Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/358

 to its extraordinarily tragic nature. But thirty-four months of warfare proved that the Belgium episode constituted only the first step towards the solution of the fundamental problem of the imperialistic war, namely, the suppression of the weak by the strong.

Capitalism in its international relations pursued the same methods applied by it in "regulating" the internal economic life of the nations. Competition is the means of systematically annihilating the small and medium-sized enterprises, and of achieving the supremacy of Great Capital. World competition of the capitalistic forces means the systematic subjection of the small, medium-sized and backward nations by the great and the greatest capitalistic powers. The more developed the technique of Capital, the greater the role played by high finance, and the higher the demands of militarism, all the more grows the dependency of the small States on the Great Powers. This process, forming as it does an indispensable element of imperialistic mechanics, flourishes undisturbed also in times of peace by means of state loans, railway and other concessions, military-diplomatic agreements, etc. The war uncovered and accelerated this process, inasmuch as it introduced the factor of open violence. The war destroys the last shreds of the "independence" of small states, quite regardless of the military outcome of the conflict between the two enemy camps.

Belgium still groans under the pressure of German militarism. This, however, is but the visible and dramatic expression of the collapse of her independence. The "deliverence" of Belgium does not at all constitute the fundamental aim of the Allied Governments. Both in the further progress of the war and after its conclusion, Belgium will become but a pawn in the great game of the capitalist giants. Failing the interference of the third power, "Revolution," Belgium may as a result of the war either remain in German bondage, or fall under the yoke of Great Britain, or be divided between the powerful robbers of the two coalitions. Imperialistic supremacy decrees that the weak be subjugated.

The same applies to Serbia, whose national energy served as a weight in the imperialistic world scales whose fluctuations to one side or the other are least of all influenced by the independent interests of the Serbian people.

The Central Powers drew the Turks and Bulgarians into the whirlpool of the war. Whether both these countries will remain as the south-eastern organ of the Austro-German imperialistic bloc ("Central Europe"), or will serve as small change when the bal-