Afterwards, a writer in the "Christian Commonwealth," lamenting war in the
name of Labour, but in the language of my own romantic middle-class, said
that all the nations must share the responsibility for this great calamity
of war. Now exactly as long as we go on talking like that we shall have
war after war, and calamity after calamity, until the crack of doom. It
simply amounts to a promise of pardon to any person who will start a
quarrel. It is an amnesty for assassins. The moment any man assaults any
other man he makes all the other men as bad as himself. He has only to
stab, and to vanish in a fog of forgetfulness. The real eagles of iron,
the predatory Empires, will be delighted with this doctrine. They will
applaud the Labour Concert or Committee, or whatever it is called. They
will willingly take all the crime, with only a quarter of the conscience:
they will be as ready to share the memory as they are to share the spoil.
The Powers will divide responsibility as calmly as they divided Poland.
The Whole Loathsome Load
But I still stubbornly and meekly submit my point: that you cannot end war
without asking who began it. If you think somebody else, not Germany,
began it, then blame that somebody else: do not blame everybody and nobody.
Perhaps you think that a small sovereign people, fresh from two
triumphant wars, ought to discrown itself before sunrise; because the
nephew of a neighbouring Emperor has been shot by his own subjects.
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