Greg Sheridan, the foreign editor of the Australian, wrote last week on the approaching centenary of World War I. His column was a strident defence of Australia’s participation in the war, using almost identical arguments to those he uses to endorse the very contemporary preparations by the US and Australian governments for military conflict with China. Sheridan framed his article by asking “who is primarily guilty”? For the Australian columnist, there was only one possible answer. “Germany, especially under Kaiser Wilhelm II, bears the chief moral responsibility,” he wrote. “It engaged in a massive military build-up and increasingly militarist policies. It gave a blank cheque to Austria in its aggression toward Serbia and it invaded Belgium as a prelude to invading France… Everyone made mistakes, but the Germans started the war and rightly bore most responsibility.” “Britain’s decision to resist German aggression was right,” Sheridan declared, and Australia was right to support Britain because it was in the country’s “national interests.” The Australians who died, he wrote, “mostly believed they were doing what was right” and had been “willing to sacrifice their own lives, their whole lives, for something beyond themselves….” Sheridan authored what can only be described as a nationalist rant. “The purpose of such heroism and sacrifice,” he wrote, “was to defeat German militarism and preserve our security, not to attain glory. But it did attain glory. The Aussie Digger [soldier] rightly became legendary… The heroism of the war showed that we were capable of meeting any challenge. To recognise and take pride in this is not to glorify war. No-one glorifies war. But it remains true in most of history a strong defence is the best preventive of war. However, you can hate war as much as you like and still cherish the Diggers…. At the end of the day, it was a just war and our soldiers were heroes.” Sheridan’s assertion that soldiers attained glory and were heroes is aimed at concealing the unimaginable horror that was endured by young men, many still just teenagers, on both sides. In mud, filth and fear, millions lost their lives to bombs, bullets, gas and disease. Many millions more suffered terrible injuries and were permanently traumatised, both physically and mentally. Hurled into an abyss of death and destruction, Australian soldiers did not display any more heroism or courage than their British, French, Turkish or German counterparts. To claim they did is nationalist stupidity and historical ignorance. The soldiers who fought World War I were victims of a crime. As the great Marxists of the time explained, World War I was a predatory and imperialist war on all sides. A generation of youth was deluded by patriotism and nationalism and used as the cannon fodder in the struggle between rival capitalist elites over the control of colonies, markets and profits. The lives of 62,000 Australians were squandered to defend the British Empire’s grip over India and large areas of Asia and Africa, while expanding Australian capitalism’s own sphere of influence by taking possession of Germany’s colonies in the South Pacific. In the final analysis, World War I was the outcome of the fundamental contradictions of the capitalist profit system between an integrated world economy and its continued division into outmoded nation-states. The only solution to the failure of capitalism, and only way to prevent war happening again, was for the working class to overthrow it.
Posted on: Mon, 12 May 2014 05:58:21 +0000
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