GERMAN GENERAL AS PACIFIST

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 85, 9 January 1928, Page 12

GERMAN GENERAL AS PACIFIST

MODERN WARFARE NOT “WAR” CONVERSION EXPLAINED The most interesting feature of the meetings of the War Danger Conference at the Central Hall recently was the appearance of a wefl-knowu German soldier, General von Schonaich, as a war resister. According to Mr. Fenner Brockway, the chairman of the afternoon session, General von Schonaich was, during the war, the idol of the militarist press of Germany. He was very prominent in the war, and has since become equally well known as a (pacifist. He is now engaged iu speaking throughout Germany on behalf of a movement like tho one started here by Mr. Ponsonby lor getting people to pledge themselves not to take part in another war. General von Schonaich, who spoke English excellently, gave the meeting an account of his conversation. "As an old German officer,” he said, "I owe you aff explanation of how I came to be a changed man. 1 was 37 years a soldier with all my heart. I made my first step to pacifism during tho war. Formerly I believed that a soldier’s work was chivalrous. Perhaps it was in the old days when one gallant knight fought another. But what has modern technique made of this once chivalrous occupation? In modern war one man with a big engine stands about ten miles behind the front, and kills with his engine perhaps a hundred or a thousand soldiers miles behind the enemy's front. Ho never sees these killed soldiers; all he knows is that they are me'n with wives and children just as he is himself. Victory now is not a question of bravery, but of who has the best gun. It is just a question of good or bad luck. The only man who makes good ‘business in this new warfare is the manufacturer of its engines. They are very expensive, and the wives and children of the Killeil soldiers must pay for them, and the taxes paid by the people on both sides go in this way. This is not chivalrous, it is a bestial work—but I must not insult ttlie good animals. The Second Step. ‘‘My second step as a pacifist was made after the war. 1 read in one of your newspapers that during the war Air. Lloyd George said that after it every Englishman would be happier and riclier than before. That is the idea which all statesmen in all wars have had. But I ask vou, vou English people—you have won the war, are you any happier.? (Cries of ‘No.’) Are you richer? (‘We are worse off.') How looks the world’s economy to-day nine years after this stupid wai; We have in the world millions of workers and thousands of idle factories and men. The victors and those who lost have been alike damaged. For nine years I have been a soldier lor peace as 1 was for 37 years a soldier for war. In no country in the world is the work of a pacifist so difficult as in Germany. German) - is in the centre of Europe and must choose between being either the battlefield of the nations or the binding link between them.” General von Schonaich went on to speak of the militarisation of Germany by Prussia, but he said the pacifist movement was now going forward slowly but steadily. The people are beginning to realise that no nation can damage another without damaging itself. In these days the chief danger came not froin tho old military class, the clergymen, and teachers, but from the owners of the important raw materials, especially oil. “When the oil kings cannot agree with one another the people must fight for them,” he said. Many people in Germany were now supporting the policy of the Ponsonby letter and were saying that if the statesmen, generals, and manufacturers of war material wanted to have a war they must fight it themselves, and he had been speaking in many parts of Germany on these lines. “If the old militarists could do what they want they would hang me up.’ ’ General von Schonaich advocated the general strike in the event of war being declared. ‘‘You here in London,” he said, “must not forget that the next battlefield will be not Flanders, but London. Paris, and Berlin, and the victims will be not soldiers alone but you and your children. We must send to Parliament at the next election such people as will go to prison rather than fight. War resistance is the best gift you can make to the League of Nations.”