Moribund Society and Anarchy by Jean Grave

It is impossible to speak of the fatherland and patriotism without touching on that frightful plague of humanity, militarism. In studying mankind's origin and the course of its evolution, we noted that the warrior caste was one of the first to be constituted and to impose its authority upon other members of the clan or tribe. A little later this caste was re-divided into chiefs and simple warriors, as a former step in advance had divided the tribe into warriors and non-warriors, all members of the clan having originally been warriors in case of need. We do not know whether humanity followed a regular course of progress; that is to say whether it passed successively through the three stages of hunting, pasturing, and agriculture. That it began by hunting and fishing, the gathering of plants and wild fruits, there is no doubt. As to knowing whether tribes passed from this first stage into the pastoral, then into the agricultural, after the manner one takes his bachelor's degree in a course in science and letters, we are not so sure. We believe, however, that these different ways of procuring food must have been combined according to the natural resources of the regions inhabited. Thus hunters might continue to live principally by the chase, even after having found the means of cultivating some alimentary plants, before they succeeded in domesticating animals. But be that as it may, the warrior caste continued to remain preponderant and to preserve a large proportion of power even when forced to share it; and this caste has remained the firmest support of those who have succeeded to authority. So long as it remained a closed caste, recruiting itself from within, making war upon its own account, the population suffered greatly from its depredations, the armed man standing on no ceremony about taking from the peasant at his pleasure; but the tithe once paid, and no troops or castle being in his neighborhood, the peasant might hope for a little respite; at all events he was not constrained to give the best years of his life to reinforce the battalions of his exploiters. There came an epoch, however, when the lords began to arm the peasants on their domains during emergencies. Then by means of bounties or by stratagem, they attracted such as it was desired to have enlist in the king's armies. But it was left to the bourgeoisie to throw the burden of its defense entirely upon its slaves. It is the bourgeoisie which has perfected the system by forcing the workers to devote a certain portion of their youth to the defense of their masters. But since it could not, without some danger, put arms into their hands and say to them: "Protect me in my possessions," it invented the worship of "the country. " And it is by the help of this lie that it has succeeded in getting the workers to submit ever since to this bloodsucking tax. It is by help of this sophism that for several generations it has been able to take away the strongest and healthiest of their youth, to send them to rot, morally and physically, in the dungeons called barracks, without anyone dreaming of resisting or escaping, without a single voice being raised to inquire by what right people are asked to be transformed for seven, five, or, in the last resort, three years, into automatons, machines for killing and food for cannon.

Nevertheless there have been protests. There have always been some; desertion and insubordination were necessarily born with the institution of standing armies, but these were scarcely conscious acts; the deserter, the insubordinate, did not appeal directly to individual rights; their acts were undoubtedly due to feelings of personal repugnance which they hardly took the trouble to analyze. Let us go further: the protests raised in literature against war and militarism were scarcely more than explosions of feeling, and hardly, if at all, supported by logical deductions based upon human nature and individual rights.