How England Sacrificed Belgium
(1914)
Irish Worker, 17 October 1914.
Recently republished in Red Banner, No.6 (PO Box 6587, Dublin 6).
Transcription: Aindrias Ó Cathasaigh.
HTML Mark-up: Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Proofread by Chris Clayton, August 2007.
It has often been remarked in Irish Nationalist circles that according to the current cant of the Parliamentary Party the interests of Ireland can always be best served out of Ireland. Sometimes it is on ‘the flure of the House’ of Commons that Ireland must be fought for, sometimes it is on the platform in the United States, sometimes it is in election contests in England, and now it is on the battlefields of the Continent. It is always outside of Ireland that blows must be struck for Ireland, if we are to believe the official ‘leaders of the Irish Race.’
It must surely be upon some such principle of action that England is fighting for the neutrality of Belgium. According to all the British jingo Press, and still more according to the organs of the Irish Home Rule Imperialists, or Imperialist Home Rulers, Great Britain has entered into this war solely because of her burning zeal for the neutrality of Belgium. Only because of the danger to Belgian neutrality was the mighty heart of England moved to action, and only because she saw this precious thing in danger did England at last reluctantly draw the sword and enter the lists against the Germans. And here in Ireland we are tearfully appealed to, to consider the awesome spectacle of the conversion of England to ways of justice and chivalry, and so considering to rush to her aid and side by side with her army battle for the neutrality of Belgium.
But when we look around us all that we see tends to arouse the suspicion that England has simply made a catspaw of Belgium, has deliberately tempted Belgium from her neutrality, and having committed that brave little kingdom to the fight has cold-bloodedly left her towns, cities and territories to be defended by her own unaided efforts. Whilst howling long and loudly against the violation of the neutrality of Belgium England never sent as much as a corporal’s guard to help to prevent it. Whilst the Belgian soldiers were pouring out their life-blood in torrents in an effort to stem the forces of the invader, whilst the harvest in Belgian fields was trodden under foot, Belgian industries destroyed and the population of Belgium driven from home and country, the armies of England were kept carefully out of Belgium, and that country left to stew in its own juice.
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England and France cried out to the world that they were modern paladins of chivalry risking their all to save Belgium whilst all the time they were coolly devoting their every energy to the work of saving their own skins. All during the first month of Belgium’s martyrdom England poured her Expeditionary Troops into France leaving Belgium to her fate. Belgium asked for troops to help defend her neutrality. England replied, “We are sorry, we would like to send you some troops, but you see we have a pressing engagement elsewhere. But we will write some nice newspaper articles about you, and even if you do suffer just think how useful your sufferings will be to us in the preparation of speeches against Germany.” That is all the satisfaction Belgium has got or is likely to get the satisfaction of serving England as a tortured animal under the hands of the vivisectionist serves science.
Antwerp in its last agony brings this fact out very clearly. Even the most thoughtless cannot be but struck by the manner in which the editorials of the English newspapers assure their readers that the sufferings of Antwerp will be another argument against Germany. They dwell so much upon this aspect of the situation that it is clearly seen that in their eyes the sufferings of the Belgian people count for little – the manner in which their sufferings can be exploited to England’s advantage counts for much.
The English press now admits that before the bombardment commenced the Belgian authorities wished to evacuate the city in order that it might be spared. But the English insisted that Antwerp must fight on although, as they now admit, they were well aware that the forts would be powerless to hold out long enough to be relieved, and that the resistance would mean the destruction of the city.
A Naval Brigade of raw, untrained units was sent into Antwerp to deceive the people with the hope of British assistance, and the Belgian people were driven on by England to the needless sacrifice of another city in order to provide another ‘horrible example’ for the unctuous hypocrites of the British press to shed tears of ink over.
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Now that Antwerp has fallen all the professional liars of the capitalist press assure us that it is of no importance to the Germans. By such a statement they only further prove the truth of what I have just written. They illustrate the cold-blooded determination of England to sacrifice Belgium, all Belgium, to save the precious skins of the Allies. If Antwerp is of no importance to Germany, then all the greater is the crime of those who forced the Belgians to resist the bombardment when they desired to evacuate the city.
If Belgium had contented herself with protesting at the passage of German troops through her territory she would now have all her fortresses and cities in her own hands, her soldiers would all be alive and in a position to act with effect when the war had exhausted both sides, none of her civilian population would have lost their lives, homes or domestic treasures, or be scattered as exiles on the charity of strangers, her foreign trade would not be lost by the paralysis of her domestic industry, and her neutrality and independence would be effectually maintained.
If in the fluctuations of the war the soil of Belgium became the scene of conflict both sides would have in their own interests kept aloof from any considerable town or city in the possession of large bodies of fresh Belgian troops, and would have avoided anything calculated to make fresh enemies for their own side.
Under such circumstances any conflict that would have taken place in Belgium between the Germans and the Allies would have been fought out in the open country, or around small villages whose inhabitants could easily have been sheltered in the large towns, and all the horrors to which Belgium has been subjected would have been unknown.
For all those horrors she has to thank her stupid governing class, and the wily, heartless English diplomacy that sacrifices Belgium in a quarrel not her own.
Will Ireland allow her sons to be sacrificed by the same unscrupulous power that English capitalism may rise by garrotting the civilisation and commerce of Europe? No, a thousand times no!
Mr Redmond’s Volunteers – the unpaid soldiers of England, scabbing on the British Army, doing for nothing what British soldiers require pay for doing – they may go though we doubt it, but no man to whom Ireland and Ireland’s interests are dear will ever draw a sword or fire a shot in any quarrel of England’s making until such time as such quarrel finds its venue in Ireland, is fought out on Ireland’s own soil.
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And when that day comes the swords will be drawn and the shots fired by Irishmen for Ireland, and for Freedom for all who work and live in Ireland.
| Independent Labour Party of Ireland Appeal to the Irish Working Class |
(1914)
Transcribed by The James Connolly Society in 1997.
Fellow-workers,
In the midst of the many appeals and manifestoes now being thrust upon your notice, we hope that you will find time to read this, the appeal of the only organised body of Socialists in Ireland who have at all times held to the principle that the true path to national redemption for this country led along the road of social progress; and that therefore they who worked for either cause could not but be of service to the other. As Socialists, we have ever taught that National Freedom could not be won by a population resigned to industrial slavery; and as believers in National Freedom we have ever taught that the real re-conquest of Ireland necessarily implied the redemption of the Irish worker from the slavery of the capitalist system.
This being our position, we desire now that Industrial Emancipation and National Freedom are alike in danger, to set before you our views of the present war, and your and our proper attitude towards it. We speak as workers to workers, and as lovers of our common country to all those who ought to love and cherish it.
Ask yourselves this question: What foreign enemies have the workers of Ireland; what country has ever done us any harm? With all the people of the world we have much in common; with none of them have we any just grounds for quarrel. All the workers of the world are like ourselves, beasts of burden to a propertied class, their lives ordered and ruled for them by the interests of that class, their countries stolen from them by the armed might of the hirelings of that class in the past, and kept from them by the superstitions of law and tradition fostered by that class in the present. Their sufferings are as our sufferings, their hopes are our hopes – we are all brethren one of another. To take up arms in anger to kill any of the poor driven workers of another nation at the order of our rulers is as clearly an act of murder, an act worthy of Cain, as any crime of violence ever committed.
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Now if we forget for a moment the vital distinction between a people and their rulers, and imagine that each of the countries outside Ireland is solid and with but one interest to conserve, that when we speak of England, we mean all England; of Germany, all Germany; of France, all France; of Russia, all Russia; if we imagine this current capitalist cant to be true, not even then can we conceive of any reason why Irish workers should fly to arms for the Empire. Has Germany ever harmed Ireland? No! Has England ever harmed Ireland? Yes! The whole history of our connection has been a history of English war upon Ireland. Are we then to take up arms and proceed to murder a nation that never harmed us, and do it at the call of a nation that destroyed our national life, murdered our civilisation, devastated our country, slew with famine untold millions of our people, hanged or imprisoned the best and bravest of our race, and even now refuses to put in operation the poor caricature of Home Rule so long promised?
We refuse to believe it. No, fellow-workers! The Empire is founded upon the misery of the toiling masses; security is based upon the submission of the dispossessed working-class. Its triumph will establish its industrial and political supremacy more firmly than ever. Its humiliation, on the contrary, will allow other peoples to take their rightful place among the nations of the world, and enable the working class to pursue their path to prosperity and freedom.
Out of such humiliation would come the peaceful growth of industry in Europe, and out of the travail of such humiliation for Empire there might arise an Ireland nationally free; an Ireland able to develop a real civilisation based upon that broad democracy of common ownership which the Celtic civilisation of our forefathers foreshadowed.
We ask you then to let the Empire go its own way; let those who own it fight its battles. It is not yours, you are but its slaves, and surely there is nothing in creation meaner than slaves fighting for the source and basis of their enslavement.
Conserve your energies, guard the welfare of your own homes, study and work for the redemption of your class and nation. Watch and wait – in Ireland. For
| “Time at last makes all things even And if we do but watch the hour, There never yet was human power That could evade, if unforgiven, The patient hate and vigil long Of those who treasure up a wrong.” |
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