Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 21 - From Marx to Mao

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V. I. LENIN
Junkers, exert every effort to support the tsarist monarchy
against a revolution in Russia.
In fact, the German bourgeoisie has launched a robber
campaign against Serbia, with the object of subjugating
her and throttling the national revolution of the Southern
Slavs, at the same time sending the bulk of its military
forces against the freer countries, Belgium and France, so
as to plunder richer competitors. In fact, the German bourgeoisie,
which has been spreading the fable that it is waging
a war of defence, chose the moment it thought most favourable
for war, making use of its latest improvements in military
matériel and forestalling the rearmament already planned
and decided upon by Russia and France.
The other group of belligerent nations is headed by the
British and the French bourgeoisie, who are hoodwinking
the working class and the toiling masses by asserting that
they are waging a war for the defence of their countries,
for freedom and civilisation and against German militarism
and despotism. In actual fact, this bourgeoisie has long
been spending thousands of millions to hire the troops of
Russian tsarism, the most reactionary and barbarous
monarchy in Europe, and prepare them for an attack on
Germany.
In fact, the struggle of the British and the French bourgeoisie
is aimed at the seizure of the German colonies, and
the ruining of a rival nation, whose economic development
has been more rapid. In pursuit of this noble aim, the
“advanced” “democratic” nations are helping the savage
tsarist regime to still more throttle Poland, the Ukraine,
etc., and more thoroughly crush the revolution in Russia.
Neither group of belligerents is inferior to the other in
spoiliation, atrocities and the boundless brutality of war;
however, to hoodwink the proletariat and distract its attention
from the only genuine war of liberation, namely, a civil
war against the bourgeoisie both of its “own” and of “foreign”
countries—to achieve so lofty an aim—the bourgeoisie
of each country is trying, with the help of false phrases
about patriotism, to extol the significance of its “own”
national war, asserting that it is out to defeat the enemy,
not for plunder and the seizure of territory, but for the
“liberation” of all other peoples except its own.