We have shown that “the country” is a sonorous word designed to induce the workers to defend an order of things which oppresses them. We shall see now if the “love of country,” this “holy sentiment,” this “love of the soil which is born in everyone,” is so deeply rooted in those who make the declaration; whether it rises from purely subjective causes, as among the workers, or from purely material causes, from vulgar preoccupations of mercantile interests. It is among the writings published by themselves for their own use that we must search for their innermost conviction. It is edifying.

To hear them when they are addressing the workers there is nothing so sacred as the country; every citizen should be ready to sacrifice his life or his liberty for the defense of the country. In fine, according to them the country represents the highest degree of the general interest; to make sacrifices for it is to sacrifice for one’s own and one’s self. We have only to rummage among their treatises on political economy to convict them of lying; to see that all these high-sounding phrases, these sentiments which they parade, are nothing but bluffs for the benefit of the simpletons who let themselves be duped by the like, masks which they take care to leave in the dressing-room when among their intimates. Here is what one of their political doctors, whose authority is officially recognized, says:

“It is the interest of the governing classes, of the preponderance which they hold and for which they are indebted precisely to a continuation of the state of war, which artificially maintains that state among civilized peoples.”4

Could anything be neater? And our good capitalists, who declaim so loudly against the frightful Anarchists that have the audacity to demonstrate to the workers how their interest is antagonistic to the interests of the bourgeois class, make no mistake among themselves in properly defining this antagonism, in order to find a basis for their governmental system. But here is a still more damaging admission:

“Motives or pretexts are no more lacking under the new regime than they were under the old; but under the one as under the other, the true motive of every war is always the interest of the class or party in possession of the government⁠—an interest which must not be confounded with that of the nation or the mass of consumers in the body politic; for as much as the governing class or party is interested in the continuation of a state of war, so much is the nation governed interested in the maintenance of peace.”5

As to the advantage which the governing class finds in the continuation of a state of war, the same author goes on to tell us:

“War without implies peace within; that is to say, a period of easy government, during which the opposition is reduced to silence under pain of being accused of complicity with the enemy. And what is more desirable, above all when the opposition is troublesome and its forces nearly balance those of the government? In fact if a war be unsuccessful, it inevitably involves the downfall of the party which undertook it; but if, on the other hand, it be successful, (and it is not undertaken unless some favorable chances are assured) the party which engaged in it and carried it to a satisfactory issue, acquires, for a time, a crushing preponderance. How many motives are there, not to speak of the small profits to which it opens the way, for not letting a favorable opportunity to make war escape!”6

As to the “small profits,” here is an enumeration of them:

“But, up to our own day, it has been the inferior classes, those whose influence counts the least, who have generally furnished the common soldiers. The wealthy classes have escaped by a money sacrifice; and this sacrifice, ordinarily very moderate, has been more than compensated for by the market which the state of war offered to members of the said classes, upon whom the proscription of foreigners and the obligation of passing through the military schools (access to which was, in fact, impossible to the poorer classes) ‘conferred the monopoly of the remunerative offices’ of the military profession. Finally if war be cruel to the conscripts who, according to the forcible popular expression, furnish ‘meat for the cannon,’ the departure of these impressed troops, brought up to farm labor or in the workshop, by diminishing the supply of hands has the effect of increasing wages, and thus palliating the horrors of war to those who escape military service.”7

This is categorical. We see that the “sacred love” of the metaphysical entity, “country,” is nothing more than exploitation and “small profits;” but the avowal is complete; it is a triumphant retort to those who would object that “there is a public opinion of which the governing are forced to take account,” that “a war may be just and obtain the assent of the public,” that “it is wrong to declaim against war in general,” that “there may be cases into which rulers are dragged in spite of themselves,” and moreover that “war is a consequence of the existing social state,” that “one may declaim against it or deplore its necessity,” but that “we are compelled to submit to it.”

Let us continue to quote:

“Nevertheless, whatever be the power of the men who decide peace or war, and the influence of the class from which the political, administrative, and military staff is recruited, they are, as we have just observed, obliged to reckon, in a certain measure, with the much more numerous class whose interests are involved in the various branches of production, to whom war is a nuisance. Experience all the time demonstrates that the resisting force of this pacific element is in nowise proportionate to its mass. The vast majority of the men who compose it are absolutely ignorant, and ‘nothing is easier than to excite their passions or lead them astray as to their interests.’ The enlightened minority is less numerous; and besides, what means would these latter have of getting their opinions to prevail, in the presence of the powerful organization of the centralized State?”8

Thus our capitalists do not hide from themselves the fact that they see nothing in war but a means of continuing their exploitation of the workers; the massacres which they organize serve to rid them of the surplus which encumbers the market. To them armies are created with the sole view of furnishing place and rank to those of their dependents by whom they would otherwise be importuned. To them, finally, these wars which they pompously call “national,” making the hollow, sounding words “country,” “patriotism,” “national honor,” vibrate in the ears of the naive⁠—to them these wars are but pretexts for “small profits.”

War upon “small profits”! War upon all the wars undertaken in the name of the “country” or “civilization”!! For now that patriotism is beginning to decline, this new mockery⁠—“civilization”⁠—is used a great deal in launching the workers on a crusade against inoffensive peoples whom the capitalists would exploit and whose sole offense consists in being behindhand in reaching that degree of development which we have agreed to call present civilization.

Ostensibly it is to punish a band of imaginary marauders and secure our national preponderance that wars like the expedition to Tunis are undertaken, while the real object is to open up a new country to the rotten financial operations of a few dubious schemers; it is to secure a free field to these parasites upon the social revenue that the money wrung from the workers by taxation is expended in armaments; it is to realize “small profits” from the offices created in the conquered countries that these new markets, which enable the capitalists to get rid of their stale products, are opened with cannon shots, that a robust youth is impoverished, that a multitude of young men is sent to perish in an unaccustomed climate or be massacred by people who, after all, are at home, and are only defending what belongs to them.

War upon these “small profits,” these expeditions to Senegal, Tonkin, the Congo, Madagascar, forever being undertaken in the name of “civilization,” which has nothing to do with such expeditions, that are brigandage, pure and simple! We exalt patriotism at home, and shoot or decapitate, as brigands or pirates, those who are guilty of nothing but defending the soil on which they live, or of having revolted against those who have imposed their rulership upon them in order to exploit and enslave them!9

But we shall have to return to this question in a special chapter upon colonization; let us confine ourselves for the moment to the patriotism of the governing classes. Recent events have laid it bare in all its hideous reality. The secrets of our armaments and defenses betrayed, through the complicity of the employees of the bureau of the minister of war; the most disgraceful intrigues, operating with this whirlpool of billions to the detriment of the taxpayers’ pocketbooks and the security of the country! The government, instead of hunting down the guilty, sought to cover them up and throw a veil over the most shameless turpitudes!10 We behold the great manufacturing metallurgists⁠—deputies for the most part, having old military officers at the head of the list⁠—becoming furnishers of arms, cannon, armor-plate ships, powder, and other explosives, to foreign nations, and delivering to them the latest engines of destruction, without concerning themselves that these may one day serve against our army and contribute to the massacre of those of our compatriots whom they, in their capacity of governors, will have sent to the frontier to be pierced by bullets. Is it not the Grand International Swindling Association of Jewish and Christian Bankers which owns our railways, holds the key of our arsenals, and has the monopoly of our supplies? O bourgeois! Talk no more, then, of your patriotism! If you could parcel out your “country” and sell it in shares you would do it speedily!

What did you do in 1871, in the Franco-Prussian war, which terminated for us, as everybody knows, in paying an indemnity of five billion francs? To whose interest was it to pay this indemnity, if not to that of the bourgeoisie alone in order to remain sole master of the power to exploit the “country”? Now, in order to pay this indemnity upon whom did they “draw at sight”? Upon the workers! A loan was made, reimbursement for which was guaranteed by the taxes which had to be levied, and which the workers alone have to pay since they alone work, and since work alone is productive of wealth. Let us pause to admire this sleight-of-hand trick. The bourgeoisie, having to pay the war indemnity, in order to get the Prussians out of power and pocket the taxes themselves, had to borrow the money necessary to pay it; but as this money was not immediately in the pockets of the famishing workers, the capitalists alone subscribed to the loan, thus lending to themselves the money which they needed. But the workers alone will have to toil for ninety-nine years to repay this loan, principal and interest, which never entered their pockets. Behold capitalistic “patriotism” in all its splendor!

After this let anyone deny that “virtue is always rewarded.”