Draft of an Appeal to the International Federation of Trade Unions.
The outbreak of the War in 1914 took the [Labor] movement by surprise, when it was unprepared to meet the situation. A great deal had been done previously, both nationally and internationally for improvement in the economic situation of workers, but they were not sufficiently conscious of the absolute necessity of preventing war.
Since then the leaders of the big workers' [organizations], with all the rest of mankind, have gone through its unspeakable horrors; and as a result of it the same misery reigns all over Europe -- unemployment, reduction of wages, high cost of living -- and still governments in Europe and on other continents do not hesitate to prepare new and even more cruel methods for the destruction of life. The progress of Scientific Warfare and Aviation has created limitless possibilities of destruction. [Airplanes] without pilots, spreading unescapable death by poison gas or by dropping incendiary bombs, are a supreme menace to the civil populations of large towns and industrial districts. There are no possible means of protection against this kind of danger.To avert such a catastrophe, the danger of which is acknowledged even by an official and expert opinion of a Committee of the League of Nations, one means only exists.
Manual and intellectual workers must unite their forces in order to protect the world against the ruthless in all countries who are preparing the ruin of mankind and of the workers first of all.
Therefore the W.I.L.P.F. is sending this challenge to the workers of the world, and particularly to those in France and Germany who are in leading positions in the I.F.T.U. to issue such a declaration as follows:
"We, the representatives of the workers, and especially those of us in France and Germany, desire to work together for the accomplishment of the greatest task of mankind, and to [cooperate] with the scientists of the world, and more particularly with those of France and Germany, who refuse to prostitute their knowledge for the purposes of war. We desire to follow their example and we say to the workers of the world:"Do not let yourselves be used for the manufacture of poison gas or of other weapons for the destruction of human life. Before us, the conscious workers of the world, lies the duty of [organizing] the will of working people everywhere to make future war impossible. Manual workers must unite with intellectual in refusing their work for war, and must continually impress upon their governments the fact that permanent peace can never be secured by war and may well be secured by [organized] international [cooperation].
"We are firmly determined to fight against all kinds of war and call upon the workers in our [organizations] to refuse to work in the manufacture of any kind of war material."
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