“The cause of war is preparation for war.”
--W.E.B. Du Bois
W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) was born only three years after the conclusion of the Civil War, within a year that saw revolutions and invasions throughout Europe as well as the increasing military presence of Great Britain in Africa, most notably in Ethiopia. The Korean War was only ten years in the past when he died and the United States, emboldened by half a century of military conflicts and conquests around the globe, some far more costly than others, was just beginning its long inglorious march into the hell of the Vietnam War.
Throughout his long and fruitful ninety-five years of life, Du Bois bore witness to a succession of domestic and international conflicts that included revolutions, rebellions, scandalous alliances, even more scandalous betrayals, the comedy of bumbling espionage, and the tragedy of human butchery. Framed as his life was by all manner of political violence, war was not something Du Bois could view from a purely philosophical of historical distance. Wars and rumors thereof were very much a part of his teen and young adult years. He was thirty at the time of the Spanish-American War in 1898 and approaching forty at the time of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 and the U.S. invasion of Cuba in 1906.
If he could have discerned in war a pragmatic advantage that furthered the development of enlightened civilization, Du Bois likely would have lent it his full support. And to a degree, in the case of the “Great War” known as World War I, he basically did because of the perceived threat to democracy and by extension the threat to the liberation of people of African descent around the world. With war having been engaged on such a titanic scale, there was, in truth, little else to do but lend one’s support to one’s native land and people. For the most part, however, no matter the angle from which he might examine it, war came to one brutal paradox: a quest for peace and harmony in the name of mass murder.
The hard questions were forever Du Bois’ favorites and in the case of war he offered a query that was extremely difficult primarily because it was extremely simple: as humanity claimed to desire peace and harmony above all else, why then did nations not prepare their industries to engage peace rather than war? Few viable answers have been forthcoming. Aware of the fear and distrust that curved rational considerations of war, Du Bois offered his own answer by allowing that pacifism was something he and Jesus Christ had very much in common.
“The time must come when, great and pressing as change and betterment may be, they do not involve killing and hurting people.”
--W.E.B. Du Bois
© Aberjhani
(from THE WISDOM OF W.E.B. DU BOIS)
I ditto Jerry's comments below entirely..
Fear breeds Suspicion...and Suspicion breeds Hostility..
In Fraternity
Peter
I believe the answer to that question is basic fear. Man understand his own thoughts, and in those thoughts there are some which are not so pure, and if he knows this about himself, it stands to reason that he would figure "those" people from that country and "those" people from another country would have these same thoughts and allow themselves to bend to the unpure thoughts, in other words, come to do harm to you because you have something or believe in something or whatever something and you had better prepare yourself for that coming siege. I rambled. The quick answer is FEAR. W.E.B. Du Bois, although abhoring war, had to come down on the side of it because he feared democracy was at stake and other fears concerning the liberation of his people worldwide. He was a great man, a moral man, a pacifist, but one steeped in reality.