The Maccabaean

The International War now dividing the world in two camps appears to humanity a tragic mystery. Yet the war did not come as a bolt from a clear sky, but is the result of historical causes remote and immediate and provoked deliberately by commercial and dynastic interests. The war is an anachronism and a contradiction to the fabric of civilization and culture, of international commerce and industry, of international socialism and unionism, of international science and literature. On the ruins of a liberating internationalism, savagery rages triumphant.

‚More surprising and significant perhaps than the war itself, the responsibility for which must be laid at the doors of the European dynasties and the ruling' military classes, is the attitude of the warring nations toward the war. Despite the diplomacy in furtherance of dynastic interests, the unjust invasion by Austria of Servia precipitated the war. This war has become the most popular and enthusiastic in history. It is natural that the peoples of Servia, Belgium and France which have been from the beginning on the defensive and whose national existence are at stake should be unanimous in their struggle for freedem. PRrt Germwanv. Austria, Russia and England have been led to the war by other motives than self-defense. Nevertheless the popular feeling for the war and the general feeling of its justification prevail in the same degree among the nenple of all the belligerent countries. Naked erotism and the naked right of the strong have become the standard of morality. All class- hatred between rich and poor. all political antagonism between socialists and conser- vatists have disanneared in face of this transformation of the nations from ethical organizations into unmoral biological units. Servia fights for its freedom and existence against Austria’s imperialiem; Germany and Austria claim to make war

on Russian Panslavism and the growing tendency to world domination; France and Belgium are bleeding for their national existance; Russia invokes the help of "the great God of the Russian Earth" in her war for the Liberation of the Slaves from the German yoke; Germany desires to break the British monopoly of the sea; whereas England on her side expects to crush the rivalry of German industry. No protest in the name of justice and higher morality is heard from the radicals and the socialists who base their class-struggle and their demands for a new social system on the principles of righteousness and justice. The red color of revolutionary socialism symbolizing the brotherhood of man and the kinship of races has assumed the significance of bloodshed. Criticism is silenced, moral scruples forgotten, holy treaties are valued as "scraps of paper." international deals have lost their power and the mailed fist dominates everywhere.

Modern Civilization Based on Egotism

This moral catastrophe has its roots in the character of modern culture. Our entire civilization is based on egotism, individual and national. Individual egotism has resulted in the class-struggle and in unfair competition through monopoly, in the anti-social conception of life expressed in the words of Cain: "Am I my brother's keeper?" National egotism leads to the apotheosis of war, to the acceptance of the right of the strong in international relations. The contempt of the ruling nations for oppressed nationalities, the secret hatred of the weak toward the strong, the degradation of assimilation, subjugation and national arrogance, all these are abnormalities, and the results of the national egotism forming the basis of our present-day Civilization.