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I fully share the conceptions that our comrades Bertrand and Paul Reclus have developed in two articles in Plus Loin, on the attitude of interventionist anarchists during the World War. I could have simply referred readers to them, or simply expressed my sympathy with the spirit of these articles. But I feel a certain responsibility for the publication of the manifesto known as the "Sixteen", and I want to take this opportunity to clarify, in my opinion, the role and duties of revolutionary libertarians in international conflicts.
Throughout the war, I occupied a position which enabled me, better than other comrades, to follow closely the attitude of the entire left and extreme left of the workers' movement: revolutionary syndicalists, libertarian communists and anarchists.
At the start of the war, I went - it was my vacation - to Holland to ask my compatriots whether they would let Belgium be crushed without protest, without any act of common defense, and then afterwards - perhaps - Paris. I returned when Antwerp was in flames, and resumed my position as editor of the newspaper La Bataille Syndicaliste. I was particularly in charge of foreign policy at this paper, as indeed I would later be at the Bataille tout court, and I held this position there for the duration of the war.
Now, in Holland, as in England and especially in Paris, I had observed that all revolutionary spirit had been blunted, if not completely disappeared, in the circles of the extreme left. Our comrades in the struggle seemed to have become Tolstoyans.
I expressed my astonishment at this to my friends back in Paris, and for the next eight months I corresponded on the same subject with our friends in London, in particular with Pierre Kropotkin and Cherkesov, explaining that in my opinion we could not remain inactive, as we had no right to hover "above the fray".
"Send us an attempt at a manifesto," replied Kropotkin. I did, but the Londoners felt that the text sent was not sufficiently appeal-like, and it was they (Grave was also living in England during the war) who drafted the manifesto. The text was reworked following some comments from Grave and myself, and perhaps from others. And if, at the beginning, the document bore only fifteen signatures, a second edition already counted around one hundred and twenty, comrades from all countries (French, Italian, Swiss, English, etc...) and some of whom had expressly written behind their names : "to the armies".
In short, the manifesto clearly expressed the opinion of internationalist syndicalists and libertarians, who had remained revolutionaries.
And here I am, expounding what I said in Holland, as in England (in an interview with Malatesta) and in Paris : As revolutionaries and internationalists, we had no right to cross our arms and let the French Republic and Western Democracy be crushed by Prussian hobgoblins. We called ourselves revolutionaries, and as such we had a duty not only to defend the Future against the Present, but also to defend the acquisitions of the Present against the Past.
There was no doubt in any of our minds, as internationalists, that European and world civilization would suffer a regression of more than a century, and return to the Ancien Régime of pre-1789, if Germany were victorious. With France crushed, imperialist Germany would have competed in submarine warfare against England. Then it would be the turn of the United States: the Americans understood this.
It wasn't even Kaiser Wilhelm II who led the war he started it was the caste of militaristic hobgoblins who dreamed of German hegemony in Europe and the world.
Of course, we are now also witnessing a social reaction, particularly in the victorious countries. How could it have been otherwise after a four-year world war?
However, twenty-six dynasties swept away in one fell swoop in Germany, Austria freed of its emperor, and Russia from its autocratic regime, all constitute undeniable progress for humanity. To this political progress we must add agrarian reform, the breaking up of large seigneurial estates in all the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in Germany and Austria, as well as in the Balkans and Russia. The world war even had repercussions on the Chinese revolution.
On the other hand, the political and social reaction in England, France and the United States is certainly less strong than it would have been worldwide after a victory for the Ancien Régime. This reaction is most effective in Italy, and it seems to me that it is this fact that has impressed our Italian comrade Fabbri too much in his judgment.
In my opinion, our comrade judges the international situation much more harshly than it deserves, and in particular the danger of a new international war seems much less threatening to me than to him. On the other hand, I regard a social revolution as imminent in all countries impoverished by war.
In any case, even if a new war broke out, the extreme left of the workers' movement could not, in my opinion, act any differently than the internationalist revolutionaries did in 1916. They will have to have the great paths of human civilization before their eyes, and cannot remain inactive.
"But this war is not ours, it's a capitalist war", I was told in the heated meetings in Holland. And one of my opponents added: "If it were social revolution, or if the outcome of the war could serve social revolution, we would naturally take sides."
First of all, you can't get rid of a global scourge like the 1914-1918 war with a few words about "capitalism". This war for the domination of peoples and races had even more roots than the rapacity of the great industrialists and financiers, of all those who made their fortune with the misfortune of others.
It is doubtful, I replied to my opponents, that comrades who have failed to defend the gains of the great Revolution of 1789 and those of 1830 and 1848 will, in the future, better defend the social revolution against the forces of present-day capitalism. In a period of global revolution, the weak will also be able to "put on their slippers" and declare themselves "against all violence".
I wouldn't reproach our non-interventionist comrades if we were non-resistance advocates, Tolstoyans. But our anti-militarism is just one of the principles of the extreme left in Western countries. It is a secondary principle, and if tomorrow this principle clashes with another predominant one, if tomorrow the whole progress of civilization is at stake - as it was in 1914-1918 - it is quite possible that the comrades of the day will have to forget their hatred of war in the face of the need to defend the new acquisitions of civilization.
After all, peoples and social classes have the civilization they deserve, and those who don't know how to defend themselves inevitably decline. This is a law of Nature, which man cannot afford to forget.