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HOW SHALL THE PLAGUE BE STAYED?

_Christmas_, 1914.

People ask what new arrangements of diplomacy or revivals of
Christianity--what alliances, _ententes_, leagues of peace, Hague
tribunals, regulation of armaments, weeks of prayer, or tons of
Christmas puddings sent into the enemies' camps--will finally scotch
this pestilence of war. And there is no answer, because the answer is
too close at hand for us to see it.

Nothing but the general abandonment of the system of living on the
labour of others will avail. _There is no other way_. This, whether as
between individuals or as between nations, is--and has been since the
beginning of the world--the root-cause of war. Early and primitive wars
were for this--to raid crops and cattle, to carry off slaves on whose
toil the conquerors could subsist; and the latest wars are the same. To
acquire rubber concessions, gold-mines, diamond-mines, where coloured
labour may be exploited to its bitterest extreme; to secure colonies and
outlying lands, where giant capitalist enterprises (with either white or
coloured labour) may make huge dividends out of the raising of minerals
and other industrial products; to crush any other Power which stands in
the way of these greedy and inhuman ambitions--such are the objects of
wars to-day. And we do not see the cause of the sore because it is so