The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1914-08-28
NOT 1LAMELESS-GEo.
BARNARD SHAW SAYS THAT
THE WAR IN EUROPE IS
FOR THE BALANCE OF
POWER

In remarkable article puofsned
IN the London Daily News George
Barnard Shaw says:
1--WE are at war. 1t is well that we
should know what the war is about
To begin with, we are not at war be-
cause Germany made an infamous
proposal that we should allow her TO
violate Belgian neutrality.
IF is had suited us to accept that
proposal, we would have found plen-
ty of reasons for accepting it. The
devotees of our own neutrality have
found some of them already no more
infamous than the diplomatic reasons
we have given in the past for courses
which happened to be convenient to-
us. Let us, therefore, drop it. Our
national trick of virtuous indignation
is tiresome enough in peaceful strife
at home. At war it is ungallant and
objectionable.
war, and nothing else, and the fact
we all have to face is that if our side
is victorious, the result will be an
overbalance of power in favor of Rus
sia, far more dangerous to all other
combatants than the one we are fight
ing to redress.
"Prussian militarism has bullied
us for forty years. Neither Germany
nor France believed that we would
fight when it came to the point. That
is why there was such a wild explo-
sion of delighted surprise when the
French chamber learned we werel
game after all. That is why the kai-
ser, though reckless of every other
interest concerned, offered us the best
excuse he could invent for our neu-
trality, believing we were only too
ready to snatch at it, and that is also
why we had to take off our coat and
sail in. We had to show that when
it comes to a balance of power wei
are no mere dummy weights in the
scale.
"Our immediate business is, there |
fore, to fight as hard as we can, for
our weight when the settlement
comes will depend on the part we
shall have played in the conflict.
France, instead of using her sur
plus income in abolishing French
slums and building up French chill
dren into strong men and women, has |
lent it to Russia to strengthen the
most tyrannical government in Eu-
rope and to secure the interest on!
her loan. She mas entered into an
unnatural alliance with Russia
against her more civilized neighbors.
I'VE have no right to throw stones
at France on this account, for wei
made an agreement with Russia of
still more sordidly commercial char
acter for the exploitation of Persia
with capital that would have fed our
starving CulluIeH.
"Now mark the consequences: Ger
many with hostile France on one
side and hostile Russia on the other,
is in a position so dangerous that
we here in our secure island can form
no conception of its intolerable ten
sion.
by our blindness we have brought
about the war. We have deliberately
added to the strain by making a mill.
tary and naval anti-German alliance
with France without at the same time
balancing its effect by assuring Ger
many that if she kept peace with
France we would not help Russia
against her, nor in the last resource
allow Russia to advance her frontier
westward.
"Is it to be wondered that Potsdam
militarism, with it's chronic state of
panic, with militarism raised to des-
peration by the menace Of Russia,
France and England, made wild at
tempt to cut its way out after a de-
spairing appeal to let Il. fight one to