The international political grouping around Freedom was aware of the threatened onrush of what was to become World War I — and wrote with increasing desperation in its August 1914 issue, calling on workers to resist calls to arms as Austria used the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand to justify an imperial invasion.

The declaration of war by the Austro-Hungarian empire against Serbia on July 28 would have come extremely late in production for the August issue, leaving little time to properly consider the wider implications. One of the writers the editors were able to call on however was Pierre Ramus (pictured), an influential anarchist living in Austria who, critical of the Austrian left as he was, had been extraordinarily dedicated in promoting revolutionary thinking there against social democratic headwinds.

A sense of frustration with workers falling into line with the hawkish belligerence of their ruling class is palpable in the part translation, part commentary shoved in at the top of the international news section for the month. Previous issues of Freedom had been clear and militant against the prospect of a major war in Europe, reporting on efforts particularly by French anarchist unions to head off its involvement in the arms race that was funnelling the imperial powers towards conflict.

Ramus would go on to have a torrid time of it during the war. Registering as a conscientious objector, he was arrested twice on charges of espionage and treason, eventually being placed under house arrest until the end of the war. Denied the ability to continue his political activities, he kept nevertheless kept writing and published a series of works in the interwar years, Die Irrlehre und Wissenschaftslosigkeit des Marxismus im Bereich des Sozialismus in 1919 (criticising Marxist economics), Die Neuschöpfung der Gesellschaft durch den kommunistischen Anarchismus in 1920 (promoting anarchist communism) and Friedenskrieger im Hinterland (on anti-war activities) in 1924.

Active as a pacifist activist and communist prior to World War II, Ramus eventually fell afoul of the rise of Nazism and was forced to flee Austria in the 1930s, moving to Switzerland, France, Spain and Morocco. His journeys came to an end as he attempted to join his family, exiled in Mexico, when the ship he was travelling on was torpedoed.

~Rr

Our Austrian comrade Pierre Ramus, who edits the Anarchist fortnightly Wohlstand fur Alle (Prosperity For All) in Vienna, is considered a man of moderate language; but his article against the Austrian Government for its gigantic crime in forcing a war against the Serbian people is as full of vigour and outspoken rebellion as it is of convincing logic.

No other State in the world could (he says) be so imbecile but the wretched, priest-ridden one of Austria as to make war for such a cause — because two people of Serbian race commit murder. Every day there are Austrians who commit murder and it should be the same whether it is a duke or a worker that is killed. Although (he declares) he is against the Serbian State as against all States, yet it must be admitted that the Serbian government had nothing to do with the two murderers. If any individuals of Austrian race were to make an attack against, say, the Italian or Serbian tyrant, the Austrian Government would not consider itself responsible.

But even had the Serbian State organised the crime, it is no reply to declare war against the Serbian people, making them responsible for the State, instead of the two governments settling it between themselves. Why should thousands of Austrian workers lose their lives in the quarrel? The Austrian government is responsible for thousands of women and children being made unhappy. How can the crime of two fanatical patriots be atoned by an infinitely greater murder or worse crime?

If the Austrian government thinks the Serbian government has gained some advantage from the crime, let the Serbian government “give it satisfaction”; it is pitiful cowardice of the two governments concerned to try to satisfy their honour by pushing the peoples into the duel.

The Austrian people (continues Pierre Ramus) must protest. They should say loudly: “Sirs, if you want a war with Serbia, go and make it yourselves; but we Austrian town workers and peasants do not feel any enmity against our Serbian brothers; we love the Serbian workers as we love all the workers in the world.” It is high time; it may be the last hour before mobilisation. It is folly and treachery for a people in face of war to waste time discussing the tactics of a general strike; every war destroys the lives of hundreds of thousands of workers. Working men have nothing to lose; if you have to die in any case, choose which death it shall be, in war or for freedom.

But (adds Ramus, the article having been written before the actual declaration of war) there is still time to ward off the mischief by a general strike before mobilisation, which is the only way to bring the heads of the State to their senses — a general strike against this mass-murder of war. The people must firmly declare their will against the rabid bestiality of such a mass-murder.