{"id":165977,"date":"2020-08-03T12:00:27","date_gmt":"2020-08-03T11:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=165977"},"modified":"2020-08-03T11:10:09","modified_gmt":"2020-08-03T10:10:09","slug":"could-the-dogs-of-war-have-been-kept-chained-prelude-to-the-guns-of-august","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/08\/could-the-dogs-of-war-have-been-kept-chained-prelude-to-the-guns-of-august\/","title":{"rendered":"Could the Dogs of War Have Been Kept Chained? Prelude to the Guns of August"},"content":{"rendered":"

World War I, also known as the First World War or the Great War, started on 28 Jul 1914: Guns of August.\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The possibility of war was in the air since 1890 when Otto von Bismarck had been replaced as Chancellor of Prussia.\u00a0 He had kept a fairly steady hand on the complex of alliances being formed among the European Powers and tried to keep Prussia out of colonial adventures in Africa which would have increased rivalries with France and Britain.\u00a0 But the young Kaiser, William II dismissed Bismarck in March 1890.\u00a0 The Kaiser quickly alienated Russia and alarmed Britain by encouraging colonial and naval ambitions so that by 1914 the political map of the world had largely become the map of the colonial possessions, protectorates, and spheres of economic influence of the Great Powers which dominated the international scene.<\/p>\n

The Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913 indicated that wars were still possible, but most leaders of the Great Powers felt that they could adjust the status quo by diplomacy and conferences. Norman Angell in The Great Illusion <\/em>(1908) had pointed out the futility of war from an economic point of view.\u00a0 Nevertheless, the storm clouds kept gathering.<\/p>\n

If the leaders of the European Powers were to move from crisis to crisis leading to war, was there anything that people could do to halt the irreconcilable aspirations of governments?\u00a0 One hope was that the socialist-led labour movement would refuse to fight against the working class of other states. The growth of industry since 1900 had led to the creation of a labour movement in the most heavily-industrialized countries: Germany, England, France.\u00a0 Could a link among such movements prevent war?<\/p>\n

On 29 July 1914, the International Socialist Bureau met in Brussels under a banner \u201cWar on War\u201d with socialist leaders from England, France, Germany, and Belgium. The two best know figures were Keir Hardie from Britain and Jean Jaur\u00e8s of France.<\/p>\n

Jean Jaur\u00e8s (1859-1914) was first a professor of philosophy having attended l’Ecole Normale Sup\u00e9rieur, the French elite institution which forms teachers for the last years of secondary schools and universities.\u00a0 Jaur\u00e8s was a classmate of Henri Bergson who later became known as the leading philosopher of his day.\u00a0 Jaur\u00e8s was elected to the French Parliament when only 26, and in 1893 defended local coal miners from his southwest area (Tarn) and gained a national reputation.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

WWI – Britannica<\/p><\/div>\n

Jaur\u00e8s was an outstanding speaker, fired by a humanistic, non-dogmatic drive that led to his speaking to meetings in all parts of the country.\u00a0 As a non-dogmatic person, he was able to bring different strands of social reformist thought together into a relatively unified socialist party. Increasingly, Jaur\u00e8s represented French socialism abroad.\u00a0 As a student, he had written on German thinkers, in particular Fichte and Hegel and so was at ease with German socialists.<\/p>\n

The idea of an \u201cinternational general strike\u201d if a war was declared was one of the ideas being discussed in socialist circles in England, France and Germany.\u00a0 However, no definite plans were set.\u00a0 Many socialists accepted the narrow nationalist spirit of their countries.<\/p>\n

Two days after the Brussels meeting, on 31 July 1914, when Jaur\u00e8s was back in Paris and sitting in a caf\u00e9, he was shot dead by a man claiming to be a nationalist.\u00a0 In the violent style of writing of the time, Rightist newspapers had been calling for the death of Jaur\u00e8s.\u00a0 Jaur\u00e8s had earlier defended the Captain Dreyfus in what was a crucial division of French political life, and so he had many enemies from the Right. Jaur\u00e8s had said that Dreyfus was \u201ca living witness to military lies, to political cowardice, to the crimes of authority.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whatever the motivations, the killing of Jaur\u00e8s silenced a voice that might have called for restraint and reason as the governments rushed to war based on the fear that the other side would change power relations decisively in its favor.<\/p>\n

______________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Ren\u00e9 Wadlow is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a><\/em>. He <\/em>is President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation and problem-solving in economic and social issues, and editor of <\/em>Transnational Perspectives.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

World War I, also known as the First World War or the Great War, started on 28 Jul 1914: Guns of August.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":129140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[433,260,291,757],"class_list":["post-165977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-europe","tag-history","tag-military","tag-wwi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}