were drawn into the bloody vortex. The total population of the world is somewhere near fifteen hundred millions. The whole of this vast population suffered directly or indirectly from the miseries of the war, which was imposed upon them by a small group of capitalist criminals. Never before had the world seen such immense armies as were now marshalled, never before had it known such monstrous instruments of death and destruction. Nor had the world ever witnessed such an irresistible mass of capital. Britain and France forced into the service of their money-bags, not only those who were British and French by birth, but in addition the thousands upon thousands of black-skinned and yellow-skinned colonial slaves. The civilised robbers did not hesitate to enroll cannibals among their soldiery, when cannibals were forthcoming. All this was done in the name of the most exalted ideals.
The war of 1914 had its prototypes in the colonial wars. Of this character were the following: the campaigns of the “civilised” Powers against China; the Spanish-American war; the Russo-Japanese war in the year 1904 (on account of Korea, Port Arthur, Manchuria, etc.); the Tripolitan campaign of Italy in 1912; the Boer war at the turn of the century, when “democratic” England brutally crushed the two South African republics. There were several occasions when a gigantic international conflagration threatened. The partition of Africa nearly led to war between Britain and France (the Fashoda incident). Germany and France were embroiled over Morocco. Tsarist Russia at one time almost went to war with Britain in connexion with the partition of Central Asia.
At the beginning of the world war, the conflict of interests between England and Germany concerning territorial predominance in Africa, Asia Minor, and the Balkans, came to the front. Events worked out in this way, that the allies of Britain were, first of all France, which hoped to wrest Alsace-Lorraine from Germany, and secondly Russia, in search of profiteering opportunities in the Balkans and Galicia. The robber imperialism of Germany