Georg Brandes: War not fight for ideals but fight for concessions

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Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Georg Brandes: Selections on war
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Georg Brandes
From The Conquest of Basra (1914)
Translated by Catherine D. Groth

The story of the Bagdad road is an example of the way in which the fate of nations depends on a few men — diplomats and ministers — who, in reality, are but the mouthpieces of the large banking and industrial concerns. The masses have not the slightest voice in directing the policy of their country, in making war or peace, and this is as true of a parliamentary country like England, a democratic country like France, as of Germany, Russia, or Turkey.
In olden days when nations lived by agriculture they went to war to gain territory, to wrest land away from their neighbours. Now that the nations have become industrial states and are in reality ruled by financial oligarchies even if they nominally appear to have emperors, kings, or presidents, the purpose of war is no longer to conquer land or peoples but markets. Each nation wants a wider outlet for its products, greater investment for its capital. The real character of war today is not a fight for ideals but a fight for concessions.
Japan made war on China in 1895 in order to dominate Korea; the United States fought Spain in 1898 to gain access to the riches of Cuba; England attacked the Boers in 1899 because of the Transvaal mines; the Powers stormed China in 1900 in order to force railways upon her; Japan declared war on Russia in 1904 to gain certain advantages in Manchuria. The conquest of territory was an incident; what the victor sought was railroads, loans, tariffs.
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It must be remembered that in France, as in all other countries, the financial and industrial interests are centred in the hands of a very few men who practically control the nation. As a Frenchman writing under the pseudonym Lysis proved in a remarkable series of articles published in 1906-7 in La Revue, France is practically governed by three or four affiliated banks and establishments of credit who control the wealth of the nation and invest it without giving any real account of their operation and without taking into consideration the interest of the nation or any but their own. Ministers of finance never attempt to interfere because the few men who control the banks also control the Government. They have made the good-will of the politicians worth while and have won the press over to their side.
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It seems as if the conquest of Basra is England’s first step to thwart Germany’s plans in Asia Minor. The outcome of the war alone will decide whether the Bagdad Railway is to be completed by Germany or the other Powers.
The Bagdad Railway — incidentally — is one of the many threads which, bound together, have forged the cable which brought on the war, — this war for business, for enriching bank directors and kings of industry. It rages madly while Europe’s unhappy and peace-loving peoples, artificially stirred by national hatred, believe they are fighting for ideals of liberty and justice.
The war for trade is costumed as a defense of the fatherland — of that fatherland which statesmen in every instance could have guarded, strengthened, enriched, and developed to the highest degree of civilisation without the use of a single torpedo, mine or grenade.

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