Armored "pacifism" - Lunacharsky
For quite a long-time various preliminaries dragged on in Geneva. They were devoid of any serious significance. The preliminaries also include that special, so to speak, tame public opinion, which was admitted to the conference to express their feelings.
* Canaan is the ancient Egyptian name for Phoenicia. —Approx. ed.
Most of these pacifists and pacifists were nothing but ordinary molasses, disgusting in taste and smell and had long been boring even to the most unpretentious contemporaries.
However, among the spokesmen for tame pacifism, there were also two major personalities, of whom one was supposed to personify the maximum of efficiency, combined with God-fearing and respectable idealism, and the other to play the role of a titanic figure that rose from the bottom and brought with it a small dose of oceanic noise from the world of the masses. .
The first role was played by the famous English artist Lord Cecile.
As always, he stood on the pulpit in a somewhat helpless pose of a very large clumsy bird and, hanging his head on one shoulder, with a calm confidence bordering, in the opinion of his admirers, downright holiness, outlined the wishes that the "League of Nations Society" puts forward. ”, numbering one and a half million people, and which people are the most respectable and fashionable.
Those who later heard the speech of the British Foreign Minister Simon understood that Cecil's speech, which caused an explosion of applause, was launched as a kind of blue background, against which then a bold lawyer's hand (I would say, language, but my image was not would have then been sustained) Sir John sketched out a profile of England's programme. At this point it should have become clear to everyone that the British government, so to speak, had not strayed far from its progressive public opinion, and, therefore, it was clearly a popular and sufficiently democratic government.
Another thing is the no less famous artist of the Belgian and international scenes, magician and baritone Mr. Emile Vandervelde.
When he stood on the pulpit and set off fireworks, pulled red ribbons from his nostrils and took a parrot out of a small purse, everyone understood that he was in front of a real great magician. Indeed, this man has all sorts of melodies, all sorts of forte and drunkenness, all sorts of exciting gestures! How much in him, first of all, that makes his charm absolutely invincible, namely, a shameless, highly experienced and completely self-confident falsehood!
This man, from whom a mile away reeks of hardened deceit, who ought to be carried around the world and shown as a rare type of charlatan of great style, represented at the conference, in his words, and by mandate, if you like, 28 million politically and professionally organized proletarians ! It would be absolutely terrible if it were not for the firm hope that this scandal would not last long. So, for example, the Genevan socialists (not communists!) responded to the proposal of the old man Emil to arrange the same prestige session with them with the most decisive refusal: “It will be, old man, we are not children.”
The preliminaries of a genuine discussion have received their real weight only because they include the proposal of the French delegation, made by M. Tardieu in a rather unusual form.
The British Foreign Minister insisted on speaking first, and Tardieu wanted to hit the conference on the head with a prepared club as effectively as possible.
The baton was prepared extremely secretly. The French then walked with their chests puffed out, and said to the right and to the left: “What! How many ministers, advisers and generals have been developing our proposal for several weeks - and no one has let it slip! Oh yes we are!
In this sense, a high school was really shown. Tardieu distributed his proposal, so to speak, suddenly: "Sniff and sneeze, gentlemen."
Many believed that the French proposal in general was an unusually clever maneuver. In fact, enter a little into the position of France.
In fact, the French formula is as follows: “I am a very well-fed state. There are countries that are very hungry. Hungry states would like to profit at my expense, that is, to take away from me something from my booty, which was plundered from them in a timely manner. I cannot allow this. I, France, could only in some way reduce my gigantic, overwhelming armed force, if I were guaranteed the absolute security of my capitalist digestion for all eternity.
But you can't say that openly. Indecent. Something else needs to be said. Therefore, Paul Boncourt, who remarkably knows exactly where the crayfish hibernate, where the dog is buried and what the dog smells like, managed to come up with the appropriate formula: "Yes, disarmament, but on condition of safety."
Ah, you ask, what is security, how to achieve security? — Excuse me: we, the French, will tell you.
- First of all, let's declare the civilian fleet international.
“Wait, wait,” says the frightened interlocutor, “what does this have to do with security?
And they explain to him: the Germans have a very large civilian air fleet, and large civilian airplanes can easily be turned into bomb carriers. There are Germans who dream about how their civilian fleet suddenly turned into flocks of doves and a flock of eagles, flew to Paris and sprinkled Paris with a certain amount of very potent substances. So, so that the Germans no longer dream of such forces (and so that the French also sleep more peacefully), let's internationalize the civilian air fleet.
This, however, is not enough! We French are willing to internationalize a lot. All major military aviation, long-range artillery, in a word, everything that is clearly offensive - especially destructive weapons. Do not destroy, as frivolous people demand. Why destroy such good things, products of brilliant human thought? No, they just need to be declared international, they will belong to the League of Nations. They will fly, swim and destroy only on the orders of the general staff of the League of Nations and under the command of international officers. But against whom will these high-voltage weapons, banned for national use, be used? asks the interlocutor, constantly sneezing in surprise.
- For international criminals, the French explain, for those who start an unjust war. We must also add to the League of Nations a certain number of ground troops, we will gladly give several tens of thousands of people. Others too. And here you have powerful international police. Here are the security guards.
“In other words,” the interlocutor sums up, “you want, in addition to the French army, to have at your disposal an international army, to which, so to speak, everything is allowed. Will you declare criminals those whom you, France, do not like, who in one way or another will revolt against the cage in which you are going to put the world?
The French giggle triumphantly, they are even pleased that they were “understood”, but for the sake of appearance they object: “Excuse me, because we will not be alone there!”
US Senator Borah, when shown this proposal, shrugged his shoulders and said: "The French want to put a straitjacket on Europe."
It must be said that not only the Germans and Italians, but even the British immediately started talking quite definitely (in the newspapers at least) that this was a brazen bluff.
Later it turned out that the trick of Mr. Tardieu did little to help France. He did not bring her out of her relative isolation, he did not create a smoke screen for her maneuvers. He offered no resistance to Litvinov's firm blow, directed straight at the breast of this phantom - French peacefulness. But at first glance, it seemed to many that although this was a scam, it was a very clever scam.
Only now people like Pertinax, with the negligence of a fair fakir, declare: "In this case, do not remove the trick."
These were the preliminaries. And then ... then "the battle broke out," if I may say so about that elegant white-gloved minuet, in the form of which there is a fierce struggle of some bourgeois cliques against others.
More on this in the next letter.
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