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Knowledge Without Wisdom
© 2001 by Paul Bond
02 | The War To
End All Wars
Let peace be
sought through war. — Oliver Cromwell
The world has been at war in one way or another since history was
first recorded thousands of years ago. Savagery and barbarism have
been inherent in the human species as it clawed its way up through
the evolutionary ladder to the present.
Karl Marx and his followers had simply forgotten — or ignored —
these facts. In their rush to discover a utopian world, they failed
to recognize the evolutionary struggle of the human being from a
primeval beast to the more acceptable, partly civilized creature of
the early twentieth century.
By the word “evolutionary,” let it be understood that the
facts supporting man’s animal origins cannot be disputed; but
neither can the reality of man’s eventual uplift by beings of divine
origin. Whereas the mindset of the wise and knowledgeable human
being does not contradict the facts and the science of evolution, it
is at odds with evolutionism. This twisted philosophy abandoned not
only religious belief but also God himself. It fed the secular
revolt that took root in the early part of this century, spawning
not only materialism but also atheistic science. Combine this with
an immature civilization, and panic and chaos result.
Howard Bloom in his revolutionary vision of the relationship
between psychology and history, The Lucifer Principle,
illustrates this point:
“The appeal of prophets often lies in the ability to paint
a picture of an irresistible utopia and to convince us that this
better world is almost within our grasp. Marion Keech, the woman
who communicated with extraterrestrial Guardians, promised her
followers that they would shed all earthly ills and bathe in
blessings they could scarcely imagine — after they had been
whisked away from our decaying galaxy. William Miller, the
founder of Seventh Day Adventism, predicated that God would come
to rearrange the world we know and that those who followed
Miller would find themselves possessors of a sparkling new
paradise. And Karl Marx explained that the elimination of
capitalism would trigger the creation of a whole new human
nature, one that would flood the greedy dens in which we live
with brotherly good will.”
(Howard Bloom. The Lucifer Principle. New York: The
Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995)
These foolish predictions by Keech, Miller, and Marx all failed
to materialize, yet millions of followers blindly believe them to be
true. The point all three missed is simply that the relationship
between man as the creature and God as the Creator is a personal
one, founded on the concept of the Fatherhood of God and the
brotherhood of man. If all three had been around at the time when
Jesus of Nazareth spent his thirty-five years of life teaching
simple parables in Galilee, they would have heard these truths. The
great problem under which Christianity labors is that so few of
God’s teachings appear in the much-edited and consequently
compromised versions of the gospels of the New Testament.
Not only is the human experience shaped by an evolutionary
process that came forth from savage beginnings, but people also are
prone to accepting myth and superstition readily. In short, humans
allow others to do their thinking for them. Yet, the simple cosmic
truth taught by Jesus was, “the
Kingdom of God is Within you.” What this means is that
every mortal has the same potential to enter into God’s kingdom of
brotherly association, the same connection to God’s love and truth,
a concept that will be expanded upon in later chapters.
With competing economic forces lined up against one another in
the early days of the twentieth century, there arose the first of
the insane and bloodthirsty events we now dismiss as World War I. At
the time, it was dubbed “the war to end all wars.” How
ignorant that statement would prove to be.
World War I
Leading up to the declaration of war in 1914, there was much talk
during the first decade about the potential for war. Politicians,
writers, novelists, and philosophers discussed at length how the
great powers of Europe were rubbing shoulders and borders in a
frantic effort for economic and trade superiority. Britain, France,
Germany, and Russia all dominated during this period. The French
were still smarting and held much enmity dating back to May 11,
1871, a day in which German Chancellor Otto von Bismark (1815-1898)
ended the Franco-German war, when he signed the agreement
transferring all of Alsace and much of Lorraine to Germany. The
Franco-German war of 1870 had been the last war between European
powers in the nineteenth century, and this victory by Germany over
France was etched in the minds of Frenchmen for many generations.
Through inept ambassadors and flawed political thinking, the
terror of war was fast approaching. In a public meeting in the
Munich Odeonplatz on August 1, 1914, an exuberant crowd greeted the
news of the coming war. Among those photographed at that moment of
public enthusiasm was the Austrian-born Adolf Hitler, then earning a
meager living selling his own watercolor paintings.
The clouds of war gathered in 1914 largely because both the
Kaiser of Germany and the czar of Russia, who had been corresponding
for twenty years and maintaining a cordial relationship, were not
able to find common ground through diplomacy or negotiation
regarding territory and trade. At 11:00 the night of the August 1,
1914, the Kaiser, unconvinced by these back-and-forth diplomatic
messages, told Helmuth von Moltke (1800-1891), the chief of
staff of the German armies, that the hoped-for guarantees of
neutrality of the British and French were illusory, and there would
be a war in the West. The troops at Trier were ordered to march.
Germany had declared war on Russia.
Five years of bloodthirsty slaughter of men, women, and children
ensued. Carnage, despair, and desperation abounded. When the noise
abated and the bullets, bayonets, shells, and gas ceased, the terror
of war between man and machines was a spectacle that must have been
the penultimate example of the savage and barbaric nature of the
partly civilized human being.
The underlying causes of World War I are related to the spirit of
unwavering nationalism that permeated Europe throughout the latter
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the political and economic
competition among the European nations, and the establishment and
maintenance in Europe after 1871 of large armaments and of two
hostile military alliances. All of these set the scene for the power
brokers of the early twentieth century to manipulate the population
of Europe, Britain and its territories, and the United States into
fighting a war people believed was simply about economics. Like all
wars, however, it was about political power and economic advantage.
The French Revolution and the Napoleonic era had spread
throughout most of Europe the idea of political democracy, resulting
in the idea that people of the same ethnic origin, language, and
political ideals had the right to independent states. The principle
of national self-determination, however, was largely ignored by the
dynastic and reactionary forces that dominated in the settlement of
European affairs at the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Several peoples
who desired national autonomy were made subject to local dynasts or
to other nations. Notable examples were the German people, whom the
Congress of Vienna left divided into numerous duchies,
principalities, and kingdoms; Italy, also left divided into many
parts, some of which were under foreign control; and the Flemish-
and French-speaking Belgians of the Austrian Netherlands, whom the
congress placed under Dutch rule. Revolutions and strong
nationalistic movements during the nineteenth century succeeded in
nullifying much of the reactionary and anti-nationalist work of the
congress. Belgium won its independence from the Netherlands in 1830,
the unification of Italy was accomplished in 1861, and that of
Germany in 1871. At the close of the century, however, the problem
of nationalism was still unresolved in other areas of Europe,
resulting in tensions both within the regions involved and between
various European nations.
Imperialism
The spirit of nationalism was also apparent in economic discord.
The Industrial Revolution, which took place in Great Britain at the
end of the eighteenth century, followed in France in the early
nineteenth century, and then in Germany after 1870, caused an
immense increase in the manufactures of each country and a
consequent need for foreign markets. The principal field for the
European policies of economic expansion was Africa, and on that
continent colonial interests frequently clashed. Several times
between 1898 and 1914, the economic rivalry in Africa between France
and Great Britain, and between Germany on one side and France and
Great Britain on the other, almost precipitated a European war.
Military Expansion
As a result of such tensions, between 1871 and 1914 the nations
of Europe adopted domestic measures and foreign policies that in
turn steadily increased the danger of war. Convinced their interests
were threatened, they maintained large standing armies, which they
constantly replenished and augmented by peacetime conscription. At
the same time, they increased the size of their navies. The naval
expansion was intensely competitive. Great Britain, influenced by
the expansion of the German navy begun in 1900 and by the events of
the Russo-Japanese War, developed its fleet under the direction of
Admiral Sir John Fisher. The war between Russia and Japan had proved
the efficacy of long-range naval guns, and the British accordingly
developed the widely copied dreadnought battleship, notable for its
heavy armament. Developments in other areas of military technology
and organization led to the dominance of general staffs with
precisely formulated plans for mobilization and attack, often in
situations that could not be reversed once begun.
Statesmen everywhere realized the tremendous and ever-growing
expenditures for armament would in time lead either to national
bankruptcy or to war, and they made several efforts for worldwide
disarmament, notably at the Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907.
International rivalry was, however, too far advanced to permit any
progress toward disarmament at these conferences.
The European nations not only armed themselves for purposes of “self-defense,”
but also sought alliances with other powers so that they would not
find themselves standing alone if war did break out. The result was
a phenomenon that, in itself, greatly increased the chances for
generalized war: the grouping of the great European powers into two
hostile military alliances — the Triple Alliance of Germany,
Austria-Hungary, and Italy; and the Triple Entente of Great Britain,
France, and Russia. Shifts within these alliances added to the
building sense of crisis.
The United States
Enters the War
In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) of the
United States, which was at that time a neutral nation, attempted to
bring about negotiations between the belligerent groups of powers
that would in his own words bring “peace without victory.” As
a result of his efforts, and particularly of the conferences held in
Europe during the year by Wilson’s confidential adviser, Colonel
Edward M. House (1858-1938), with leading European statesmen,
some progress was at first apparently made toward bringing an end to
the war. In December, the German government informed the United
States that the Central Powers were prepared to undertake peace
negotiations. When the United States informed the Allies, Great
Britain rejected the German advances for two reasons: Germany had
not laid down any specific terms for peace; and the military
situation at the time (Romania had just been conquered by the
Central Powers) was so favorable to the Central Powers that no
acceptable terms could reasonably be expected from them. Wilson
continued his mediatory efforts, calling on the belligerents to
specify the terms on which they would make peace. He finally
succeeded in eliciting concrete terms from each group, but they
proved irreconcilable.
Wilson still attempted to find some basis of agreement between
the two hostile groups until a change in German war policy in
January 1917 completely altered his point of view toward the war. In
that month, Germany announced that beginning on February 1, it would
resort to unrestricted submarine warfare against the shipping of
Great Britain and all shipping to Great Britain. German military and
civil experts had calculated that such warfare would bring about the
defeat of Great Britain in six months. Because the United States had
already expressed its strong opposition to unrestricted submarine
warfare, which, it claimed, violated its rights as a neutral, and
had even threatened to break relations with Germany over the issue,
Wilson dropped his peacemaking efforts. On February 3, the United
States broke diplomatic relations with Germany and at Wilson’s
request a number of Latin American nations, including Peru, Bolivia,
and Brazil, also did so. On April 6, the United States declared war
on Germany.
Russian Losses
On the eastern front in 1916, the Russians staged an offensive.
Their attack, designed to force the Germans to move troops from
Verdun to the Lake Narocz region, was a complete failure. Not only
did it fail to divert the Germans in any degree from their attack on
Verdun, but also the Russians lost more than a hundred thousand men.
In June, the Russians carried out a more successful offensive. In
response to an Italian request for action to relieve the pressure of
an Austrian offensive, the Russians moved against the Austrians on a
front extending from Pinsk south to Czernowitz. By September, when
strong German reinforcements from the western front stopped the
Russian advance, the Russians had driven some forty miles into the
Austro-German position along the entire front and had taken about
five hundred thousand prisoners. They did not succeed, however, in
capturing either of their objectives — the cities of Kovel and
Lemberg. Losses of a million men left the army demoralized and
discouraged. The Russian drive had nonetheless given sufficient
evidence of strength to play a large part in inducing Romania to
enter the war on the side of the Allies on August 27, 1916. By the
middle of January 1917, however, Romania had been completely
conquered.
On the eastern front, the dominating influence on the fighting
during 1917 was the outbreak in March of the Russian popular
uprising against the imperial government, which resulted in the
establishment of a provisional government and the abdication, in
March, of Czar Nicholas II (1868-1918). The provisional
government continued the prosecution of the war, and in July the
Russians staged a moderately successful two-week drive on the
Galician front, but then lost much of the territory they had gained.
In September, the Germans took Riga and in October occupied the
greater part of Latvia and a number of Russian-held islands in the
Baltic Sea. The Bolshevik party seized power by force on November 7.
A cardinal point of Bolshevik policy was the withdrawal of Russia
from the war, and on November 20 the government that had just come
into power offered the German government an armistice. On December
15, an armistice was signed between the Russian and Austro-German
negotiators and fighting ceased on the eastern front.
By the end of World War I, the seeds of socialism and fascism
were taking root. In addition to this, the Christian church had
entered into an unholy alliance with the state, which would provide
the spiritual void into which hundreds of millions of
twentieth-century souls were sucked. This destructive spiritual
vacuum is at the very root of the secular revolt and the resulting
materialism and evil of atheistic science. The latter generations of
twentieth-century humankind were destined to experience the full
effect of these sophistries, thanks in no small way to that
nineteenth-century genius of perverted philosophy, Karl Marx.
Laying blame, however, is not the motive here. The blame game
solves nothing; it merely creates a confrontational atmosphere
whereby the populists and the reductionists hold sway over rational
debate. Rather, the intention is to focus the reader on historical
facts. Our history is the map upon which we may reliably navigate.
If we truly know where past generations have been, we can learn from
their mistakes. Only then are we as human beings able to navigate a
righteous path for our future and that of succeeding generations.
The Treaty of
Versailles
The Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, between
defeated Germany and the principal Allied and associated powers. The
representatives of twenty-seven victorious powers appended their
signatories to the two-hundred-page document. On September 1, 1919,
the last American combat division left France, sailing from Brest.
In the previous months, three hundred thousand American soldiers had
crossed from east to west each month, heading back to the United
States. Each returning soldier received his discharge papers, a
uniform, a pair of shoes, a coat, and a sixty-dollar bonus. More
than three and a half million soldiers went through this process. A
small group of men remained in France to work in the military
cemeteries, supervising the gathering of bodies, their
identification, burials, and memorials. An American occupation force
of sixteen thousand men was also sent to Germany as part of the
allied presence on the Rhine; they were based at Coblenz.
In Britain, those conscientious objectors who had been in prison
were also being released but only slowly. In March 1919, there were
still twelve hundred in prison and thirty-four hundred performing
labor service in special camps. As a collective punishment for their
un-warlike views, they were deprived of the vote for five years
after the war, both in parliamentary and local government elections.
In short, their wisdom in not wishing to participate in the terror
of war was punished. This is a prime example of worldwide knowledge
without wisdom. This was only a glimpse of the idiocy and legal and
political ineptitude we’ve learned to take for granted in the latter
part of the twentieth century.
On November 19, 1919, the U.S. Senate rejected the Treaty of
Versailles. This single act sent a shudder through the Principal
Allied and Associated Powers that would virtually ring a death knell
not only to this treaty but also to the concept and legitimacy of
the League of Nations. The Treaty of Versailles came into force on
January 10, 1920, a mere seven weeks after the U.S. Senate had
rejected it out of hand. As one of the treaty’s British participants
would later write, “The whole Treaty had been deliberated and
ingeniously framed by Mr. Wilson himself to render American
cooperation essential.”
Ten years later, Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929) wrote
rhetorically to the Americans, his indignation still at fever pitch:
Your intervention in the war, which you came out of lightly since
it cost you but 56,000 human lives, instead of our 1,364,000 killed,
had appeared to you, nevertheless, as an excessive display of
solidarity. And either by organizing a League of Nations which was
to furnish the solution to all the problems of International
security by magic, or by simply withdrawing from the European
schemes, you found yourselves freed from all difficulties by means
of a “separate peace.” It was not enthusiasm that flung you
into our firing lines: it was the alarming persistence of German
aggressions.
This admonition by the Frenchman was all too true. America had
entered the war based on its fear of German aggression and the
possible loss of financial power through commerce and trade. The war
having been won, the U.S. Senate had no further use for such devices
— perhaps the U.S. senators had a modicum of wisdom in this
decision.
This planet will not enjoy lasting peace until the so-called
sovereign nations intelligently and fully surrender their sovereign
powers into the hands of the brotherhood of men — mankind
government. Internationalism — Leagues of Nations or United Nations
— can never bring permanent peace to mankind. Worldwide
confederations of nations will effectively prevent minor wars and
acceptably control the smaller nations, but they will not prevent
world wars nor control the three, four, or five most powerful
governments. In the face of real conflicts, one of these world
powers will withdraw from the League and declare war. You cannot
prevent nations going to war as long as they remain infected with
the delusional virus of national sovereignty. Internationalism is a
step in the right direction. An international police force will
prevent many minor wars, but it will not be effective in preventing
major wars, conflicts between the great military governments of
earth.
During the course of this war, four empires had been lost, the
most significant being that of Russia. In 1917, through the auspices
of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870-1924), the Marxist theorist,
party organizer and first leader of Soviet state, Russia fell to the
Bolshevics. Lenin was the principal figure in the development of
Marxism during the twentieth century. He contributed to it a
distinctive revolutionary politics that is of continuing and
terrorizing importance. He is celebrated in particular for his
account of the proper organization of a revolutionary party, its
relationship to the class system, its role in political
mobilization, and for his characterization of a new and final epoch
of capitalist development that had created all the sufficient
conditions for global socialist transformation.
Lenin and his successors in all Communist regimes reigned over
their citizens using terror and tyranny to uphold the totalitarian
state. In the West, the seeds of Marxism were rapidly bearing fruit
as one after another over the ensuing decades, so-called democracies
fell prey to the insidious mindset of Marxism. As leader of the
Communist International, Lenin was instrumental in enforcing
acceptance of Bolshevik organizational precepts and the Russian
revolutionary progression upon member parties, precipitating a
breach with gradualist and constitutional social democracy. During
his lifetime, he engaged in and provoked an almost constant stream
of polemic and disputation, and almost every aspect of his thought
and activity continues to be the subject of scholarly controversy.
With the outbreak of the World War I, Lenin began to formulate a
new theory of contemporary capitalism, which he completed in
Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916). In it,
he denounced World War I as a fight among the imperialist powers for
control of the markets, raw materials, and cheap labor of the
underdeveloped world. Since neither the Allies nor the Central
Powers offered any benefits to the working class, he urged all
socialists to withhold their support from the war effort. Following
his lead, Russian Bolsheviks initially refused to support their
government in its war efforts.
He also contended that the innovative and progressive role of
capitalism in refining the productive forces was a product of its
competitive market structure that consequently ceased when
capitalism became monopolistic at around the turn of the century. It
then became retrogressive and parasitic upon colonial exploitation,
thereby universalizing its own contradictions and preparing the
ground for the fusion of the European Socialist Revolution with the
colonial struggle for national liberation. Capitalism, Lenin
concluded, had outlived its historical mission.
Simultaneously, however, monopoly capitalism itself had, by
concentrating capital in the hands of the banks and by rationalizing
the processes of production and distribution in the trusts and
cartels, created the mechanisms whereby a rational allocation of
scarce resources and equitable distribution of the product could be
achieved under popular control. Capitalism, in its imperialist
stage, had created the objective conditions for international
socialist transformation.
So the stage is set through Lenin, the student of the Marxist
Communist Manifesto, for the oncoming secular revolt and resulting
materialism that, together with atheistic science, would plunge our
planet into a suicidal and frightening place.
A “Just”
War?
As recorded in its long and turbulent history, all wars have been
“just” wars. World War I and every other war and regional
antagonism since have been similarly justified. Through the
centuries, wars have been absolved by politicians, supported by
theologians, and participated in by we the people, who innocently
believe the “just war doctrine” and spill our blood on the
battlefields.
In the broadest sense, Western culture defines a “just”
war as the justified use of force for political purposes. The entire
tradition of thought and practice in this civilization is aimed at
setting limits and determining when the use of force is justified.
The components and expressions of just war include religious and
philosophical moral thought, legal theory, domestic and
international customary and positive law, and military theory.
Theological ethicists use the term primarily to refer to that
component of the broader tradition derived from Christian
theological sources, and Roman Catholic authors typically narrow the
meaning still more when they speak of the “just war doctrine”
of Catholic moral theology. Christianity has embraced for centuries
the concept of a just war, providing the war furthers Christianity.
This is evident from the Vatican back through to the crusades. Many
idealists during this and preceding centuries have asked the same
question: Why is war necessary? The only answer that makes any
sense, even to the partly civilized mind of the twentieth century,
is that legal theory and political expediency make it so. In other
words, we simply abdicate all responsibility to the state
represented by the government of the day, then blindly follow the
doctrine that is most expedient to the political leadership in the
prosecution of their assumption of our wishes. Have you or anyone
you know ever prayed or petitioned for war? Have you or any one you
know ever been asked to cast a popular vote in favor of war?
The answer to these questions speaks volumes.
More than nine million soldiers, sailors, and airmen lost their
lives in the World War I. An additional five million civilians also
perished between 1914 and 1919. Seven hundred fifty thousand German
civilians died during the Allied naval blockade. Men such as Adolf
Hitler (1889-1945), Winston Churchill (1874-1965),
Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), Erwin Rommel (1891-1944),
Georgy Zhukov (1896-1974), Bernard Law Montgomery (1887-1976),
and Maurice Gustave Gamelin (1872-1958) all served as
soldiers in the trenches during this war. It is interesting that
these future protagonists would serve their apprenticeships in this
war and go on to play such a major part in the next. Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969)
volunteered and served with the French as a Vietnamese orderly in
World War I. Harold MacMillan (1894-1986), who later became
prime minister of Britain, also served and was wounded on the
western front.
The Federal
Reserve System
There is one more piece to the puzzle that needs to be recognized
to see clearly the emerging kaleidoscope of the twentieth century. A
piece of American legislation was shepherded through the U.S.
Congress by Woodrow Wilson and Carter Glass (1858-1946) of
Virginia late one night just before Christmas 1913. It would become
the infamous Federal Reserve System. True democracy slipped from the
grasp of American citizens on that fateful night. Commonly known as
“the Fed,” this system was foisted on the American people
without their consent or blessing. It would prove to be the nemesis
of the American way of life from that day forward.
In a later chapter, we will take a more detailed look at how this
vague and shadowy yet controlling system will impact not only the
United States but the rest of the world as well. It not only becomes
grossly misunderstood but also has a great effect on the emerging
global economy. Several aborted attempts to introduce a central
banking system had been experienced in this great nation’s history.
With several assassinations and coups having been perpetrated up to
1913, the United States had warded off all attempts from a hijacking
of the fiscal policy mechanism. Materialism fueled by greed and
power did finally triumph over the high ideals that the founding
fathers of almost two centuries earlier — inspired by divine and
insightful guidance and imbued with wisdom and a vision of the
future of this great nation — brought into temporal existence
through the Constitution and the accompanying Bill of Rights.
As we shall see, the unfolding pattern of each chapter of the
twentieth century is a repeat, albeit in different terms, of
previous mistakes and unwise paths. Only time will tell if the
present and future generations have learned anything from the
blood-soaked pages of history. Only when a certain level of wisdom
has been attained can the pattern be broken and plans made for a
future that not only encompasses all people, but also provides a
rich and fulfilling life based on virtues, families, and a spiritual
connection to the First Source and Center — God.
source (kingdomwithin.org)
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