V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:LS/v28;en:MT;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

M. SAMBA. "BY NOT GIVING PEACE, YOU ARE PREPARING THE WAY FOR THE KING"*

Marcel Samba "By Not Giving Peace, You Are Preparing the Way for the King".
Fifth edition.
Paris 1913 (Eug. Figuière). 5th edition. ((Pp. 278)).
(Published July 20, 1913).

"If we were to discover, for example, that
we have been drawn into a system of alliances leading, through
the arms race, straight to war; and that,
nevertheless, this system of alliances is built on
the very foundations which would be sufficient
to ensure peace?" (p. XI).

"Do you not know that modern
war is becoming more and more like an industrial enterprise every day?
That mobilisation is a huge industrial
operation? That, like every industrial operation,
it requires technical knowledge and ability?" (p. 13).

"Yes! One can imagine a republic
less divorced from life and activity.
This is all the more necessary because the present
republic is not only incapable of waging war,
as I tried to show on the preceding pages,
but is equally incapable of ensuring
peace" (p. 25).

"Do not tell me that we can do without this, that you do not want conquests, that
you aim only at self-defence: pure
twaddle" (p. 28).

*
Extracts from Samba's book were made by N. K. Krupskaya; notes,
insertions
(see printed in bold type), underlinings in the text
of the quotations (see printed in italics) and page numbering are by Lenin. Ed.

104
LENIN MISCELLANY

"I proposed one day in the Chamber, after
the Agadir crisis, to try to create a new organ" (p. 31).
"The proposal was to organise, for
the direction of Foreign Affairs, a
Council composed of all former ministers of
Foreign Affairs" (p. 31).
"Assemble all the former ministers of
Foreign Affairs? But, my dear fellow, they would
only think of playing tricks on their successor!
Where on earth do you come from?" (p. 33).
"The contemporary financial
history of France, if it were ever
sincerely written, would be made up of the history of a
multitude of particular pillages, like the sacking of
a conquered city!
"It is the sacking of a brainless
nation by clever financiers. Let us see what
happens when the French state is faced,
no longer with its own nationals, but with foreign
governments" (p. 41).
"To * decide her, M. Delcassé proposed to
her a fine piece of Morocco with the
promise of our friendly support and our military and financial
assistance. On a reciprocal basis! Two hundred thousand good Spanish soldiers
would admirably fill the deficiencies of our
effectives" (p. 49).
"How many months did we let pass
before recognising the Portuguese Republic?
"At the time I write, the Chinese
Republic is not recognised by us: the United
States already treats it as a great personage!
But we have sacrificed it to the financiers.
"When Norway hesitated, did we make
a gesture, say a word? She was waiting for it!" (p. 65).

* Spain. Ed.

M. SAMBA. "BY NOT GIVING PEACE, YOU ARE PREPARING THE WAY FOR THE KING"
105

"If for twenty years we had not, on purpose, calmed and discouraged them, the revolutionaries
of Spain, it would not be Portugal alone
that would be a Republic! We would not need
to buy the Spanish alliance with the
pieces of Morocco! We would not have to
discuss the return to the Three-Year Law" (p. 68).

"My friend Jaurès, among others, said to me
on several occasions: 'You exaggerate the
danger. You must not believe that war must
infallibly occur. Each year that passes
consolidates peace and diminishes the chances
of war. Is it not, on the contrary, to increase
them, to predict the conflict?'
"I would be happy to share this
confidence, and to persuade myself that our common
efforts will long succeed in dispelling the
danger. It is because I fear the very opposite,
it is because, reflecting on it for several
years, I have felt grow and strengthen within me the
opposite idea that I have written
this book" (pp. 76-77).

"Once again, how do you expect the
Germans to take our peaceful affirmations seriously,
when the most notorious revanchists declare themselves friends of peace?
"They conclude from this that France
desires revenge and that only prudence
prevents us from declaring it aloud. They
sense us on the watch, ready to profit from the
occasion that would promise us victory. I ask
every honest Frenchman: Are they so wrong?
Would you dare in your heart of hearts to assert that
they are wrong? If really an opportunity presented itself,
evident, unique, delivering a weakened
Germany to our blows, and offering us a certain victory,

106
LENIN MISCELLANY

would we hesitate to fall upon her? Which of us
can answer that the peaceful will would
prevail, and that a violent wave of warlike patriotism
would not sweep away all resistance?" (p. 88).

"But defensive war is a war just as much as
offensive war, and the thought of
defending oneself can lead to attacking" (p. 91).

"It must be encouraged with all our heart!
Socialists readily sneer at pacifist
attempts! They see in them a kind of
international philanthropy which
deceives itself, when it does not seek
to deceive others, and which closes its eyes
to the economic determinism of war, just as
private philanthropy disregards the mechanism of
poverty.
"Socialists are wrong, all the same, to
scoff! That does not prevent the majority of
socialist deputies from enrolling in the
Arbitration Group and supporting all its
manifestations" (p. 93).

"Léon Bourgeois rose to the
conception of the Federation of peoples and the United
States of Europe! Hehe! here we are in the
neighbourhood of the International!" (p. 95).

..."Proletariat as a whole!.. rather
insurrection than war... the poison-press
... the plots of the capitalists... Le Creusot
... the cannon manufacturers... to capitalist force we will oppose working-class revolt..." (p. 106).

"The people of Paris send to the German
people their fraternal greeting and declare themselves ready to
resist by all means, and if necessary by
the general strike and insurrection, the
criminal enterprises of the warmongers..." (pp. 106-107).

"At bottom, I think there is a little

M. SAMBA. "BY NOT GIVING PEACE, YOU ARE PREPARING THE WAY FOR THE KING"
107

uneasiness: the uneasiness of people who do not admit
to themselves all they think" (p. 108).

"'In case of war, they would see! There would
all the same be * something in the
suburbs!'
"All the same? Yes! That means that we
have shouted very loudly in order to frighten,
but that we are not sure of being masters
of those thunders whose rumbling we imitate.
"The general strike? Yes! The unions
voted for it! They will march! The insurrection? The
barricades? Yes! There will be movement in the
suburbs, especially if the people have the impression that
we are the aggressors, the provocateurs.
"But if we were the provoked ones? If William,
squarely, attacked us?
"'The German socialists are there for that!'
That is the phrase for the adversary,
or for the doubter, and also for that doubter
who lives in each of us: it is launched in a sharp,
peremptory tone. Then the little voice murmurs:
'And if the German socialists have,
like ourselves, more goodwill than
power?... Listen: the chauvinist press is devilishly
rascally when it comes to mixing up the cards,
on both sides of the border!'" (pp. 108-109).

"And they will make the poster, the article, the new
paper! Written by people who dare not
say everything, and read by people who dare not
admit everything to themselves!" (p. 110).

"It is against us alone that the
War Ministry draws up the Carnet B. It is we
who threaten the government, in case of war, with
a resort to violence" (p. 112).

* Samba's italics. Ed.

108
LENIN MISCELLANY

"If we feel provoked, then it will be
a general let's-go, an irresistible
current which, as in Italy, will sweep everything away, like
straw, in its overflowing flood!" (p. 114).

"Rather Insurrection!.. *
"I want!.. Do you see the place, the
circumstances, the street, the faces of the comrades, the
number of the newspaper?" (p. 115).

"We can do nothing, I fear, when
it breaks out" (p. 117).

"That is the immense service that has so
many times been rendered to France by our eminent
friend Edouard Vaillant when he hurled at the face of the
rulers, at all tragic hours, his famous
challenge: 'Rather insurrection than war!' **
"The rulers understood: 'Beware! Let us not
imprudently risk war! Let us not
lightly risk defeat! It may be
a new Fourth of September!'" (p. 119).

"Beautiful days of Basel where towards the old
cathedral the processions of the International
thronged the steep streets!" (pp. 120-121).

"Of those three hundred thousand internationalists
of Treptow how many would have consented to deliver
Germany defenceless to the blows of the
chauvinists?
"Not one! and bravo! I congratulate them! We
too do not agree to deliver France
to the Pan-Germans!" (p. 122).

"Thus we rise up in each country
against our own government
to prevent it
from being bellicose, and above all separate
fatherlands, we outline the International" (p. 122).

"It follows that we must not be counted on
any more than the pacifists to maintain
* Sub-heading in Samba's book. Ed.
** Samba's italics. Ed.

M. SAMBA. "BY NOT GIVING PEACE, YOU ARE PREPARING THE WAY FOR THE KING"
109

and guarantee today, in every hypothesis and
against every danger, the peace of Europe.'
"Sad truth? You're telling me! But
truth! it is good to tell!" (p. 123).

"Let us persuade ourselves that shouting: 'Down with
War! War on War!' without thinking of
any practical effort to prevent a precise
conflict, is to practice Exorcism, Sorcery,
Magic" (p. 124).

"Magic is the unsatisfied desire which
proclaims itself, and by mimicry, believes it can
hasten the hour of satisfaction!" (p. 125).

"The possibility of an insurrection is, as
I said, a strong means of pressure and an excellent
threat. But when the time for threats is past?
When war is declared?...
"What to do? The Commune in every
city, hoisting the red flag, and the insurgents
getting themselves killed rather than yielding to the
warriors of the two countries? And it is we, the
scientific socialists, who feed on these
nonsensical ideas? But modern war is a
large-scale industrial enterprise! The city in revolt
against the enemy army, without artillery,
without ammunition, is the artisan against the big Factory.
A modern army would swallow one after another the insurgent
cities as one swallows strawberries. That is done
in a week, a twentieth-century war! And by
hurricanes of shells and by accumulated batteries!
Where the devil would our cities
find the time to federate among themselves and
organise a common defence, that is,
if I am not mistaken, to return to a national
army capable of holding out?
"...But heroic sacrifice is the fine
impulse of the moment: it is not a party programme!

110
LENIN MISCELLANY

It is not a tactic! And it is also not a
serious military operation, nor a strategy!" (pp. 126-127).

"To shout vaguely: 'Down with war!', to shake
threatening fists at the clouds, and to imagine
that one is sheltered from war, pure childishness!
It is not enough to fear war to be preserved
from it, nor to curse it to avoid it"
(pp. 128-129).

"No treaty obliges us to do so. We do it
voluntarily; and it is in complete freedom
that we impoverish each year the
natural nourishment of French production
by watering foreign production with our
savings. Everyone knows it. Everyone
approves" (p. 199).

"'You are not thinking of it,' he said, 'they
will demand the admission of German securities
on the Paris Stock Exchange!'
"I am thinking of it very much, and Mr. de
Waleffe is quite right! Indeed, the Germans
would certainly demand that" (p. 202).

"The only fruit of the Franco-German
understanding must be for France to definitively
establish European peace and to secure for
the future, in a consolidated Western Europe,
the conditions for its free development and
its legitimate influence" (p. 213).

"To unite with them (with whom?)* to
destroy the Germans or place the latter under
their yoke, which we would not escape for long
either, would be to show the world
France working with savagery against
civilisation" (p. 218).

"Have we heard talk of the limitation
of Armaments! of 'progressive and simultaneous'
disarmament!

* The words "with whom?" were written by Lenin above the words "avec eux"
("with them"). The author is speaking of the Slavs, the Russians. Ed.

M. SAMBA. "BY NOT GIVING PEACE, YOU ARE PREPARING THE WAY FOR THE KING"
111

"These are the very terms of the
proposition that my old friend Dejeante tabled,
like a good little fellow, some fifteen or twenty
years ago!" (p. 225).

"For my part, I cannot hide it, the
Franco-German rapprochement seems to me an enormous
historical fact, full of consequences,
and opening a new era for the universe. On one
side, by its beginning, it is positive, narrow and
limited, and is dictated to us by the sole
concern of avoiding an imminent war. On the other side,
from the side of the future, it seems to me to form
the embryo of the future United States of Europe" (p. 230).

"...it will be the prelude of an invasion like
that of the Burgundians or the Normans, a movement
of races" (p. 244).

"The fact is that the instinct of war, you see,
is intimately and deeply linked to the idea of
the fatherland" (p. 246).

"'Down with war!..' Have you noticed one
thing? In meetings against war,
one never shouts 'Long live Peace!'
"Never! or almost never!..
"Acclaim peace? We have come here
to protest and fight a scourge, a
villainy, the war we hate, and the scoundrels
who prepare it.
"'But, since you hate war, you cherish
peace!'
"That seems evident, rigorous, irrefutable.
Yet, against this logic, something deep down in the
popular soul says no. And
it is the popular soul that is right.
"Shout: 'Long live Peace!' just like that,
simply? Then that peace suffices for us? and
we are content? Never! Let us shout: 'Long live

112
LENIN MISCELLANY

the Social Revolution!' if you like, but not: 'Long live
Peace'. Down with war is very good,
because the meaning is clear and true. Yes, we hate
all war, whatever it may be; but it is not true
that we cherish all peace. The working
people do not cherish bourgeois peace, that
peace in which they are, without a battle, treated as
vanquished. They feel vaguely that in
acclaiming it, they would seem to wish only
the end of an alarm, the resumption of the
daily routine, the treadmill where the
sleepy man turns the wheel.
"That is not it at all!" (pp. 249-250).

"Our militants have the instinct of the crowd"
(p. 251).

"But, deep in his heart, he feels that the
enthusiasm which carried away this peasant in his
glorious delirium is a flame so burning
that one day of this fire is worth more than a life of
numb torpor; and that this young man who
will be killed next week on the ramparts of
Tchataldja will have lived longer than if he
had died in his field at seventy-five.
"He feels this deeply, and if he despises
this warlike enthusiasm, it is because he knows
another enthusiasm and another war, which
seem to him superior, and from the height of which
he contemplates with compassion and disdain this old
soldierly enthusiasm which he has known and which he
has overcome" (pp. 252-253).

"The worker who has nothing in peacetime,
has nothing to lose in war and risks nothing
but his skin. He risks his skin, but in exchange
he receives a rifle. With that rifle he could
do many things. He thinks about it. No, decidedly,
it is not economic interest that excites
the worker's hatred of war" (p. 255).

M. SAMBA. "BY NOT GIVING PEACE, YOU ARE PREPARING THE WAY FOR THE KING"
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"Do you know what Germany would gain most
clearly from a new war against France?
"'The Lorraine deposits, perhaps?'
"No, better than that! What she would pick up
under the walls of Paris is Belgium
and Holland, quite simply. Germania inferior...
and its colonial dependencies which are
notable" (p. 257).

"The frontiers of present-day fatherlands are
not for us eternal, impassable enclosures...
and we look, beyond the French horizon,
the new sun of the United States of Europe rising"
(p. 268).

"If we succeed in organising peace and
Europe, it seems to me that there we have the Republic,
the Fatherland and the International in perfect
accord, and we do not have to relegate the Republic
to the attic" (p. 272).