Genoa, Rapallo, San Remo, or any other equally pleasant spot where diplomats can dine and wine agreeably under the palm trees in the wintertime. As a matter of fact, conflicts of interest and the fear felt by weaker nations that they will be 'bunkoed' by stronger nations are what have hitherto postponed the conference.

I do not mean that a conference will not be held. Why not? What matters is that a conference cannot prevent imperialist wars; that it will merely aggravate existing conflicts and in the long run encourage a new armamentsrace. Already we hear proposals to

modify the decision of the Washington Conference of 1921. Rumania, through her official military journal Romania Militaria, opposes making further pledges like those at Washington. In the August number she demands that Rumania build a navy as rapidly as possible, in order to face a new conference with an accomplished fact; and in the September number she insists that the Washington resolutions upon submarine warfare be amended 'to consult the interests of particular countries.'

The same spirit expresses itself in the new Japanese naval programme, which is remarkably ambitious-'four new nineteen-thousand-ton cruisers, nineteen large destroyers, nineteen mine-layers,' and so on. This programme is clearly designed to compensate for the Washington limitations by proportionally strengthening the navy in other directions.

The dispute between Great Britain and America over cruiser and submarine construction, which became so acute that the British Foreign Minister was impelled to offer a loving-cup to the German Ambassador in London, is all in line with this.

Another straw on the current is the new bill before the Parliament of Czechoslovakia providing for the military training of youths. Nothing shows the real hollowness of the disarmament fraud better than this movement. Czechoslovakia proposes to disarm. She plans to reduce her period of military service to 'only fourteen months.' At the same time the Government brings in a bill to force all young men of the ages of nineteen and twenty to take military instruction for two years, so that they will be partially trained soldiers when they begin their compulsory service. Disarmament by lengthening the period of military instruction!

It is nonsense, of course, to imagine

that these evasions and violations of the pacifist programme are mere accidents, or merely aberrations in a movement that is, on the whole, making real headway. On several occasions the Great Powers Great Powers- the United States, Great Britain, Japan, France, and Italy have solemnly agreed not to use poisonous gases in a future war, but to stick to their old tried and tested high-explosive shells and similar more humane devices. This solemn pledge was renewed only a year ago. Nevertheless we hear on every side of plans to use poison gas in defiance of this pledge when war breaks out. This attitude is of crucial significance, for it shows that all such conferences are held merely to delude and stupify the proletariat, but that when the crisis comes all these solemn pledges will prove to be mere scraps of paper like the Belgian Neutrality Treaty.

Naturally everybody argues against the use of poison gas in the next war, because it is the most fearful lethal weapon in existence, capable of wiping out a hostile army in a moment and of depopulating the whole country behind the front. But at the same time we are told that we ought to use poison gas in the next war because it is the most humane weapon we can employ. That is the discovery of certain bourgeois professors - a tribe of sycophants that is, on the whole, the most contemptible of all the apologists and bootlickers of capitalism.

This latest gospel comes to us from pacifist America, the country that all our semibourgeois trade-union leaders hold up to us as a model for the world to follow. For instance, we read in the Military Surgeon, the official organ of the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States, in the issue of November 1925, an article upon the humanity of gas warfare, where it is demonstrated at length that, although

breathing poison gas may not be preferable to a vacation at a health resort, it is a far more desirable mode of death than a man usually meets with on the battlefield. 'It can be confidently asserted that the use of chemicals in warfare is far more humane than that of the other weapons commonly employed.'

A French surgeon and professor of the Academy of Medicine, writing in Figaro last July to justify France for using poison gas against the Moors in the Rif, after that country had solemnly pledged itself at Washington not to use this weapon, protested: 'We are the victims of mischievous errors and ridiculous prejudices. In reality, gas warfare is exceptionally humane douce!!!- so far as anything can be humane in war. It alone enables us to reach our military objectives with a minimum of slaughter and bloodshed. Gas is almost painless. The losses [presumably of the attacking party] are practically nil. Let us stop quibbling over this. Gas warfare is much less cruel than shell warfare. It is not so bloody, and it is far more effective. We have employed it, consequently, whenever possible against the Moors. We are doing them less injury in this way than we should were we to drive them out of their lairs with machine-guns and high explosives while they were shooting down our soldiers.'

These cynical unbosomings strip the mask of hypocrisy from the imperialists and their chauvinist admirers. Gas warfare is more effective, so it must be retained. That is the main argument of all these advocates. Let me quote a champion of English imperialism and a champion of American imperialism to show that the resolutions of the Washington Conference are mere scraps of paper, and that no imperialist Power intends to observe them when they stand in the way of its purpose. On

October 5, 1922, the Assistant-Secretary of War of the United States, in a reply to the criticisms made of his Department because it continued its preparations for gas warfare in spite of the Washington Conference, said in substance: As things stand to-day, we can leave nothing to chance. The Government will be able to get the poison gas it needs if it must have it. All the chemical works in the country are listed and organized to meet the emergency in case of hostilities.

After the unanimous resolution of the Arms Traffic Commission, in which the United States was represented, the semiofficial Journal of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering stated in an article upon disarmament in June 1925 that it was just as impossible to prevent the use of gas in warfare by law as it was to prevent the use of other offensive and defensive arms. Since the Washington Conference, where Balfour and others stated frankly that research in chemical warfare would inevitably continue, America had come to the conclusion that it was not practicable to banish the most effective military weapon that exists. The Committee on Military Affairs of both the Senate and the House, and military experts in the army and navy, were agreed that it is impossible to abolish chemical warfare, and the United States Chemical Warfare Service could therefore count on the support of the authorities in continuing its work.

Now to add an English opinion. One of the leading military experts of Great Britain, writing in its leading military journal, the Army Quarterly, of November 1, 1925, under the pseudonym of Otac, said: It is inexcusable optimism to say that chemicals will not be used in future military operations; memories of the last war are still too fresh in the minds of the nation for it to imagine that an unscrupulous enemy would not

We can easily understand, therefore, how Poland, which is the first country to use poison gas against its 'domestic enemy,' the fighting proletariat, has just established a chair in its School of Mines at Krakow to teach the use of poison gas in warfare, and why this subject is also taught at several American universities.

Let me repeat that these are not the effusions of irresponsible hotheads, as the pacifists are wont to call anybody who refuses to help them lull the proletariat into security with soothing

sponsible officials whose business it is to make ready for a coming war. They show us how inconsistent imperialist governments are. Each of them has a Janus head. Only one of its faces bears a benignant smile of peace. I could add indefinitely to such statements as I have cited. They go to prove that we can never have peace, albeit peace is the most desirable thing in the world, so long as bourgeois governments and imperialist States exist. The only way to get peace is through war- but it is civil war. Let the proletariat seize power, and the war era will be over.

[THE author of The Economic Consequences of the Peace keeps in the public eye as a tireless advocate of the economic doctrines he espouses. If he is not reforming peace treaties, opposing the gold standard, and advising the French Ministers of Finance upon their budget bills, he appeals to a less economic element in the community by a romantic marriage with a Russian dancer. This character-sketch by one of the most brilliant Liberal journalists in Great Britain possesses a high degree of general interest for that reason.]

IN the dark sky of December 1919 Mr. Keynes flared up like a rocket. He published a book. It was a book on what is supposed to be the dullest of

1 From the Daily News (London Liberal daily), January 23

all subjects. It had a title - The Economic Consequences of the Peacethat seemed like a sentence of death on its prospects. The argument of the book was so unpopular that its author, had he been recognized in Trafalgar Square, would probably have been ducked in the fountain-pools as a pro-German. It was stated with such uncompromising audacity that it seemed to be an invitation to public ostracism, if not to a public horsewhipping. The book was damned by the critics and sent a shudder through the 'Coupon' Parliament. And it went like a prairie fire. It was read as Uncle Tom's Cabin was read in the days of our grandfathers. It crossed the Atlantic and set America aflame. It was translated into every Continental tongue, and was discussed from