From the article by M. Tarragó and Romeu a Advertising (9-X-1917). Own translation. This text came out just like yesterday in the middle of the First World War, then called the Great War. Of Tarragó i Romeu it is only known that in 1908 he published a novel (The summer of Sant Martí). He mentions in this piece the journalist Ralph Norman Angell Lane (Holbeach, 1872 – Croydon, 1967), member of the British Parliament representing the Labor Party and whose pacifism Tarragó points out.
Discarded the possibility of a war of religion between nations, due to the fact that the feeling of confessional freedom has already come to be unanimously accepted, and discounted also the possibility of a war due to personal rivalries between reigning families, it remains today as the only reason – and according to it seems very powerful – for the war is the means to obtain the economic domination of the earth, to which, according to everyone’s opinion, belongs what is bleeding our planet today. The imperative need, according to some, that Germany had to secure for herself the world markets in which to place her immense production, reducing the danger of the force of those who might oppose her triumphal march, was what he led this power, first, to maintain a powerful army and a most formidable navy, and then, according to his own expression, to defend itself against the enemies who might one day fall upon it and annihilate it. According to others, England also had to go to war to maintain its seriously threatened hegemony in its vast colonial heritage, the first base of its wealth. (…) The close relationship in which the interests of all nations live has made it very clear the terrible danger involved in creating antagonistic economic groups, due to the fact that none of them can achieve the absolute dominance of elements of production to deter their adversary. (…) This close relationship of interests, both those corresponding to the large manufacturing, banking and mercantile companies, and those corresponding to the workers, has so far not had the decisive force to prevent the catastrophe we are witnessing today; this is mainly due to the capitalist element believing that its prosperity depended on the ruin of the adversary, and on the part of the working element believing that its life and well-being depended on the good business done by capital. (…) If, as a liquidation of the current conflict, the despotism of certain military classes is managed to be annihilated at once, and the peoples are left free to direct their own destinies, well we can affirm, without fear of making a mistake -us, that the last stage of this human evil, war, in its manifestation as a business engine, will have been completely removed from the list of calamities, as have been leprosy and smallpox, because missing the single element interested in making war for war’s sake, there will be no one who will try to defend or promote their business by armed hand. As Norman Angell says, peoples do not make trade treaties supported by the number of battleships, nor by units of army corps, because if it had been so, they would have no explanation for the vigorous development of Holland, Belgium and Switzerland, nor the classic poverty of Russia.
Source: www.ara.cat
