ect guilt of the German war lords was the guilt of the whole
political society of Europe, whose secret diplomacy (unrevealed to
the peoples) was based upon hatred and fear and rivalry, in play for
imperial power and the world's markets, as common folk play dominoes
for penny points, and risking the lives of common folk in a gamble for
enormous stakes of territory, imperial prestige, the personal vanity of
politicians, the vast private gain of trusts and profiteers. To keep the
living counters quiet, to make them jump into the pool of their own free
will at the word "Go," the statesmen, diplomats, trusts, and profiteers
debauch the name of patriotism, raise the watchword of liberty, and play
upon the ignorance of the mob easily, skillfully, by inciting them to
race hatred, by inflaming the brute-passion in them, and by concocting
a terrible mixture of false idealism and self-interest, so that simple
minds quick to respond to sentiment, as well as those quick to hear
the call of the beast, rally shoulder to shoulder and march to the
battlegrounds under the spell of that potion. Some go with a noble
sense of sacrifice, some with blood-lust in their hearts, most with the
herd-instinct following the lead, little knowing that they are but the
pawns of a game which is being played behind closed doors by the great
gamblers in the courts and Foreign Offices, and committee-rooms, and
counting-houses, of the political casinos in Europe.

I have heard the expression of this view from soldiers during the war
and since the war, at street-corners, in tram-cars, and in conversations
with railway men, mechanics, policemen, and others who were soldiers a
year ago, or stay-at-homes, thinking hard over the meaning of the war.
I am certain that millions of men are thinking these things, because
I found the track of those common thoughts, crude, simple, dangerous,
among Canadian soldiers crossing the Atlantic, in Canadian towns, and in
the United States, as I had begun to see the trail of them far back in
the early days of the war when I moved among French soldiers, Belgian
soldiers, and our own men.

My own belief is not so simple as that. I do not divorce all peoples
from their governments as victims of a subtle tyranny devised by
statesmen and diplomats of diabolical cunning, and by financial magnates
ready to exploit human life for greater gains. I see the evil which led
to the crime of the war and to the crimes of the peace with deep-sp