The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1918-02-22
CHANGE WHICH
WAR WILL MAKE

The following editorial, heralding
the rise of the working people to
power as the salvation of world
staggering under agonies brought
upon it by erich and old men," to
be endured by "young and poor"
ones, is from the London Nation,
one of England's foremost weekly
journals:
at is the love of power which has
brought the world to this pass; the
power of one class over the life of
another class, passing into the am
bition of the most materialized of
all the European societies to exercise
this power over all it's rivals. Chris
tian thinkers have often liked to re-
fleet that it was slavery which
brought the first great European I'm
perialism to the ground. Has its
successor banished slavery? When
war broke out, every great COM
mercial city in the world was the
moving wheel of some tremendous
engine of economic power. What
measure of liberty was likely to be
left to the workpeople under sys-
tenn which put every natural agent
of mans physical needs, and there
fore every avenue of his labor, I'M
der a few hundred men sitting in
| board rooms in London or Johannes
burg, in Berlin or New York? In
ternationalism in supply and maui
facture is necessary and right. But
beneath the internationalized capital
of our times has lain something very
like national slavery-expressed as
over-work, under-pay, bad housing,
industrial disease. It's masters were
absolutely distrustful of each other,
and one after another of their
browning acts of exploitation in
North and South Africa and in the
Far East-all but ended in general
war. They could not make a just
and peaceful division of the worlds
rich inheritance; for they conceived
of power as force, pursued it with
the help of their Governments) in
mutual jealously, and based it on
the essential subjugation of the gen.
eral will and mass of mankind
black, white or yellow. Thus indus
try, which should unite men, divided
them. Wealth, which should be the
sign of a fuller general life, became
merely the symbol of grasping and
restless one, and Science, which is
the victory of reason, overthrow it.
Is there, then, no element of hope,
no possible and available service of
rescue for society? There is. 1t
is not a matter of small significance
that the class which, with some ex-
ceptions, has spoken of the war with
most sense and moderation is that
which has suffered most from it, and
had least to do with bringing it
about. That class consists of the
real workpeople of the world. 1t
consists, too, of the theorists, hard
and mistaken as many of them have
been, who have busted themselves
most with the social problem. Even
from those strange Russian Bolshe-
viks has come an act which, with
all it's roughness and inconsiderate
haste has rent the veil of that Tenn
pie of Secrecy where much of the
worlds worst work and meanest wor-
ship have been accomplished. But
behind the Bolsheviks stand forces
which are not merely more moderate,
but more humane and more service
able. We do not underrate the task
of Liberal Europe and America in
reducing to reason the wild dreams
of Nationalism and Imperialism. But
Liberalism is no longer a direct
weapon of democracy, and since it's
decline in western thought, some
thing in closer touch with the first
needs and realities of mans life has
come into being. Even at this stage
of the war, it would be possible to
imagine half-a-dozen Labor Cabinets
meeting in conference and bringing