A special warning to the working class of the United States:
Open wide your eyes, brothers—and sisters.
The next trick-to-the-trenches is being prepared.
There is talk of peace—but preparation for war.
For more than twenty-five hundred years the great sea wars have been fought on the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. The bottoms of these oceans are strewn with shattered ships and human bones.
But the vast butcherings at sea in the near future will probably be, most of them, on the Pacific Ocean.
Like hungry wolves hotly eager in sight of prey, like clouds of vultures swooping confidently over a field strewn with a vile feast—thus the capitalist nations are gathering together their drums, their rifles, cannon, dynamite, lyddite, embalmed beef, hospitals, soldiers, marines, battleships, and boat-destroyers, preparing to assemble on the Pacific Ocean for bloody struggles.
There is talk of peace—but preparation for war.
What for?
Simply to secure more opportunity to make more profits for more money-hungry cowards, who will loll at home—safe—while the “brave boys” do the fighting.
There is talk of peace—and preparation for war.
What for?
Eastern Asia is the prize.
Working-class boys everywhere who are socially snubbed at home—and even turned down at the factory—these boys will join the armies and the navies of the world for these future struggles. Huge guns will roar, big shells will boom across the waves, splendid ships will shudder, then plunge to the bottom of the deep, filled with boys enticed from the homes of the humble. The sharks will send the innocents to the sea.
It will be “great” and “glorious.” Very.
And especially profitable: which is the main thing.
Perhaps your own bones or your son’s bones will bleach at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
The fundamental cause of these future wars on the Pacific Ocean and in Eastern Asia, the cause, will be ignored or concealed by all International Peace Conferences and Conventions. And, afraid to admit the cause, they can not treat the cause of these wars; they will thus be unable to prevent these wars—these wolfish struggles for Eastern Asia as a capitalist prize. The leading capitalist citizens of the world have no confidence in these International Peace Conferences. Therefore they continue building more cannon, more battleships and more than ever they are teasing the boys—our own younger brothers of the working class—teasing them on board these great butchering machines.
Warn your neighbor—right away.
More and more defiantly the purpose is announced. In the year 1908 the President of the great American “Republic” uttered an imperial fiat—and lo! 18 battleships, 8 armored cruisers and a flock of torpedo-boat destroyers, with thousands of cheap and humble young fellows on board,—a fleet of butchering machines with the butchers aboard—pompously steamed ’round the earth on a forty-five thousand-mile cruise and carouse, meaning—meaning what? Precisely this:
The capitalists of the United States are prepared with “civilized” weapons, a shark’s appetite and a tiger’s methods, to conquer a lion’s share of the vast profits to be wrung from Eastern Asia if they can find enough gullible jackies to do the fighting.
Be warned—you toilers in the mills and mines and on the farms.
“During the last half century,” writes Dr. Josiah Strong,[[179]] “European manufactures have risen from $5,000,000,000 to $15,000,000,000. This increase of production has led the European Powers to acquire tropical regions nearly one-half greater than Europe. But while European manufactures were increasing threefold, ours increased sixfold, and we, too, must find an outlet.
“All this means that the great manufacturing peoples are about entering on an industrial conflict which is likely to be much more than a ‘thirty years’ war,’ and like all war will cause measureless misery and loss.”
The interocean Panama Canal, costing our country hundreds of millions of dollars, is simply one part of the American plutocrats’ plan to dominate the Pacific, bleed Asia, convert the “Republic” into a still less veiled despotism for conquest, commerce and profits to stuff the pockets of the modern Caesars who talk of patriotism and always lust for gold.
Mr. William H. Taft, in an interview, spoke thus threateningly in 1908:
“The foremost issue of the coming campaign will be the question of expansion and the affairs of our insular possessions.
“The American Chinese trade is sufficiently great to require the government of the United States to take every legitimate means to protect it against diminution or injury by any political preference of any of its competitors.
“The merchants of the United States are being aroused to the importance of their Chinese export trade and will view political obstacles to its expansion with deep concern. This feeling of theirs would be likely to find its expression in the attitude of the United States Government.
“The Japanese have no more to do with our policy as a people than any other nation. If they have or develop a policy that conflicts with ours, that is another matter....
“I am an advocate of a larger navy.”[[180]]
There is talk of peace—but preparation for war.
But mark it well, brothers of the working class: Mr. Taft’s sons will not be butchered as cheap American marines fighting on the Pacific Ocean for a larger market for American capitalists. No capitalist shark shall make a sucker of his sons and tease them to the sea. Mr. Roosevelt’s sons, Mr. Bryan’s sons, and the sons of Senators and of Congressmen, the sons of bankers, great merchants and manufacturers—the flesh of these will never rot at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. No, oh, no. Scarcely. They are too proud and shrewd to do anything of the sort—for fifty cents a day. The mothers and sisters and sweethearts of these thoroughbred boys will never weep in homes made desolate by the thoughts of skulls of loved ones shining and grinning at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
Brothers, I warn you.
“Tell them who are so fond of touring around the globe to import—(I would rather say to inflict)—their civilization on the backward nations and tribes,” says Mr. Frederic Harrison,[[181]] “tell them that you want civilization here at home, if you can get it genuine.... Tell them that there are fifty burning social questions at home to solve.... Tell these noisy philanthropists ... whilst ‘civilization’ is making the tour of the world on board iron-clads, with eighty-ton guns, civilization is terribly wanted ... at home.... Therefore it is, I say, that peace, international justice, and quiet relations with all our neighbors, are first of all the interest of the workingmen ... they lose most heavily by war, both in what they immediately suffer and in what they have to surrender. They may leave their bones to wither in distant lands, but they bring back no fortunes, no honors ... no new honors for their class. They only can speak out boldly and with the irresistible voice of conscience, because they only have no interest in injustice, nothing to gain by conquest, and everything to lose by interference.”
Refuse, brothers, refuse. Be proud. Refuse. Stand by your own class. Refuse. Bankers refuse. Manufacturers refuse. All the shrewd “prominent people” refuse. You also should refuse to let your flesh rot and your bones bleach at the bottom of the ocean in the interest of these international leeches.
Lift up your meek faces, you tricked toilers of the world. The war trenches are yawning for your lives—a gulf in which the hopes, the happiness, the blood and the tears of your class will be swallowed.
Refuse.
When you understand, brothers, you will defend yourselves.
The day is dawning when the working class will not only shrewdly refuse to be tricked to the trenches, but will also proudly seize all the powers of government in defense of the working class. The working class must defend the working class. The state, the school, the press, the lecture platform, and even part of the church, all these powerful institutions, are at present used to fasten and hold the burdens of toil and the curse of war on the backs of the brutalized and despised working-class producers and the working-class destroyers.
It is our move, brothers. Have we sense enough for self-defense? See Chapter Ten: “Now What Shall We Do About It?”
CHAPTER SEVEN.
For Father and the Boys.
Following are “Topics for Discussion,” commended especially to working men as themes for conversations by fathers (and mothers) and sons, daughters also. It is hoped, too, that many of these themes may be brought up for discussion by labor union bodies.
The reader will kindly refer to the footnote on page [13].
The divisions—or “sections”—of the present chapter and of the succeeding chapter are not always materially related, and for the author’s purpose it is not necessary that they should be. The section numbering is for convenience in cross reference and for indexing.
(1) The Tsar of Russia and Germany’s famous general Von Moltke positively refused to permit the young soldiers to see Verestchagin’s pictures of war. Why? Because the pictures are true: they look like hell. Hell is not alluring.
“If my soldiers should think carefully, not one of them would remain, in the ranks.”—Frederick II.
Did you ever notice the attractive pictures of well-dressed, well-fed soldiers and marines displayed as our government’s advertisements for army and navy recruits? The pictures are lovely. They are intended to make war look good to the young and hungry wage-earners, especially to those out of a job. But let me tell you: Recently when a crowded transport reached San Francisco back from the Philippines, some of the soldiers, on seeing again the advertising pictures displayed as decoys in San Francisco, shook their fists at the pictures and loudly and bitterly cursed them as part of the bait used to lure them to the hell of war. They had been thinking it all over. A good time to think it over is before you enlist—before you agree to go to hell.
(2) Comment on war:
German proverb: “When war comes the devil makes hell larger.”
The Rev. Doctor Albert Barnes: “War resembles hell.”
Bishop Warburton: “The blackest mischief ever breathed from hell.”
Lord Clarendon: “War ... an emblem of hell.”
William Shakespeare: “O, War, thou son of hell.”
General W. T. Sherman: “War is hell.”
Well, really, it does seem as if the workingmen should at least be sharp enough to stay out of hell.
Now, since “war is hell” and the business men want hell and the politicians declare hell—why not let these gentlemen go to hell?
(3) Suppose we should have two laws passed and suppose we were in political position to rigidly enforce these two laws:—
First Law,—Requiring that when Congressmen and Senators are elected there shall be elected at the same time an alternate for each and every one of the Congressmen and Senators elected—to fill easily and promptly any vacancies that may occur from any cause.
Second Law,—Requiring that all Senators and Congressmen who vote for war and thus “declare war” shall be forced, according to this law, to instantly resign their offices, and, by special draft provided for in this law, be forced to join the army immediately, infantry department, and, with the common instruments of war (rifles, swords, etc.), fight on the firing line, as privates, without promotion, till the war is finished or till they themselves are slaughtered.
It is significant that:
“Universal military service, adopted by all the great states on the Continent, in imitation of Germany [following the Franco-Prussian War], has, by making the young men of wealthy families join the army, personally interested the members of the governments and parliaments in avoiding war.”[[182]]
When, in 1909, the Spanish War in Africa became intense and dangerous, the Spanish government renewed an old “exemption” law permitting wealthy and “noble” and elegant Spanish gentlemen to send substitutes to the war and thus avoid the hell of the firing line themselves.[[183]]
Our “Dick” Military Law, passed by Congress in 1903, exempts Congressmen, Senators, judges, etc.,—also (by agreement with the State laws) preachers and priests—exempts all these from the clutches of the War Department, though that same law sweeps millions of other men—all able-bodied, male citizens over eighteen and under forty-five years of age—sweeps millions more than before into the absolute control of the Department of Slaughter. (See Section 11, below.)
Does it not seem that if war is good enough to vote for or pray for it is good enough to go to rifle in hand? If not, why not?
Those who vote for or pray for blood-stained victories should be forced to go after them. (See Chapter Eight, Section 14.)
(4) Mr. Workingman, would you for any reason permit any statesman or other leading citizen to compel you personally and individually to go out into a neighboring pasture-field and open fire with a Winchester upon your neighbor who had done you no injury, against whom you felt no enmity? Scorn the thought!
Well, suppose you are multiplied by 500,000 and your neighbor is also multiplied by 500,000, and instead of a neighboring pasture-field you have a neighboring territory on the other side of some national boundary line, and no quarrel, no enmity, no injury to be righted between the two groups of 500,000 workingmen—what then? Can’t you see the point—till you have a bayonet thrust into you?
Suppose the Congress of the United States and the Diet of Japan should declare war against each other. Why not have all the fighting and the bleeding and the dying done by the Mikado and the national legislature of Japan and our President and our national legislature? Simply have these two small groups of glistening strutters forced to face each other with rifles, swords and Gatling guns out on some nice level county fair-ground or big cornfield—forced to furnish the blood, cripples, corpses and funerals. This plan would be far more fun and less worry and less work—for the working class; it would require so much less time and money and blood and tears.
Take the last great war between Germany and France, in 1870–71. The King of Prussia and the Emperor of France had a personal quarrel about who should be or who should not be the new King of Spain—which was none of their business. They got “real mad.” War was declared. The “honor” of this precious pair of handsome parasites was at stake. Nothing but blood would wash out the stain upon their “honor.” Of course, royal blood was too precious for this laundering process. “Noble blood” was, of course, not available—for such purposes. The blood of common working class men would do very well for these two brutes to do their washing in. They were too cowardly to take each a sword and a Winchester and go out behind the barn or into the woodshed and “settle it,” risking their own putrid blood.... No—oh, no! The red ooze of kings and nobles is not to be wasted as long as a lot of cheap wage-slaves are standing around willing to be butchered—with pride,—for the experience and honor of it.
“To the front! To the front! A million men to the front!”
Instantly a multitude of the strong men of the working class blindly rushed to the front—as ordered, and asking no more questions about the justice of the war than the cavalry horses asked.[[184]]
Did the working people of France and Germany have any grudge against one another? Not the slightest. But they butchered one another by the tens of thousands.
It is true that the King of Prussia and the Emperor of France were actually in this war, “at the front” (somewhat—or “as it were”). But the working class reader should not be deceived by that fact. The King and the Emperor were rarely in any danger whatever—up very close. They “enjoyed” the battles from the high ground overlooking the slaughter—watching bravely through telescopes.
“How, then, did the Germans capture the Emperor at the Battle of Sedan?”
His troops were overwhelmed by the Germans. His soldiers swept back—crowded into Sedan. Five hundred German cannon pounding the town made the Emperor long for home. He did his grandest deeds of heroism—in trying to escape. He hadn’t time to get out of the way. Bravely he dressed in women’s clothes in order not to be recognized, hoping by a perfectly ladylike manner to get back to his throne on which his heroism would be more apparent and his martial spirit more assertive.
(5) Well-paid federal injunction judges, well-paid generals and naval officers (and their widows) are provided with liberal old-age government pensions—to make sure that their last years may be absolutely secured against toil and worry and the humiliation and social damnation of poverty. Now if these well-paid men, receiving salaries of from $2,000 to $12,500 a year for many years,—if these and those they love should be carefully protected against want and worry in their gray old age, then why should not useful industrial workers who serve long and well in the mills and mines and on the farms and railroads for a meagre living where their lives are full of risk—why should not these also be made absolutely secure when the sunset of their lives draws near? Why not?
The present annual cost of our two Departments of Murder—the Army and the Navy—(including interest on war bonds and the loss of the “regular” soldiers’ labor-power, but not including the military pensions) would furnish an annual old-age industrial pension of more than $290 each for one million four hundred and fifty thousand people. You old men and old women of the working class, wouldn’t it give you a feeling of peace and confidence if you were absolutely certain that, after a life of useful labor in the grand army of industry, you, every pair of you, would receive yearly, not as charity, but as a right provided for all, over $580? The lives of many working class men and women are today filled with fear of hunger and rags and shelterless, helpless days when they pass the capitalists’ deadline, the employers’ “age-limit.”
Says the New York World:[[185]]
“The unemployed of New York ask that on Decoration Day there be a service in the honor of the workingmen who have lost their lives at the post of duty. Not much attention has been paid to the suggestion.... These are the legacies which a people devoted to industry have received from an ancestry devoted to war. The heroes most honored in all ages have been warriors, and yet every generation has produced countless examples of devotion and sacrifice remote from the field of carnage.
“More than any other great nation this republic might be expected to glorify the martyrs of industry, whose lives have been as truly for progress as any of those sacrificed in the ranks of armies. There are many dangerous callings in which the risks are as great as those of war. There are hundreds of thousands of working men and women fighting fiercer battles daily than many a soldier ever knew. On the industrial firing line, where no quarter is given to the invalid or the incompetent, courage is not sustained by excitement and passion, and there are no illusions of fame to strengthen the faltering toiler when he comes face to face with defeat and death.
“It is well that we should remember the fine patriotism of our citizen soldiers, but even they were workers before they were warriors. If we would celebrate heroism it is to be found all about us in the humble stations among the men and women—even the children—who toil.”
Think about this matter, carefully, you men and women of the working class. Discuss it with your children and your neighbors.
(6) The owner of a factory, protected by law, by the constitution, by the flag, by the politicians and the soldiers and militia, can “turn down” a skilful, effective wage-earner because his hair is gray, because he is “too old,” is “past the age limit”—even though his old wife starve for support. The “glorious flag” protects even such vile industrial tyranny. The flag that the old man has worshipped, the constitution he defended, and the politicians he voted for—all these are no protection for him. Thus our old industrial soldiers are helpless even though the industrial tyrant spit on their gray beard.
(7) The patriotic militiamen and the “regulars” often say: “We believe in protecting property in time of strikes.”
How much property have you? And what kind of property is it? Is your property in danger? Indeed, was your property even remotely threatened? Do those who own the property you protect actually help you in protecting their property—help you in actual struggles where the lead flies?
American capitalists often refer to the “splendid service” of the militia and the regular troops in Chicago in 1894 in “protecting railway property from being burned by the strikers.” But let us see:
Certain railway companies in 1894 knew that the government of Chicago could be forced or “persuaded” to pay for all the cars destroyed within the city limits during the strike by claiming insufficient protection of property had been furnished. If, then, hundreds of old worn-out cars worth “old-iron” prices could be destroyed by fire within the city limits during the strike, and if the railway companies could by trickery collect from the city, say, $500 for each such car burnt, it would be “good business” to have such cars set on fire by paid incendiaries. The burning of this precious property would also create powerful sentiment against the strikers when “played up” luridly by the capitalist newspapers. Thus there was powerful motive for having the precious property burnt. It would be both awful and profitable. Employees of some of the railways entering Chicago have told the writer that old worn-out cars from railway shop towns far out in Iowa were actually hauled to Chicago and burnt within the city limits in 1894.
Did you know that in 1895 in court the railway union men were charged with burning the cars during the strike; and did you know that when the union men brought into court the proof that detectives were caught in the act of setting fire to cars, court adjourned, and the case has never been called since, though there has been a standing challenge to the courts to do so? Thousands of such facts as these are suppressed.
“It is in evidence and uncontradicted,” says Carroll D. Wright,[[186]] “that no violence or destruction of property by strikers or sympathizers took place in Pullman [Illinois], and that until July 3d [when the federal troops came upon the scene] no extraordinary protection was had from the police or military against even anticipated disorder.”
(8) In 1907 there was a bitter strike at the iron mines in northern Minnesota. In all the “strike” mining towns, except one, armed men, “special guards,” were officially placed on duty at once—ready to “keep order,” ready to “quell the riots,” etc. In Sparta, an iron-mining town, there were over three hundred men on strike, hotly eager to win the strike. But the strikers and the town officials united in an urgent request that no special armed guards be sent to Sparta. The strikers and the town officials agreed that “the guards only stir up trouble,” and without the guards they could and would keep order themselves.
Guards were sent to all the “strike” towns but Sparta.
Turmoil and bitterness promptly broke out and continued for weeks in every “strike” town except Sparta.
There was no trouble whatever in Sparta during the entire strike. The only man arrested in Sparta for disorder during the entire strike was a special guard that sneaked into the town and got viciously drunk. He was promptly thrust into jail by the police, with the glad sanction of the strikers, and on the following morning he was escorted to the town limits and forced to get away and stay away. Another day during the strike several special guards came to the borders of the town, plainly seeking trouble. They were promptly forced to leave.
Well-fed, well-paid, well-armed men in a strike town ready to bayonet poor fellows struggling for crusts against a brutal corporation—simply stir up trouble. And the capitalist employers know this well.
Surely you have noticed that during troublous times of strike the chief use made of police, militia, cossacks and “regulars” is to protect the haughty employer who blurts out: “Nothing to arbitrate!” He would promptly come to terms—there would instantly be “something to arbitrate”—if he did not feel sure that the toilers would be promptly jailed or shot if they became maddened in their fear and hunger and humiliation.
(9) You must have noticed that in turbulent strike times in your community hungry, humiliated, angry men never for a moment think of doing the least damage to the publicly-owned school houses, the publicly-owned libraries and the publicly-owned art galleries and the State University and the publicly-owned park. You see, the workers are in a more social relation to this social property. And if the mills, mines, factories, and railways and the like were socially owned and socially controlled, the workers would also be in a far more social relation toward this socialized industrial property. Then there would be no class war raging around the mines and shops. Then this property would need no protection from cheated, hungry, humiliated, maddened working people nor from detective crooks in the service of capitalists as incendiaries. Then the workers could not be haughtily turned down with the brutal “Nothing to arbitrate!” Then indeed there would be no industrial kings and emperors to demand: “Bring out the Gatling guns and the cossacks! This is our business!”
Notice:
Political justice is impossible under a political despotism.
Political democracy is the only known cure for political despotism.
Industrial justice is impossible under an industrial despotism.
Industrial democracy is the only cure for industrial despotism.
Industrial democracy would end the civil war in industry.
“The right to rule the political state is mine!”—says the king.
“You are wrong!” answer the most enlightened people.
The king steps down. He must.
The people step—up—to power. They must.
This is progress.
“The right to rule in industry is ours!” say the capitalist industrial masters, the industrial kings.
“You are wrong!” is the increasing answer of the increasing multitude of the increasingly intelligent members of the working class.
The kings of capitalism will come down. They must.
The working class will go up—to industrial democracy. They must.
This will be progress.
If despotism is all wrong in politics, it can not be all right in industry.
Increasing democracy is on the increasing program of mankind.
The master of ceremonies is the political party of the working class to secure, to inaugurate, to “render the next number on the program,”—industrial democracy.
This is the “road to power.”
Forward! Forward! On!—to the last great battle in the civil war in industry.
“Evolution makes hope scientific.”
Evolution leads to revolution.
That is a law of nature.
Laws of nature cannot be ignored, suspended, amended or repealed.
Learn the road to power, great splendid multitude of toilers.
The world is ours just as soon as we learn the road to power.
Prepare for the revolution—and Life.[[187]]
(10) That there is civil war in industry under capitalism has concrete illustration in the facts of strikes and lockouts. Here are some of them for a short term of years—in our own country:—
From 1881 to 1901 there were in the United States 22,793 strikes, which involved 117,509 establishments, threw 6,105,694 persons out of employment for an average of 21 and 8/10
THE WAR
IS THE
CLASS WAR
days, lost these workers in wages $257,863,478, consumed $16,174,793 in assistance from labor organizations, and lost to the employers over $122,731,121. Of these strikes less than 51 per cent. succeeded, slightly more than 13 per cent. partly succeeded, and over 36 per cent. failed altogether. During these same years there were 1,005 lockouts which involved 9,933 establishments, threw 504,307 persons out of employment for an average of 97 days, lost $48,819,745 in wages, cost $3,451,745 in assistance from labor organizations, lost for the employers $19,927,983. About 51 per cent. of these lockouts succeeded, less than 7 per cent. partly succeeded, and about 43 per cent. failed.[[188]]
“In legalizing labor wars,” says Waldo F. Cook,[[189]] “the state virtually recognizes industrial classes as belligerents; and enough time has now elapsed to enable one to say that the long series of these wars and their highly probable continuance for an indefinite period under present conditions, establishes the presumption that the wage-system is a failure and must sometime be replaced by another, which will not produce industrial classes with hostile interests and exacerbate society by their class antagonisms and hates. For the labor war, no less than the war between nations, cultivates prejudice, bitterness and hatred—only these feelings affect classes within a nation rather than the nations themselves in their relations with each other.... Law makes violence by nations right; law makes violence by strikes wrong.”
“War is a collision of interests.”—General Von der Goltz. (Quoted by Mr. Cook, above.)
(11) The Dick Militia Law: A quiet revolution. Everywhere our capitalist government prepares to serve the capitalist interests in the “collision of interests,”—in the civil war in industry.
The highest literary honor that can come to an officer of the United States Army is the Gold Medal of the Military Service Institution. This honor was won in the year 1908 by Captain Bjornstad of the Twenty-Eighth Infantry—with an essay urging a standing army of 250,000 men and a reserve army of 750,000 men.
Would not the following be a fruitful subject for discussion in the labor union halls: What is the connection between the threatening increase in the insulted, starving army of the unemployed and the threatening increase of the bribed standing army?
Study and discuss this matter till our class realize that strong men of the working class are bribed with bread to slay those who earn bread.
All working men should read the Annual Report made by Mr. Elihu Root, Secretary of War, in 1902–3. Mr. Root, shrewd, shameless and powerful lackey of the capitalist class, forcibly set forth in his Report the great advantages that would result (to the capitalist class) from certain almost revolutionary changes that could be easily made by vastly increasing the “State” militia forces and at the same time constituting these “State” forces as an organic, instantly commandable part of the national army—to be used precisely like “regular” troops for any purpose desired by the capitalists in control of the national government. Mr. Root’s Report attracted instant wide and favorable attention. The capitalists were delighted. The workers were deluded. Immediately the Report became the basis of the “Dick Militia Law” which was passed in 1903.
The author of War—What For? has urged capitalist editors all over the United States to publish this law. He has offered to pay for space at liberal advertising rates in which to print from ten to one hundred lines of this law. He has not succeeded in finding a capitalist editor who would thus reveal the treachery of his class lurking in this law. This law is a rough-ground sword against the rousing, rising working class in the United States, a law more important to the working class than any other law passed since the middle of the nineteenth century. This law is loaded with death for the workers when in future years the army of the unemployed or the ill-paid toilers gather around the mines and factories and roar for work or bread. Instead of work they will get sneers. Instead of bread they will get lead and steel—provided for by this Dick Militia Law.
The capitalists do not dare permit the working class to read and study this “Dick” law in the newspapers. Note some of the features of this law:
The purpose: “An Act to promote the efficiency of the militia and for other purposes.”
What is meant by “other purposes” will become clearer as the army of the unemployed grows larger. “Other purposes”—exactly: food for reflection when out of work and hungry.
Section 1,—“The militia shall consist of every able-bodied male citizen of the respective States, Territories, and the District of Columbia ... who is more than eighteen and less than forty-five years of age.”
The males of military age, all from eighteen to forty-five inclusive, in 1890 numbered 13,230,168.[[190]]
Section 4,—“... It shall be lawful for the President to call forth for a period not exceeding nine months such number of the militia as he may deem necessary ... and to issue his orders ... as he may think proper.”
The law was amended with an iron hand during the winter and spring of the hard times of 1907–8, when millions were thrown out of employment and into the muttering, angry army of the unemployed. For example, the nine-months limit was struck out of Section 4, which is more food for reflection—for any one who has brains enough to reflect with.
Section 7,—“Any officer or enlisted man of the militia who shall refuse or neglect to present himself to such mustering officer upon being called forth ... shall be subject to trial by court martial, and shall be punished as such court martial may direct.”
The law creates a vast reserve army now rapidly being perfected. The law, especially as amended recently, gives the President power greater than is possessed by some of the most dangerous and hated tyrants on earth today. Issuing a general order by telegraph and post, the President could suddenly place under orders from five to ten millions of the strongest men in the land—including the strikers themselves; and to neglect or refuse to obey such orders would mean a “court-martial” trial with rigorous punishment. A court-martial jury is not noted for gentleness; famously different from a jury of one’s “old neighbors.”
Section 9,—“The militia, when called into actual service of the United States, shall be subject to the same rules and articles of war as the regular troops.” That is to say, for the time they are “on call,” they are virtually federal soldiers.
The law as amended by Congress in May, 1908, provides “that every officer and enlisted man of the militia who shall be called forth in the manner hereinbefore prescribed shall be mustered for service without further enlistment.” [Italics in Report.]
“The call of the President will, therefore, of itself accomplish the transfer of the organized militia which is called forth by him from its state relations to its federal relations. It becomes part of the Army of the United States and the President becomes its commander-in-chief.
“The President is the exclusive judge of the existence of an emergency which would justify the calling forth of the Organized Militia.”[[191]]
This law contains twenty-six sections, every one of which should be studied carefully by the working class of the United States. The Union labor bodies should urge local newspapers to publish parts of the law selected by the unions. The more the law is examined the more food for reflection will be found in it.[[192]]
The English capitalist government has also recently enacted a new military law, a species of “Dick” law, called the Territorial Force Act. This law transforms a “voluntary citizen soldier” into a “regular” soldier. Says Justice:[[193]]
“Under the new act the Volunteer must ‘enlist’ and serve under ‘military law.’ He will be as much a regular soldier as a Life Guard or a Lancer, and can be called out to shoot down strikers in labor disputes as was actually done at Featherstone ... and at Belfast only a few months ago.”
“The Volunteer,” says the Morning Post, “will no longer be a citizen soldier, he will be a soldier without the blur of citizenship.... He may be mechanic; many of the best Volunteers are mechanics. If there is a strike in his works, ordered by the trade union to which he subscribes, and if the Mayor is afraid of the Strikers, and wants soldiers to shoot them, in case of need, the Volunteer, renamed ‘man of the Territorial Force,’ is just the man he wants; and the bill empowers the Mayor to call him out for the purpose.”
The “Dick” law was passed by capitalist “friends of labor,” of course, both Republicans and Democrats; and the “Territorial Force Act” was similarly passed by capitalist “friends of labor,” both Liberals and Conservatives. As the unarmed army of the unemployed grows threateningly larger and the armed army of bribed butchers grows larger—ready to murder those who starve—it is in order, in “Old England,” in “New America,” everywhere in order, for the working class to give more careful attention to the “good men” who are so tearfully and fearfully “friendly to labor.”
(12) Why should the working class give the capitalist governments a free hand in the murder of the workers? Why not rigorously restrict the power to call millions of men to arms?
What would happen if the working class should refuse to fight?
“That ‘the government can not put the whole population in prison, and if it could, it would still be without material for an army, and without money for its support,’ is an almost irrefutable argument. We see here [‘in passive resistance, not simply in theory, but in practice’] at least the beginnings of a sentiment that shall, if sufficiently developed, make war impossible to an entire people....”[[194]]
Five points to be emphasized here:
(1) Require all the school teachers to teach all the children to despise and hate war.
(2) Arm everybody or nobody.
(3) Train everybody or nobody.
(4) “The right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed.”—Constitution of the United States: Third Amendment.
(5) The working class should diligently study the folly of requiring one regiment of the working class to fight the united and class-loyal capitalist class in strikes.
These five propositions suggest a plan that would, even under capitalism, render the working class far less helpless and hopeless than they are at present in their class struggle against the capitalist class of masters who may legally order the working class soldiers to fire on the working class.
However, the triumphantly effective work can be accomplished in this matter when—and not until—the working class have seized the powers of government. (See Chapter Ten, which is wholly devoted to the fundamentals of “What to do.”)
It is significant that the first Secretary of War, Henry Knox, appointed by President Washington, made a Report January 18, 1790, on the proper basis for the military defense of the United States. His plan was “to reject a standing army, as possessing too fierce an aspect and being hostile to the principles of liberty.”
A scholar of world-renown, Francis Lieber, German-American soldier, historian, economist and publicist, has this to say of standing armies:[[195]]
“Standing armies are not only dangerous to civil liberty because depending upon the executive. They have the additional evil effect that they infuse into the whole nation ... a spirit directly opposed to that which ought to be the general spirit of a free people devoted to self-government. Habits of disobedience and contempt for the citizens are produced, and a view of government is induced which is contrary to liberty, self-reliance, self-government.... Where the people worship the army, an opinion is engendered as if courage in battle were really the highest phase of humanity; and the army, in turn, more than aught else, leads to the worship of one man—so detrimental.”
(13) “For the French and Italians and especially the German and Russian adolescent of the lower classes ... the army is called ... the poor man’s university.”[[196]]
“The poor man’s university!”—in which he is drilled and kicked into spineless subserviency and is taught the noble art of killing himself, his class, scientifically. The degraded, docile, and despised millions of the working class men of the standing armies of the world are indeed educated when they are willing to wade in their own blood in defense of the parasitic capitalist class who rule, ride and ruin the toilers of all the world.
A standing army is a joke and a yoke on the working class. A standing army is a compound human machine educated to spank the working class when it cries for milk—and bread and meat. A soldier, a militiaman, is an educated boot with which the employers kick the working class.
(14) Do not rich men’s sons sometimes voluntarily join the militia?
Yes, sometimes—but very, very rarely. One of the bluest-blooded Vanderbilts of New York was recently a captain in a specially handsome Regiment. But, mark you—in ninety-nine cases in a hundred, well-armed, well-trained militiamen fight unarmed, untrained workingmen (and women), which is not so very, very dangerous—for the militiamen. To an intelligent rich man an unarmed wage-earner on strike for an extra nickel to buy bread, as “the enemy,” and an armed trained soldier whose business is murder, as “the enemy,”—these look different, you know.
For years New York millionaires and all the other “best people” “pointed with pride” to the famous Seventh Regiment of the National Guard, the “rich men’s regiment,” the “gilt-edged regiment” of lovely young millionaires, many of whom rode to the armory for drill in their automobiles. This regiment of the American nobility of lard-and-tallow-steel-coal-and-railway millionaires, ready at any moment to defend and save the dear country from “the enemy,”—this regiment was, indeed, the pride of the village called New York. These glistening patricians taught the common people patriotism. “So they did.”
Until the Spanish War broke out.
Then these fakir patriots—what did they do—then?
Resigned.
Or they did what amounted to the same thing—voted not to go to the war.
Certainly they did. Promptly, too—and intelligently.
Why not?
Surely you do not expect a lot of intelligent men to leave their happy homes, go to hell and make themselves ridiculous, do you? Why, the cost of a rubber tire for one wheel of an automobile would pay the war wages of a cheap man of the “lower classes” for six months.
(15) “Didn’t one millionaire go to the war in Cuba?”
Yes. Out of our six thousand patriotic, flag-waving millionaires, one, just one, a young green one, went to the war in Cuba—“for a little excitement and a lark,” he said. He found large quantities of excitement “all right,” and some cold lead. He was killed. As a millionaire “patriotically” going to war his case is an exception, clearly an exception, a conspicuously lonely, vain and stupid exception; and that exception will never be imitated. Too much intelligence—among the millionaires. Even his millionaire friends laughed at him for going to war. But he wanted a “hot time.” He got the “hot time”—and the cold lead.
There were several thousand other millionaire flag-wavers instructively conspicuous in that war—by their intelligent patriotic absence.
It is instructively significant that the capitalist newspapers gave more than a hundred times as much space to the death of the one millionaire soldier in the Spanish-American war as they gave to the death of any hundred humble working class soldiers who were slaughtered in the same war.
(16) Were not some of the rich men of today soldiers at one time—“years ago”?
Yes. Some of the rich men of today were soldiers at one time—years ago; but they are not soldiers now when they are rich, and they were not rich when, years ago, they were soldiers.
(17) If politicians do not go to war, what about Mr. Bryan’s case? Didn’t Mr. Bryan patriotically go to the war in Cuba?
No. Mr. Bryan did not go to the war in Cuba. He simply went toward the war.
Mr. Bryan was, of course, patriotic, fervently, noisily so; but, like the intelligent people of his class, he always had his enthusiasm under perfect control. Mr. Bryan at no time showed an unmanageable desire to get up close in front, on the firing line. And his class was true to him, respected his strong preference for war five hundred miles from the flaming, snarling Gatling gun; and, accordingly, his class—in power at Washington—kept him well out of danger. At one time he got the impression he was in danger of being sent to the front. At once he cried out, “It’s politics!” and promptly resigned his noble command, double quick, patriotically. Mr. Bryan, mounted on a splendid horse, with uplifted sword in hand, grandly vowing to “defend the flag against the enemy” as he headed his noble braves, assembled for review, and admiration, before the Omaha Bee building, ready to start toward the front—at that sublime moment Colonel William Jennings Bryan was, well, simply beautiful, not to say pretty. As the golden tones of this Nebraskan Achilles, this Alexander from the Platte Valley, rolled forth in his heroic vow to bleed (if necessary) for his flag, the nation was comforted—felt saved already.
Patriotism is, after all, worth all it costs—that is, worth all it costs Mr. Bryan. Mr. Bryan, like Mr. Hearst and many others, is patriotic, even intemperately so—with his mouth.
But the reader may ask, “Was not Mr. Roosevelt in the Cuban War a case of a politician actually on the firing line?”
Clearly an exception. Name a few other “great statesmen” or international noises who went to the Cuban War—to the actual firing line.
Mr. Roosevelt loves excitement and danger. And what indescribable dangers there were for the Americans in the Cuban War! The mightiest “republic” on earth was pitted against the most toothless, decadent old political grandma in Europe. The dangers?—equal to those that threaten an armed, athletic hunter alone and face to face with a sucking fawn. Mr. Roosevelt himself has heroically—and carefully—recounted and printed his own brave deeds in that war. With Christian love and humility, with charming modesty and delicacy, with the diffident ingenuousness of a blushing schoolgirl, characteristic of him, Mr. Roosevelt tenderly recites one of his noble deeds as follows:[[197]]
“Lieutenant Davis’s First Sergeant, Clarence Gould, killed a Spaniard with his revolver.... At about the same time I also shot one.... Two Spaniards leaped from the trenches ... not ten yards away. As they turned to run I closed in and fired twice, missing the first and killing the second [Oh, joy!].... At the same time I did not know of Gould’s exploit, and I supposed my feat to be unique.”
Surely it requires courage, rare and noble courage, for a wealthy graduate of Harvard University to boast in print that he shot a poor, ignorant fleeing Spanish soldier—very probably a humble working man drafted to war, torn from his weeping wife and children—that he shot such a man, in the back. Oh, bliss—elation—ecstasy divine! “I got him! with my revolver too! in the back!” Manly pastime of an American gentleman, a mongrel mixture of patrician and brute. Yes, reader, Mr. Roosevelt, politician, was in the Cuban War—with a purpose; and secured a military title and a “war record” worth at least 75,000 votes in his campaign for the governorship of New York which immediately followed the war. For details consult The Rough Rider. With shrewd patriotism, political foresight, rare courage—and girlish bashfulness—Mr. Roosevelt’s picture is repeatedly presented in the book, the poses expressing his usual audible modesty and ferocious gentleness.
Emerson finely says: “Every hero becomes a bore at last.”
(18) The noble Professor Paulsen (Berlin University) wrote:[[198]]
“Hate impels men to seek quarrels, and pride turns their heads.... Nay, arrogance and hatred are really always the signs of an irritable, diseased self-consciousness.... [That] selfish, arrogant, vain and narrow-minded self-conceit, which the flatterers of the popular passion call patriotism.”
The distinguished Italian historian, G. Ferrero, has written:[[199]]
“Thus in destroying or creating, man can procure for himself strong emotions, and persuade himself of his own superiority.... Two passions have divided the human heart throughout the annals of human history: the divine passion for creation, and the diabolical passion for destruction.... Nineteenth-century man may seek after violent and inebriating emotions that permit him to assert his superiority over his fellows....”
Robert G. Ingersoll understood the hero-brute mongrel:
“Courage without conscience is a wild beast. Patriotism without principle is the prejudice of birth, the animal attachment to place.”
Thus Victor Hugo:[[200]]
“To be, materially, a great man, to be pompously violent, to reign by virtue of the sword-knot and cockade ... to possess a genius for brutality—this is to be great, if you will, but it is a coarse way of being great.”
The cannon’s roar, the bayonet’s thrust, the crush of flesh, the splash of blood,—such things in battle make men gentle, tender, gallant, even heroic, fit subjects for the adoration of women.[[201]] For example: When the Christian heroes captured Magdeburg:
“Now began a scene of massacre and outrage which history has no language, and poetry no pencil, to portray. Neither the innocence of childhood nor the helplessness of old age, neither youth nor sex, neither rank nor beauty, could disarm the fury of the conquerors. Wives were dishonored in the very arms of their husbands, daughters at the feet of their parents, and the defenseless sex exposed to the double loss of virtue and life.... Fifty-three women were found in one church with their heads cut off. The Croats amused themselves by throwing children into the flames, and Pappenheim’s Walloons with stabbing infants at their mothers’ breasts.”[[202]]
But it may be said that those things were done far back in the seventeenth century. Consider, then, the fact that in the French civil war of 1871 the government’s noble heroes, having conquered the revolutionists, took thousands of unarmed prisoners—men, women, and children—to an open space at the city limits of Paris and shot them, children and all; in many cases the brave, armed ruffians stood up rows of helpless prisoners one behind the other and amused themselves by testing their rifles on living human flesh, noting how many men, women and children could be butchered with one bullet. Many of the “better class,” “refined ladies and gentlemen,” “leading citizens,” conspicuous by their elegance of manners and dress, were present watching the fun, smiling encouragement and making helpful suggestions to the “civilized” butchers.
And still more recently:
A British hero thus describes a “funny” incident in the South African war: “Really, sir, I never saw anything quite so funny in all my life. Just fancy, I saw a Kaffir woman pick up the headless body of her baby and strap it on her back. Funny, oh, Lord! It makes me laugh when I think of it now.” The same authority (the Westminster Review, quoted by Walter Walsh) also gives the following case of Christian military heroism: “A contingent of German scouts [in South Africa] took five native women prisoners ... an officer ordered ten men to fix bayonets. Five stood in front and five behind the women, and stabbed the women to death.” Ten armed, Christian heroes with bayonets ripping the breasts of five unarmed women. Great! Isn’t it? At least it is war. One scarcely knows which to despise the more—the soldiers or the lazy parasites for whom they committed a thousand crimes of basest cruelty and cowardice. Dr. Walter Walsh[[203]] lets the soldiers tell in their own heroic language of their manly deeds—thus:
“‘Our progress was like the old-time forays in Scotland two centuries ago.... We moved on from valley to valley ... burning, looting and turning out the women and children to sit and cry beside the ruins of their once beautiful farmsteads ... my men fetched bundles of straw. The women cried, and the children stood holding to them and looking with large frightened eyes at the burning house.... The people had thought we had come for refreshments, and one of them went to get milk.... We then set the whole place on fire. They dropped on their knees and prayed and sang, weeping bitterly the while. One of the poor women went raving mad. When the flames burst from the doomed place the poor woman threw herself on her knees, tore open her bodice, and bared her breasts, screaming, “Shoot me, shoot me, I’ve nothing to live for, now that my husband is gone, and our farm is burnt, and our cattle taken!”’”
These foul deeds are samples of thousands.
“War, is it?” says Dr. Walsh. “Be it war: then an army is a manufactory for cowards and a school for cowards.”
“A war hero,” says the distinguished Roman Catholic Bishop John Spaulding,[[204]] “supposes a barbarous condition of the race; and when all shall be civilized, they who know and love the most shall be held to be the greatest and the best.”
And Robert Ingersoll thus:
“Every good man, every good woman, should try to do away with war, to stop the appeal to savage force. Man in a savage state relies upon his strength, and decides for himself what is right and what is wrong.”[[205]]
“Nothing is plainer,” says Emerson, “than that sympathy with war is a juvenile and temporary state.”[[206]]
Dr. John Fiske, historian and philosopher, makes the following observations on the slow grand march from brutality to brotherhood.[[207]]
“For thousands of generations, and until very recent times, one of the chief occupations of men has been to plunder, bruise and kill one another. The ... ugly passions ... have had but little opportunity to grow weak from disuse. The tender and unselfish feelings, which are a later product of evolution, have too seldom been allowed to grow strong from exercise ... the whims and prejudices of militant barbarism are slow in dying out.... The coarser forms of cruelty are disappearing and the butchery of men has greatly diminished ... in the more barbarous times the hero was he who had slain his thousands.... And thus we see what human progress means. It means throwing off the brute inheritance, gradually throwing it off through ages of struggle that are by and by to make struggles needless. Man is slowly passing from a primitive social state ... toward an ultimate social state in which his character shall have become so transformed that nothing of the brute can be detected in it. The ape and the tiger in human nature will be extinct.”
How encouraging! We can confidently look forward to a time when not even a pervert candidate for the presidency of a great Christian “republic” will be either tiger enough to butcher a human being or peacock and monkey enough to brag of doing so.
“Who loves war for war’s own sake
Is fool, or crazed, or worse.”—Tennyson.
“One of the commonest popular mistakes is to confound aggressiveness and belligerency with genius. These qualities are almost in inverse proportion.... But usually great energy and determination, and especially combative qualities are associated with rather meagre abilities.”[[208]]
There is really too much bull-dog greatness.
“No blood-stained victory, in story bright,
Can give the philosophical mind delight;
No triumph please, while rage and death destroy:
Reflection sickens at the monstrous joy.”[[209]]
“Cursed is the man, and void of law and right;
Unworthy property, unworthy light,
Unfit for public rule, or private care,—
That wretch, that monster, who delights in war.”[[210]]
Imagine a Sioux Indian chief, pagan Alexander, pagan Caesar, Christian Napoleon, also the Christian bullies Emperor William and Theodore Roosevelt, also the quiet Christ—imagine these seven “not only willing, but anxious to fight,” mounted on foam-stained horses galloping across a bloody battlefield strewn with wounded and slaughtered men and boys, imagine these seven galloping, bravely and boisterously galloping, waving red-stained swords, yelling, squawking, yawping, hurrahing for war, “glorious” war—the iron-shod hoofs of their rushing horses crushing into the breasts and faces of dead and dying young men and boys.
The savage Sioux, the immortal pagan brutes Alexander and Caesar, the renowned Christian bullies Napoleon, William and Theodore—these six “geniuses,” these coarse-grained, blood-stained egotists fit that picture perfectly, as a shark fits the ocean, as a wolf fits the forest, as a tiger fits the jungle, as a savage fits a cannibal feast,—as the Devil fits Hell.
But Christ, Christ in whose breast lurked no tiger and no savage,—Christ with a long sword, a hero’s butcher-knife in hand, plunging it into the breast of his brothers, screaming like the “dee-lighted” brute, calling it “great,” “splendid,” “bully!”—
Impossible!
But why impossible for Christ and “dee-lightful” for the other six?
Because, simply because, these six blood-lusting heroes are savage or at best only civilized; but Christ was socialized.
Socialization opposes assassination—both wholesale and retail.
Christ is immortal—by his wide love and brotherhood.
The “great general” is promoted and immortalized for his narrow hates and brilliant brutalities.
(19) Has not war been natural and necessary in the life of the human race, and has not war been a potent factor in the intellectual development of mankind?
Professor Ferrero has this to say:[[211]]
“Thus the duty of every well-meaning man today is to diffuse knowledge of the fact that war no longer serves the purpose it once served in the struggle for civilization.
“War necessary to civilization?”
Well, for a long time in the life of the human race nature was so ill understood, man had such insufficient knowledge and control of nature, that it was extremely difficult to get a living for all. Our ancestors naturally quarreled; perhaps it was necessary for some of them to kill others in order that some of them might live—ignorant as the people were in those times of how to make nature yield bountifully and easily for all. And no doubt the struggle developed the race—the part that did not get killed. In those struggles were developed, at first, strong muscles, skin-ripping claws or knife-like finger-nails, tusks in the mouth, and thick skins; and, later, clubs, spears, cross-bows, bows-and-arrows; and still later, rifles, cannon, battleships and lignite shells, and also the methods and tactics of struggle;—all these were developed. Always, too, cunning, deception, malignance, egoism, egotism, coarse-grained dispositions, cheap ambitions, swaggering manners, fierce eyes, and the soft, bull-like military voices and hero worship—all these were developed.
The muscles and the mentality thus developed are still extremely useful. Indeed, the mentality, developed in war (but neither wholly nor chiefly in war), is worth all it cost, whatever it did cost, because with this godlike mentality, and only with this mentality, we can now have the higher and finer forms and phases of life, the pleasures that distinguish man from the brutes; that is, with this mentality we can have these more glorious forms of life: Provided, that the low cunning, deception, malignance, egoism, egotism and the coarse-grained strain of the ancient brute are not even yet too strong in our veins and characters. In spite of one’s intelligence he may be “not only willing, but anxious to fight.” Such a person may no longer have the skin-ripping finger-claws, but he has the skin-ripping disposition that was developed when the skin-ripping finger-claws were developed, and developed in the same way.
Now, of course, we still need the muscle and the intelligence, every one of us. But we do not any longer need the skin-rippers, or the tusks, or the club, the “big stick,” the spear, the bow and arrow, the rifle and the battleship; nor do we any longer need the arrogant egotism, the cheap cunning, the prize-fighter ambitions or the tiger’s readiness to take blood. Nor should we any longer need the ancient method of struggle, every-fellow-for-himself, in the industrial process of life—in a rationally organized society, with our present control of nature. And we should no longer enjoy any of these brute means and methods if we were civilized in the noblest sense, that is, if we were decently socialized.
“Are you ready for the question?” This is the question:
Can you use, do you prefer to use—your developed mentality like a brute, like a savage, or like a truth-seeking, socialized man? Are you “not only willing, but anxious to fight,” or are the business and the methods of the brute disgusting to you? What o’clock is it in your personal evolution? Do you prefer a library to an armory, books rather than bayonets? Is a fight natural, or necessary, or helpful in your personal development? If a fight, actual part in a fight rifle-in-hand, is not necessary to the preacher, the senator, the professor, the banker or the manufacturer, why should it seem necessary in your case—and why should you permit these “better class” citizens to have you ordered and led around like a prize-winning bull-dog to fight in the international prize-ring called the struggle for the world market? War as a developer and a civilizer is a flat failure in your case if the capitalist class can seduce you for fifty cents a day to fight for a foreign market for American porter-house steak while you and your father and mother are fed on third-rate meat, beans, cheap syrup and mock-coffee without cream. Brother, you may indeed be a “brave boy,” and a “good shot,” and you may have heroically stained your hands in other men’s blood; but, really, the “upper class” have marked you as an easy victim, a useable cheap “guy” of the “lower class.”
(20) John Ruskin keenly appreciated the capitalist’s craftiness and the workingman’s buffoonery in “a war for civilization.” He wrote:[[212]]
“Capitalists, when they do not know what to do with their money, persuade the peasants that the said peasants want guns to shoot each other with. The peasants accordingly borrow guns, out of the manufacture of which the capitalists get a percentage, and men of science much amusement and credit. Then the peasants shoot a certain number of each other until they get tired, and burn each other’s houses down in various places. Then they put the guns back into towns, arsenals, etc., in ornamental patterns, and the victorious party put also some ragged flags in churches. And then the capitalists tax both annually, ever afterwards, to pay interest on the loan of the guns and powder.”
The Italian historian Ferrero sees the swinish snout of the ruling class greed in the wars of three thousand years of “civilization.” He writes:[[213]]
“During those thirty centuries from which dates our historical knowledge, war has been more a social system than a cruel pastime for kings—the first most violent and brutal means adopted by ruling minorities to acquire wealth.”
(21) Is it said that wars always have been and always will be?
That wars always have been is an unproved proposition.[[214]]
That “wars always will be” depends upon the working class. The clouds of confusion are clearing from the mind of the working class. A revolution is ripening in the toilers’ thought on war.[[215]]
(22) Is it said by the leading citizens that wars are necessary in order to kill off the surplus population?
If wars are necessary for such purpose, why not have Mr. Leading Citizen and his friends classified as a part of the surplus population on the ground that they are criminally unsocial, and have them taken out to the battlefield and forced to shoot one another? The theory of having the surplus population killed off would thus quickly lose its popularity with the “upper classes.”
(23) It may be said that the Napoleonic wars removed more than 7,500,000 men from competition in the labor market;[[216]] and it might be argued by the working man that since war reduces the competition among the workers, the working class should on this account welcome war.
Let us see: If four men are competing for two jobs, should two of them be satisfied, and even glad, to have the competition for the jobs reduced by having the other two climb upon their backs and cease to bid for the jobs? It should be kept distinctly in mind that the workers who do not go to war support those who do go to war—always, everywhere, absolutely no exceptions.
(24) There is a somewhat popular, and simian, assumption that in war—even in beautiful Christian war—the results are “the survival of the fittest,” meaning, in the case of modern wars, the survival of “the more highly civilized,” also the biologically “best.”
Of course a “bullet carefully selects its victim.”
And do not statesmen tell us on the Fourth of July all about the “splendid intelligence” and the “noble spirit” and the “superiority” of the “brave boys who died in battle”?
Does not the recruiting officer try to get the soundest men for slaughter?
Let the orthodox worshippers answer: Is pagan Japan more fit for survival than Christian Russia?
What show for survival would Belgium have in a contest with Turkey, Spain or Russia?[[217]]
(25) A kindred and stupid assumption in all wars is this: Might makes right.
But if might makes right between two warring nations, then why does not might make right when a strong man by force compels a weaker man to hand over his pocket-book?
(26) A Scotch philosopher on the “brave boys”:[[218]]
“Omitting much, let us impart what follows: Horrible enough! A whole march-field strewed with shell-splinters, cannon-shots, ruined tumbrils and dead men and horses; stragglers remaining not so much as buried. And those red mound-heaps: aye, there lie the Shells of Men, out of which the life and virtue have been blown; and now they are swept together and crammed down out of sight, like blown Eggshells!... How has thy breast, fair plain, been defaced and defiled! The green sward is torn up, hedge-rows and pleasant dwellings blown away with gunpowder, and the kind seed-field lies a desolate Place of Skulls. Nevertheless, Nature is at work ... all that gore and carnage will be shrouded in, absorbed into manure....
“What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net purport and upshot of the war? To my own knowledge, for example, there dwell and toil, in the British village of Dumrudge, usually some five hundred souls. From these, by certain ‘natural enemies’ of the French, there are successively selected, during the French war, say thirty able-bodied men: Dumrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them; she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even trained them up to crafts, so that one can weave, another build, another hammer, and the weakest can stand under thirty stone avoirdupois. Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are selected; all dressed in red and shipped away, at the public charges, some two thousand miles, or say only to the south of Spain, and fed there till wanted. And now to that same spot in the south of Spain, are thirty similar French artisans—in like manner wending their ways; till at length, after infinite effort, the two parties come into actual juxtaposition, and thirty stand facing thirty, each with his gun in hand. Straightway the word ‘Fire!’ is given, and they blow the souls out of one another; and in the place of sixty brisk, useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carcasses, which it must bury, and anew shed tears for.
“Had these men any quarrel? Busy as the Devil is, not the smallest! They lived far enough apart; were the entirest strangers; nay, in so wide a universe, there was even, unconsciously, by commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them.
“How then?
“Simpleton! Their governors had fallen out; and instead of shooting one another, had these poor blockheads shoot.”
(27) In that part of biology treating of parasitic life the technical terms “host” and “guest” are used. The host is the living thing that furnishes a living not only for itself, but also for the life-filching intruder which fastens itself upon the body of the “host.” The intruder, the robber residing upon the body of the “host,” is the “guest,” that is, the parasite.
Now one of the strangest things in the entire live world is this: When in some life-forms a certain stage of parasitism is reached, when the guest has permanently fastened itself upon the body of the host and the host has become thoroughly accustomed to and adjusted to the parasitic arrangement, the host stupidly inclines to defend the parasitic guest. It is remarkable (and discouraging) that this law of nature, this tendency, is found in operation in the social life of man. For thousands of years multitudes of men, women and children have been held in the grip of this law, mentally strangled in their effort to think Justice and Freedom; the vast majority of the working class are always quickly and easily rendered “peaceful,” “law-abiding,” and “satisfied,” and “patriotic.” Millions of chattel slaves have “loyally” defended their parasitic masters. Millions of serfs have “loyally” defended their landlords-and-masters. And today tens of millions of wage-earners strongly incline to “loyally” defend their parasitic employer masters. Moreover, the employer, by craftily praising the wage-earner, can induce the wage-earner to ignorantly, blindly, stupidly praise and defend not only the employer, but also the whole wage-system of robbery and social parasitism. Not only that, the employers, by controlling certain institutions such as the school, the library, the press, and the lecture platform, can have the wage-earning hosts taught to teach their own children to defend and praise the parasitic employer guests and the parasitic social system under which their lives are belittled by being sucked up as rent, interest and profits and fed to the parasitic capitalist class.
What the employer calls a contented and loyal working man is simply a stupidly acquiescent “host,” biologically considered. And a working class man with a rifle in his hand defending the class that, as social parasites, rob the working class—such a workingman is the best possible illustration of the fact that the great laws of nature are careless of the so-called “dignity of man,” totally careless of the ridiculous spectacle of a human being reverting to the behavior of creatures far, far down below even the simian cousins of the human race. Nature does not care whether a man behaves like a crab or a sucker, a tiger or a monkey, a sycophantic slave or a defiantly self-respecting man.[[219]]
(28) Toward the prideless working class as a social “host” defending the ruling class, the defended ruling class take nature’s contemptuous attitude. And the working-class soldier as professional defender of the parasitic capitalist class, tho’ much flattered, is cordially despised.
What the United States government thinks of the soldier may be seen, for example, in the fact that a Civil Service employee, in the Weather Department, travelling about on duty on long trips, is allowed one dollar, and even more than a dollar per meal in his expense account; while the “brave boys” in khaki who agree to stand ready to butcher their brothers for a living are lucky if they get a thirty-cent meal at any time. In this connection the following from Mr. Taft’s Report as Secretary of War for 1907 (p. 92–93) is of interest. Under the head of “Rations” we find:
“The present ration, while liberal and suitable, falls considerably short of the Navy ration in variety. Butter, milk and molasses, or syrup, at least, should be added to the garrison ration. These are articles almost necessary in the preparation of desserts.... They are part of the ration in Alaska and they should be everywhere.”[[220]]
The present ration “liberal and suitable,” yet lacking butter, milk and molasses and even syrup. Such things are “almost necessary!”
The reckless epicureanism thus proposed by “the great secretary” in offering some cheap syrup as an addition to the dessert gives us an illuminating suggestion as to the War Department’s estimate of the cheapness of the hungry greenhorn who can be lured into the rulers’ “service” with cheap syrup. An ordinary house fly can be coaxed into a trap with syrup—good syrup.
The United States soldier’s meals are estimated by the War Department to be worth six and two-thirds cents apiece, as will appear from the following passage taken from the Report of the War Department for 1907, page 85: “The pay of the private, at present, is 43 and one-third cents a day. Adding the [daily] cost of his ration as 20 cents, clothing allowance and right to quarters each at 15 cents, and his remaining privileges at, say, six and two-thirds cents, his present pay still falls 25 cents short of the average laborer throughout the United States.” This is the War Department’s estimate of the soldier’s average total daily income in cash and allowances, made by the Department in order to compare the soldier’s incentive with that of the farm hand and general day laborer. On page 84 of the same Report is the Government’s estimate of the average daily income of the “farm and the general laborer”: For 1902 the average for these two classes was (according to the Report) $1.20 a day; and “allowing for the increase in wages since 1902” the government’s estimate for the “farm and general laborer” in 1907 was $1.25 per day. This, the Report says, is $7.50 per month better than the soldier’s incentive in 1907.
It is matter of common knowledge that the United States soldiers and marines are forced to spend a considerable portion of their cash incomes for food that the Government is too stingy to furnish. That is, the ruling class have such contempt for their human “watch dogs” that they furnish them a meaner living than is received by the most meanly paid group of the working class over whom they stand guard and stand ready to murder if they strike and struggle for more.
In the same Report, under the heading “Quarters,” is this:
“The fact that he is living in a $40,000 building impresses the soldier less if he finds in it only iron bunks, cheap chairs, and unpainted tables—the absolute necessities for his use and nothing for his comfort. The barrack is the home of the soldier while he remains in the service. It is possible that he might think oftener of continuing there if it presented more the appearance of a home. So far as the squad rooms are concerned, mere room adornment is neither necessary nor advisable [!] ... The squad rooms are sleeping rooms only. There is space only for bunks, lockers and a few chairs; but these last might in part be something more than the present cheap and uncomfortable article. But it is the reading and amusement rooms that are meant particularly. There is no reason why they should not be made habitable. [Indeed! Really, Mr. Taft! How daring of you!] A few barrack chairs and rough tables, with possibly a billiard table, ordinarily constitute their furniture now. There is little to tempt a man to stay there. [“Tempt” is good.] ... These rooms might be made comfortable and pleasant. A rug on the floor, a few prints on the walls, substantial chairs, a few writing tables and writing materials could all be supplied at no serious expense to the United States.... There is nothing degenerating in such furnishings; there is much that is homelike.” [Like whose home?]
“A few prints”—not many of course, and cheap ones, let us say about ten cents each; and “a rug”—a dull, unexciting mat of rags—simply these and nothing more, lest the degenerating influences of fine art should soften the syrup-baited lads’ blood-lusting temper too much for the more glorious art of butchering. As Mr. Taft profoundly remarks, “There is little to tempt a man to stay there” at present; but, as he sagaciously suggests, about 98 cents expended in baiting the bunk-room trap with a few original Italian, or, say, Dutch, masterpieces, and a few imported Persian fascinations of emotional red—this 98 cents for the seductions of fine art added to a nickel’s worth of skimmed milk and molasses would be an effective allurement for the khaki heroes to re-enlist and “stay there.”
Recently Congressmen and Senators advanced their own salaries from $5,000 up to $7,500 per year. This is one sign of self-respect. This advance of $2,500 per year will of course be sufficient to provide a fair quality of syrup and skimmed milk for the statesmen’s dessert.
Does it seem probable that cheap molasses added to the dessert of the soldier’s ration and a few ten-cent prints hung on the walls of the soldiers’ living rooms will attract Taft’s sons or Roosevelt’s sons or the sons of Senators and Congressmen and the sons of the “better class leading citizens” to the dreary, barren barracks provided for men who stand ready to slaughter for less than 50 cents a day and cheap “keep”?
Says Major-General J. F. Bell, Chief of Staff:[[221]]
“That men enlist believing they will love the life is likely, but their mental picture is oftentimes so different from the reality that disappointment is the almost inevitable consequence.”
Fifty-eight per cent. of all the desertions from the military service in the year 1906 were desertions of men in their first year of service, and considerably more than half of these desertions were during the first six months of service.[[222]]
Twenty-six times as many enlisted men in our army committed suicide in 1908 as in 1907, and thirty-nine times as many of the “tempted” and trapped young men in our army committed suicide in 1909 as in 1907. No suicides are reported for the years 1901 to 1906 inclusive. The record for the three years 1907, ’08, ’09 is 1, 26, 39, respectively.[[223]]
It would seem likely that a young fellow whose loathing for the army life had become unendurable would desert rather than commit suicide to escape the hideous business. But no doubt the following line from the Report of the Secretary of War, Mr. Wright, in 1908, will help explain somewhat the increase of suicide in the army. Mr. Wright says (page 19): “An elaborate system ... now almost perfected is well calculated to secure swift and certain apprehension and punishment of deserters and will ... have a marked effect in reducing the crime to a minimum.”[[224]] An illustrative feature of this “highly perfected system” is to furnish the run-away soldiers’ pictures to the police of a city to which the lads can be traced, and offer the police $50 a head cash for the arrest of the soldiers. The $50 results in a human “bloodhound” search. This “highly perfected system” makes a young man’s enlistment a good deal like swallowing a barbed fish-hook. A great number of the boys go insane. In 1908 insanity ranked third in the long list of causes of discharge from the army for disability.[[225]]
Army service, even in time of peace, is not exactly a picnic dream. On this point General Frederick Funston offers some helpful information, thus:[[226]]
“There is too much of the everlasting grind of drill and practice marches, and at some of the posts too much ‘fatigue’ in the way of keeping the reservations in apple-pie order. It is pretty much of a shock to many of the men who have entered the army service to taste the delights of military life to find that, from the standpoint of the post-commanders, the most important part of their training consists in cutting brush and weeds.”
In his Report of 1907, page 14, Mr. Taft said:
“A noteworthy feature in the recruitment of the Army under present conditions is the increasing number of men who fail to re-enlist and of those who leave the Army before the expiration of their term of service by purchasing their discharge.... The fact cannot be disregarded nor explained away that for some reason or other the life of the soldier as at present constituted is not one to attract the best and most desirable class of men.”
In the excerpt just quoted Mr. Taft makes it pretty clear that in his judgment the present enlisted men in the “regular” army are “undesirable citizens.” Hence the “great secretary’s” recommendation of milk-and-syrup additions to the soldier’s dessert, a few cheap prints on the walls, and a coat of paint on the tables used by the soldiers—in order to catch a better and more desirable class of men; that is, a better and more desirable class of workingmen; for be it remembered the Government does not expect to get any well-fed capitalist class men into the army by means of cheap syrup and cheap milk and cheap ‘print’ pictures and the like. “The soldier in peace,” says the Report just quoted, “is better fed and better clothed than the average man of his class in civil life.”[[227]] How interesting and instructive!
In 1905 almost 73 per cent., and in 1906 almost 74 per cent. of the applicants for examination for enlistment in our army “were rejected as lacking either mental, moral or physical qualifications.”[[228]]
President Roosevelt, in his Message of December, 1907, virtually ridiculed the patriotism of the men in the army and those who may contemplate entering the army. He wrote:
“The prime need of our present Army and Navy is to secure and retain competent non-commissioned officers. The difficulty rests fundamentally on the question of pay.”
“Fundamentally on the question of pay.” How suggestively patriotic! Did Colonel Roosevelt join the army for the cash there was in it? “Oh, certainly not.” But why should he insultingly say that, for other men, joining the army is fundamentally a question of cold cash?
The War Department, with Mr. Taft at the head, in 1907, joined Mr. Roosevelt in his sneering contempt for the soldier’s motive in joining the army. The Report runs:[[229]]
“Under a voluntary system men enlist either to aid their country or to promote their own ends; that is, through self-sacrifice or self-interest.... Self-sacrifice of this sort is patriotism, an emotion necessary to arouse.... To keep it through long periods of peace at a pitch high enough to maintain an army would be impossible.... Self-interest is, therefore, the only cause of enlistment necessary to consider; ...”[[227]]
It thus appears that, in the judgment of the “great secretary,” now President, patriotism is not at all a matter of brains, of reason steadily sustained by logic, but is, on the contrary, a matter of emotion, passion, “brain-storm,” induced with fife and drum and sustained with godlike sky-climbing aspiration to have one’s stomach filled with “butter, milk and molasses, or syrup, at least”—as “dessert.” The two Presidents, the anti-labor injunction judge and the lion-hunting monkey murderer,[[230]] agree that what looks like patriotism in the long-service “regular” is after all simply a matter of getting less than fifty cents a day and “keep.” Of course, such things as this are not mentioned on the Fourth of July nor in campaign speeches when the “great secretary” or his chattering predecessor is courting the ‘brave boys’ for their votes.
(29) When a young man joins the army or the navy he virtually agrees to pocket his pride and submit to a series of insults from his “superior” officers for a term of years. The recruiting officer is to some degree, at least temporarily, a man of pleasant manners, and the callow patriot taking the bait in the recruiting office is treated alluringly. But when the youth signs his name in the books and becomes a soldier patriot, matters take a change. It is a case of being “stuck” or “stung.” For following the hour of his enlistment, humble, prideless submission to strutting, swaggering bosses is the soldier’s portion. From “superior” officers he must meekly accept insults for which, in private life, he would promptly knock a man down. In the service he must bend his neck and take the yoke for years. Here is a sample of the spirit of the haughty airs assumed by the “superiors.”
Mr. Taft, speaking as Secretary of War, February 14, 1908, to the young men at West Point Military School, said:
“The plainest of your duties is to keep your mouths shut and obey orders. As a soldier you must forego the privilege of free speech.... You will meet with injustices, others will get all to which they seem entitled. Your wives will have heart-burnings. Your children will have heart-burnings. In spite of all that you must do your duty, honestly and devotedly.”
Here is a soldier’s letter:[[231]]
“... We are supposed to work eight hours a day, but we get dismissed when the officers see fit to let us go—all for fifty-two cents a day. The negroes working at Panama get more money and are better treated than the enlisted men out here. Our ‘little brown brothers’ are treated better over here. And to cap the climax, over comes a high statesman [Mr. Taft?] and makes a speech to a mob of our ‘little brown brothers’ and tells them not to judge the Americans by the enlisted men, as the enlisted men are composed of the roughest elements in the States....”
President David Starr Jordan (Leland Stanford University) writes of the contemptuous treatment of the men in the ranks by the “superior” officers:[[232]]
“One soldier [in the Philippines] says, ‘If the United States were on fire from end to end, I would never raise my hand to put it out.’ Another would ‘toss in a blanket the officials at Washington, as we toss a cheating corporal.’ Another says in print, referring to the abuse of the soldiers by their superiors in pay: ‘Yes, I knew that war would be hell before I got into it. But I did not know that war would be hell deliberately and fanatically inflicted. I expected to sleep in mud puddles with my head on a stone for a pillow, and go hungry for days on forced marches and away from a base of supplies. But I never dreamed that I would have to sleep in a leaky and exposed shed when there was plenty of good shelter elsewhere, and when thirty officers had fine apartments in which there was room for five hundred men; neither did I expect to be fed on coffee-grounds and foul canned meat for weeks when we were right next to a base of supplies, and when our officers lived on the choice of the commissary’s department.’”
But the question naturally occurs to one: Why shouldn’t the working class soldiers be treated thus? Surely it is to be expected that the great majority class will get what they permit from their “superiors.”
Note how the soldier boys are snubbed and bull-dozed in the German army. Says Dr. Walsh:[[233]]
“In a trial reported Dec. 17, 1903, a lieutenant of the infantry has been convicted of 618 cases of maltreatment and 57 cases of improper treatment of soldiers under him, and a sergeant in another regiment has been convicted of 1,520 cases of maltreatment and 100 cases of improper treatment.... The men deposed were so afraid, that nobody ventured to complain.”
There is a yearly average of 7,000 desertions from the English regular army. Quite naturally. Frozen, starved and despised, the thirty-cent patriots make a break for bread and freedom from the “noble” snobbery of the aristocratic pets in control.
The record of desertions from the American Army is, for the years 1907, 1908, and 1909, respectively, 4,534, 4,525, 5,023.
(30) How is it possible to interest young men in the brutal business of war?
There are some paragraphs on this matter in the chapter following, “For Mother and the Boys.” Here the matter of military parades is suggested for consideration by “father and the boys.”
Sometimes the boys’ interest in war begins in so simple a thing as a parade. A military parade is a trap—for the working class. A writer in the New York Tribune, April 22, 1908, makes several artful suggestions as to the value of military parades in snaring young toilers into the army. He suggests:
That “parades, so far as circumstances permit, be through or near ... sections [of the city] ... where they may encourage enlistment among a ... class of prospective recruits ... instead of on Riverside Drive [where the ‘better classes’ live], to which the public has access with difficulty and which is not frequented by the class of young men to whom the National Guard appeals.... These suggestions reflect the views of many citizens ... with whom the writer has conferred.”
The writer also points out that bright-colored uniforms for the paraders have excellent effect on the imagination of the prospective recruits.
There can be no doubt that the masters are well aware of the hypnotizing influence of marching loud, gay-colored bands, festively uniformed infantry, and fascinating cavalrymen through the streets where they may be seen and admired by the working class, admired by many thousands of ill-fed, ill-clothed, meanly sheltered young men and women whose lives are dull and sad, consumed with the killing monotony and hurry of the factory. A cavalry captain in the United States Army, a part of whose business is to wheedle the gullibles into the dreary army life, has this to say of parades:
“The good influence in popularizing the army by having it stationed in large cities is exemplified in London. The various guards and other bodies of troops marching through the streets, preceded by their gorgeously dressed bands, all the uniforms recalling traditions of brave, gallant deeds, gain friends every time.”
The best known butcher of modern times (Napoleon) also understood this matter.
“You call these toys? Well, you manage men with toys!” said that red-stained egoist, speaking of the ribbons and crosses and other gewgaws of his Legion of Honor.[[234]]
When at the street-side a boy of seven, watching a military parade, shouts in gleeful admiration and claps his small hands in happy hurrahs, Mars, the bloody god of war, begins to fasten his clutches on the little fellow, the child’s imagination takes fire with visions and hopes, his soul begins to thrill with the kill-lust, then and there he is being prepared to enlist—when he “gets big.” How different it would be for the small boys if, when soldiers were marched through a city, these armed slayers of their kind should march at night with all lights out and with the rumble of drums and the frequent boom of cannon in the darkness making the air tremble. The working class mother might well consider this matter. She has all to lose.[[235]]
In the average parade-and-review the workingman is made ridiculous. Did you ever see prominent bankers or other “better class” business men in large numbers trudging along afoot in the middle of the dusty or muddy street, marching and sweating miles and miles past a gay-colored reviewing-stand to be “reviewed” and grinned at by a bunch of sugar-coated crooks in the “reviewers’ stand”? No! And you never will. The trudging and the sweating, as usual, are handed over to the “common people,” chiefly the wage-slaves. When the “very best people” do take part in the parading before the “grand-stand,” they ride, up front, in carriages or on horseback. They laugh and chat and gaily enjoy the stupid gullibility of the working men as the humble fellows are thus “bell-weathered” through the dirt and heat. On the occasion of a recent great parade in New York City a well-known capitalist gliding along in a handsome automobile swaggeringly called out, “We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, and we’ve got the money too!” A seedy, hungry-looking young man proudly answered back, “You bet we have!” On the same occasion thousands of ten-dollar-a-week clerks and factory workers were charmed into hand-clapping as the gaudily dressed soldiers marched by carrying the very rifles they were ready to use to crush the admiring toilers if they should strike and struggle for justice.
The usual “review” is a pompous occasion on which hundreds or thousands of meek, ill-fed, cotton-lined, callous-palmed working men “hoof it” for an hour or so past a “reviewing-stand” occupied by some grinning, well-fed, silk-lined, lily-fingered, decorated “great” men who scorn even the thought of the working class having a political party of their own for their own self-defense.
(31) A great many fathers and sons are thinking a good deal about an “era of peace” to be ushered in mainly through the good offices of peace societies. The Hague Peace Conference is, in the judgment of many people, “the hope of the world.”[[236]]
The first meeting of the Hague Conference was called—in Jesus’ name, of course—by the most infamous blood-stained butcher of feeble old men and women and thoughtful, aspiring young men and women, in all the world,—that is, by the Tsar of Russia. The sincerity of this crowned murderer may in some measure be realized by a brief study of his gross inconsistency in the year 1903 and in the years immediately preceding. (See Chapter Six, and Sixth Illustration.)
The second meeting of the Society was held in 1907, and another is scheduled for the year 1915.
The serene confidence the world’s rulers have in the Society is easily seen in their frantic efforts to increase their armies and navies. They are bleeding their people white with taxes to make the enormously expensive preparations for what is likely to be the most vast and terrible butchering of the working class by the working class that has ever horrified mankind. Secretly the crowned and uncrowned ruling butchers of the world have nothing but contempt for the Conference at The Hague. Very naturally, however, they are all shrewd enough to make a large and beautiful profession of faith and desire for peace through the Conference, while at the same time they all “want for soldiers young men who are not only willing, but anxious to fight.” The man who inaugurated the Conference promptly scorned the Conference when he believed his interests would be served by a war with Japan. The famous French anti-militarist G. Hervé shrewdly pointed out the hopelessly weak place in the “authority” of the capitalist Hague Peace Court:[[237]]
“Governments so far are unanimous in withdrawing from The Hague Tribunal all questions affecting ‘the honor and vital interests of the country,’ a convenient formula permitting them to refuse arbitration when they please.”
And here is a frank admission:
“The Hague Tribunal has nothing compulsory about it; all its members are left in perfect freedom as to whether they submit questions to it or not.... In all treaties hitherto the Great Powers have retained power to withhold submission of questions affecting ‘their honor or vital interest.’”[[238]]
“Honor and vital interests,”—convenient phrase—a matter of business—cash and commerce, “plain dollars and cents,”—under capitalism.
It is of interest to note that another peace society, The Peace Society, founded in London in 1816, has been busy for almost a hundred years trying to mop up the blood, so to speak, never daring, or not knowing how, to uncover the fundamental cause of war.
In at least some respects a “Conference” of The Hague Peace Society is, itself, hopelessly ridiculous and, in appearance, wickedly insincere. For example, at the “Conference” of 1907 the delegates learnedly and laughably discussed the “Humanizing of War,”[[239]] and, after much brain-fagging effort, the delegates to the fakirs’ feast duly and heavily concluded as follows:
“It is especially prohibited to employ poison or poisoned arms.”
Well be it known:—
That kleptomaniacs’ periodical luncheon, or “thieves’ supper,” called The Hague Conference, would have no more work to do for the next thousand years, would never again have anything whatever to meet for, if all bullets and all swords and all bayonets used in all the armies were dipped in a deadly poison; for, in that case, the working class of the whole world would flatly refuse to volunteer or be drafted to serve in any war anywhere under any circumstances. And, of course, the soft-voiced, well-fed “humanizers of war” would not go to war—poison or no poison. The universal use of poisoned bullets, swords and bayonets would make war absolutely impossible, because the inauguration of such a policy would make the working class think.
A thinking slave is the terror of the plunder-bloated rulers of the world—always.
When the workers once think about war they will promptly do two things:
First, They will refuse to go to war;
Second, They will find the cause of war, and will remove it.
Of course, it requires the deep and prayerful investigation of “great” and “prominent Christian” gentlemen in peace conference assembled to discover that it is wrong for men to butcher men with swords and bullets dipped in poison, but that it is not wrong for men to destroy men with clean lead and clean steel, their souls charged with hate as an adder’s fang jetting venom into its victim’s flesh; to discover that it is wrong to have soldiers thrust poison-dipped bayonets into one another’s stomachs, but that it is not wrong for a “Christian business men’s” government to feed its soldiers on poisoned canned beef. The poor dupes who butcher one another at the word of command are, of course, too “common” and ignorant to understand the logical legerdemain of these prayerfully discovered distinctions; but the learned and prominent gentlemen in peace conference assembled, far, far from the battle line, smoking 50–cent cigars, quaffing the world’s costliest champagne—these noble braves, these bottle-scarred heroes, can tell us all about it.
Certainly.
With thoughtful tenderness many Christian governments, influenced by peace societies, have made an international agreement that, in case of war, no bullet used weighing 14 ounces or less shall be an explosive bullet,—that is, a bullet that easily expands, flattens and shatters when it strikes flesh. However, these same “more refined and civilized” nations are all at perfect liberty to use a cannon bullet, or shell, weighing hundreds of pounds, charged with explosives, flesh-tearing materials and deadly gases, arranged with time-fuses in order to explode over the heads of, or among, a great body of men on the field, or in the midst of men when it has pierced the armor of a war vessel.
It is not definitely known how these wise Christian statesmen and scholars discovered that a three-hundred pound explosive bullet might properly and lovingly be used by gently sensitive Christian butchers, but that a thirteen-ounce explosive bullet might not with propriety be used by these loving followers of the gentle Jesus. Possibly the discovery was made by some deep-seeing pot-house statesmen and scholars after a prayerful study of the Sermon on the Mount,—with champagne on the side.
War is “human” or “inhuman” according to the orations, discussions, confusions, delusions, conclusions, decisions and provisions of these perfumed, patent-leathered fighters after a long fast—on terrapin, porter-house and “Mumm’s Extra Dry.”
The eloquence of the Hague Peace Conference literature concerning its long list of extremely “glorious achievements” would lead the uninstructed to suppose that till this organization came on the field there had never been a dispute settled without war. It modestly claims everything in view.
Note here the fact that:
“There is no period known to history in which instances are not found of arbitration as a substitute for force, and we can only wonder when we consider the historical antiquity of the former that the latter should have maintained its hold so long, so constantly and so fiercely.”[[240]]
“Where are thy portents, Peace?
What sign on land or sea
Of thy great coming, of thy rule to be?
The fighting and the drumming do not cease;
Gun-thunder smites the air,
And shakes the earth beneath.
Bait we not the war-dogs in their lair,
And toil at harvesting of dragon’s teeth?...
Must it forever be a poet’s dream—
The land secure, the mind at rest,
The cut-throat tamed and laboring at an oar,
The braggart silent and ashamed,
The toiler as a monarch seem,
The woman with her baby at her breast,
Aglow with joy that war shall be no more?...”
—J. I. C. Clarke, in New York Times.
Prominent people—prominent chiefly because they are elevated upon the shoulders of the working class—have been talking about peace for a long time. But peace born of justice, peace founded upon fairness,—that is neither thought of nor talked of, by the ruling class, in the pompous and pretentious peace conferences; it is not on the program.
Father and the boys of the working class will themselves have to place peace on the program of mankind. And one of the first things to do is to bring up the subject of war and peace in every working class organization in the world—for discussion. (See pages [272], [283]–289. Index: “Carnegie.”)
A Special Notice to the Hague Peace Society:
As to “limited armaments”—whether the swords are long or short, the working class more and more clearly see that you intend that the working class shall continue to do all the fighting in case of war.
A Special Challenge to the Hague Peace Society:
That all delegates to the Conferences shall discuss, not the problems of “disarmament,” but (1) the problem of striking the bands from the wrists of the wage-slaves; (2) the artificial arbitrary restriction placed upon the consuming power of the wage-earners, out of which fact grows the imminent world-struggle for the “world-market.”
A Second Special Challenge to the Hague Peace Society:
That the Society shall frankly announce in all its Conferences, in all its Reports, in all its leaflets, in all its lectures and sermons, that the Socialist Party’s method of preventing war is to frankly and loudly WARN THE VICTIMS OF WAR, the working class, just what war always means to the working class; and that this method has succeeded in preventing two wars in recent years in cases where the Hague Peace Society was powerless.
A Third Special Challenge to the Hague Peace Society:
That the Society shall explain why the Capitalist masters of the Hague Peace Society will not permit their vassals in the Conferences to accept the Second Challenge.
THE BENEFICIARIES OF HELL, FLIRTING WITH “HEAVEN”
The author of WAR—WHAT FOR?, in the summer of 1910, attended a National Peace Conference in New York City. The Conference was attended by some of the most distinguished peace-wishers in the United States, including capitalists, orators and college professors. The author was given the floor to address the Convention. Everything went well until the author began to urge that all who want peace should make every possible effort to WARN THE VICTIMS of war, the working class, of what war means to the working class. Instantly there was manifest discomfort all through the audience, and very soon the chairman left his seat, came close to the speaker and urged that the speech be concluded at once. No other speaker was thus interrupted.
CHAPTER EIGHT.
For Mother and the Boys and Girls.
Topics for consideration, especially by the mothers in the working class.[[241]]
(1) “Will there be, indeed, more wars?”
Yes, undoubtedly.[[242]]
“What shall be done about it?”
There are two things to be done, by the mother, right away: Think about war and talk about war with other mothers and the boys—also with the girls.
Let us see:
In the next war whose sons shall be shot?
The aristocrat’s wife is not worrying about whose children are to be destroyed in the next war. She knows already that her sons will not be destroyed in battle; her sons will not stand before Gatling guns; her sons will not be torn and lie bleeding, groaning, screaming and cursing on the steel-swept battlefield by day or through the long night; her sons will not fester and sicken and die in dismal battlefield hospitals; she knows that her sons will not be pitched into nameless trenches—buried like dogs; her flesh and blood, her slain sons, will not be brought home to mock her aching heart.
That is settled—positively.
She belongs to the ruling class.
The ruling class protect her and the men and boys she loves—loyally.
But the working class mother—the humble mother of wage-slaves—she feels no such security. Herod and Mars invade her home to steal the men and boys she loves. The rude fist of war is ever ready to crush her. This humble woman is wholly unprotected against war by the ruling class. She is also unprotected against war by the voting men of her own class.
This woman must protect herself—for the present.
Let it be remembered that in the gentle heart of a humble mother whose loving sons have been butchered in battle, it is always winter. The cheap rhetoric and hypocritical compliments of the coarse-grained political orator, the honeyed words of any man in any profession—sacred or secular—craftily exempted from the war which slew her loved ones, these can not charm the wintry desolation of her life into rare June weather. Nor can the wound in her mother heart be healed with a stingy quarterly allowance of filthy money called a pension. When her loved ones were slaughtered her joys were slain.
This woman must indeed protect herself; and she can protect herself, somewhat,—if she will.
She can do this: She can teach her child to hate—to hate war.[[243]]
(2) Mother, is your five-year-old son strong, healthy and handsome? Yes? Well, that is fine. But think of him at the age of twenty in slaughtering clothes, being transformed into a swaggering armed bully. Mother, if he should be tricked into the army and butchered and his torn corpse should be brought home to you, you would then know what other mothers feel when their boys, whom your son butchers, are brought home to them. Then, perhaps, war would seem quite different—far less “great” and “glorious” to you. You see, mother, in a war some mothers’ boys must be butchered. Perhaps a false patriotism has been taught to you—just as a false patriotism is taught your sons. Both the mother and her sons are confused. To get the working class boy ready for war the capitalist must first confuse and trick the mother.
Kings, emperors, presidents, tsars, and capitalists of all lands are lovingly interested in the problem of “race suicide,” the problem of small families,—interested in the “food-for-powder” crop, the “bullet-stopper” crop,—EAGER THAT EVERY WORKING CLASS MOTHER SHOULD BECOME A BREEDER. After Napoleon Bonaparte had had multitudes of the men and boys of France butchered, making it difficult to find soldiers, he impatiently exclaimed, “What France needs is mothers!” What he meant was that France needed more human breeders flattered into bearing and rearing more butchers for Napoleon. Of course Napoleon was shrewd enough to confuse the humble mothers with plenty of cheap flattery concerning their “patriotism.”[[244]] Capitalists today want larger working class families for more soldiers, also for a larger army of unemployed—in order that the capitalists may, in the industrial civil war, more tyrannically dictate the wage terms to the workers and also more easily secure substitutes in case of a war.
And to this end the capitalists are willing to pay the price; that is, willing to pay for the social chloroform, for the false teachings, necessary to beget a slave’s blind enthusiasm for the master that betrays him—called patriotism.
(3) Thomas Carlyle called working class soldiers simpletons. A person of good mind, however, if caught young, can be confused till he will actually volunteer to butcher his fellowman. This can be done in many ways; for example, take Fitchburg, Massachusetts, May 29–30, 1908. The very small children, also ten-year-olds, and those still older, were assembled, according to age, in halls, churches, the Young Men’s Christian auditorium, and elsewhere, May 29; and for long weary hours gory stories of “bravery” in war were recited to them, horrible pictures were displayed before them, blood-curdling suggestions were urged upon them, cheap lusts for cheap glory were inspired in the helpless youngsters,—just as a savage might teach his little sons to rip the scalp from a screaming victim’s skull. And humble mothers of the working class were tricked into co-operating in this anti-social “patriotism.”
Such abominable performances stunt the children. Their social development is arrested. They become jingoists, ignorant little bigots—utterly incapable of sincere international love. Their political philosophy is a shallow and silly “Hurrah!” Their “patriotism” becomes a belittling conceit and a readiness for cruel deeds.
Everybody, of course, loves a frank, finely social child. International and national murder is a coarse and unsocial thought; and when parents, teachers, preachers, or lecturers, speak enthusiastically of wholesale murder or of famous national and international murderers in the presence of a child, the child’s social development is checked, stunted; when a few suggestions of international jealousy and malice have been ignorantly (or cunningly) thrust into a child’s mind it becomes simply impossible for the child to develop into an “international man,” a finely social person sincerely loving his fellowmen. This would be a charming world if all men and women were social—socialized, unblasted, unstung by shriveling national jealousy and malice; but everywhere the vile business of blasting the social nature of the rising generation is being extended. The school, even, is invaded. The Rev. Dr. Walter Walsh warns parents thus:[[245]]
“The school has become not only the training ground, but actually a recruiting ground for the army. The British War Office issues a circular pressing secondary schools to teach boys over twelve the use of the rifle; issues Morris tube carbines to schools having suitable ranges; and supplies ammunition at cost price. The inevitable next step is the formation of cadet corps in the schools, with inspection by military chiefs.... The capture of the schools by the militarists is one of the most ominous signs of the times. The militarist has long looked with wistful eye at this happy hunting grounds.... Parliaments have already been strongly urged to make military drill compulsory in all public schools.... The scholar is rapidly transformed into the conscript.”
The shameless audacity of using a socializing institution, the school, to cultivate national malice in the helpless children!
(4) If only the children could get one good look at the hell behind the curtain it would be more difficult to beguile and betray them.
Let the wonderful Zola tell what the boys in the public schools are not taught and are not permitted to realize till later when they are grown up and are seduced to the battlefield with the crafty cry, “Follow the flag!”
Here following are some paragraphs on the battlefield hospital. A military hospital, it may be said, is an institution in which sick and shell-torn men are hastily repaired in order that they may go again to the battle line—perchance to faint or be ripped to pieces again. Thus Zola:[[246]]
“... Outside in the shed the preparations were of another nature: the chests were opened and the contents arranged in order.... On another table were the surgical cases with their blood-curdling array of glittering instruments, probes, forceps, bistouries, scalpels, scissors, saws, an arsenal of implements of every imaginable shape adapted to pierce, cut, dice, rend, crush.... The wagons kept driving up to the entrance in an unbroken stream.... The regular ambulance wagons of the medical department, two-wheeled and four-wheeled, were too few in number to meet the demand ... provision vans, everything on wheels that could be picked up on the battlefield, came rolling up with their ghastly loads; and later in the day carrioles and market-gardeners’ carts were pressed into the service and harnessed to horses that were found straying along the roads.... It was a sight to move the most callous to behold the unloading of those poor wretches, some with the greenish pallor on their faces, others suffused with the purple hue that denotes congestion; many were in a state of coma, others uttered piercing cries of anguish ... the keen knife flashed in the air, there was the faint rasping of the saw barely audible, the blood spurted in short sharp jets.... As soon as the subject had been operated on another was brought in, and they followed one another in such quick succession that there was barely time to pass the sponge over the protecting oil-cloth. At the extremity of the grass plot, screened from sight by a clump of lilac bushes, they had set up a kind of morgue whither they carried the bodies of the dead, which were removed from the beds without a moment’s delay in order to make room for the living, and this receptacle also served to receive the amputated legs and arms, whatever débris of flesh and bone remained upon the table.... Rents in tattered, shell-torn uniforms disclosed gaping wounds, some of which had received a hasty dressing on the battlefield, while others were still raw and bleeding. There were feet, still encased in their coarse shoes, crushed into a mass like jelly; from knees and elbows, that were as if they had been smashed by a hammer, depended inert limbs. There were broken hands, and fingers almost severed, ready to drop, retained only by a strip of skin. Most numerous among the casualties were the fractures; the poor arms and legs, red and swollen, throbbed intolerably and were as heavy as lead. But the most dangerous hurts were those in the abdomen, chest, and head. There were yawning fissures that laid open the entire flank, the knotted viscera were drawn into great hard lumps beneath the tight-drawn skin, while as the effect of certain wounds the patient frothed at the mouth and writhed like an epileptic.... And finally the head, more than any other portion of the frame, gave evidence of hard treatment; a broken jaw, the mouth a pulp of teeth and bleeding tongue, an eye torn from its socket and exposed upon the cheek, a cloven skull that showed the palpitating brain beneath.... Although the sponge was kept constantly at work the tables were always red.... The buckets ... were emptied over a bed of daisies a few steps away.... Some seemed to have left the world with a sneer on their faces, their eyes retroverted till naught was visible but the whites, the grinning lips parted over the glistening teeth, while in others with faces unspeakably sorrowful, big tears still stood on the cheeks. One, a mere boy, short and slight, half whose face had been shot away by a cannon ball, had his two hands clasped convulsively above his heart, and in them a woman’s photograph, one of those pale, blurred pictures that are made in the quarters of the poor, bedabbled with his blood. And at the feet of the dead had been thrown in a promiscuous pile the amputated arms and legs, the refuse of the knife and the saw of the operating table, just as the butcher sweeps into a corner of his shop the offal, the worthless odds and ends of flesh and bone.... Bourouche, brandishing the long, keen knife, cried: ‘Raise him!’ seized the deltoid with his left hand and with a swift movement of the right cut through the flesh of the arm and severed the muscle; then, with a deft rear-ward cut, he disarticulated the joint at a single stroke, and, presto! the arm fell on the table, taken off in three motions.... ‘Let him down!’ ... he had done it in thirty seconds.... Their strength all gone, reduced to skeletons, with ashen, clayey faces, the miserable wretches suffered the torments of the damned.... The patients writhed and shrieked in unceasing delirium, or sat erect in bed with the look of spectres.... There were others again who maintained a continuous howling.... Often gangrene kept mounting higher and higher, and the amputation had to be repeated until the entire limb was gone.”
And that is hell—for which your children are prepared.
This phase of war is shrewdly kept from the children. No child’s mind could be poisoned, no child’s imagination could be set on fire for war, no child’s heart could be made to lust for the “glory” of the battlefield of carnage—if he were shown this side of war.
But the child is an easy victim. Even some cheap jingo jingle called patriotic poetry renders the working class the easy, fooled tool of despots. The victimizing of the helpless child is rendered especially easy when the mother, blindfold with flattery, gullibly lends assistance in strangling the child’s sociability. (See Chapter Seven, Section 30.)
(5) Here is a specimen of the poison craftily used in the public schools under the control of the capitalist class:
“A soldier is the grandest man
That ever yet was made.
He’s valiant on the battlefield
And handsome on parade.
By strict attention to my drill
It should not take me long
For me to be an officer
When I am big and strong.
Then, when my country needs me,
In case of war’s alarms,
I’d run and get my uniform[[247]]
And call the boys to arms!
With sword in hand I’d lead the charg
My orders I would yell
Above the noise of cannon’s roar
And storms of shot and shell.
We’d dash upon the foreign foe,
As Teddy did of yore,
Who took the hill while covered with
Dust, victory and gore!
With banners gay, while bugles play,
We’d seek our native land.
Upon a horse I’d ride that day,
The General in Command!”[[248]]
Will the mothers protect their children’s nature against the unsocial small souls who are always ignorantly or maliciously ready to thrust fangs and venom into the generous natures of frank and social children by having them recite stupid praise of distinguished human butchers and “famous victories”?
An American literary man of great eminence, Dr. Edward Everett Hale, thus rebuked the poisoners of school children:
“But even now, think how much more care you give to the study of the histories of war than to the histories of peace. There are ten times as many people who know who commanded at the Battle of New Orleans as there are who could tell me the name of the great apostle who made freedom the law for Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Michigan. This man died leaving no memorial.”[[249]]
(6) The working class should speedily get control of public libraries and throw out and keep out books written especially to exalt war and puff the brilliant butchers who have guided millions of working men to death on blood-soaked battlefields,—throw out and burn all books designed to praise the Christian or pagan cannibalism, or the civilized savagery called war. Labor unions and all other working class bodies should make formal and vigorous protest against having anything said in the public schools in praise of war and in praise of distinguished butchers. Let them reflect too that military drills, given as such, with martial songs and war tales, cultivate blood lust in the children, blind them to the true meaning of war, make them an easy prey, later, to the crafty cowards who will seek to use them in future savage contests, and are thus an outrage on the children. For a dozen reasons the working class should get control of local school boards.[[250]]
(7) The following lines from a poem written by an elegant coward, are often used in the primary grades of the public schools:
“Form! Form! Riflemen, form!
Ready! be ready to meet the storm!
Riflemen! Riflemen! Riflemen, form!”
A school teacher can make a fool and a murderer of a boy of eight or ten years with such lines. Remember that poets and teachers who furnish the war-song chloroform for school children usually “side-step” when the storm breaks—no rifle business for them—they let others “meet the storm” which their poetry and teaching helped stir up. The war-song poet and the war-song school teacher, if you please, are too “cultivated and respectable” to be patriotically butchered.
Under no circumstances should a working class father and mother keep silent while a public school teacher or a Sunday-school teacher thrills the children’s blood and blasts the glorious sentiments of human brotherhood with recitals of war-tales and fulsome praise of men whose “glory” is red with the blood of tens of thousands of working class men. Such stories and such praise scar and brutalize the social natures of the children as distinctly as a hot branding iron would disfigure their tender faces.
(8) The little lovers, the children, who are conceived in love, born in love, and live on love, who hunger for love, long to love, glorify the home with love and make the sad world hope for—almost mad for—love, one generation of these sweet little lovers, these prattling sweethearts of mankind, would, when grown up, fill the world with an international love, if they were not bitten by the viper of petty, local patriotism.
The mother who will think about this matter somewhat will promptly realize that there is something disastrously wrong with the education which stings her little lovers with a murderer’s aspiration. There is something wrong when the gracious neighborliness and charming sociability of children give way to swaggering insolence and savage blood-lust.
Let the mother think of it: Even their playthings, their toys, are craftily used to sting, to debauch the imagination of the children, to write the hopes of brutes in the hearts of gentle children. Lately there has been enormous increase in the business of manufacturing toy soldiers, toy cavalry horses, toy cannon and toy Gatling guns, also khaki soldier clothing for children. “120,000 bales of scrap tin from the Puget Sound canneries were sent recently to Hamburg, Germany, to be made into toy soldiers.”[[251]] There can be no doubt about the results of using such garb and playthings. That the child is thus scarred is revealed when the tiny boy assumes the attitudes and the strut and swagger of the professional man-slaughterer. His very conversation with his military toys shows he is marked—ready.[[252]]
William Lloyd Garrison wrote:
“My country is the world, my countrymen are all mankind.”
But the stung child can not learn the meaning of Garrison’s noble words.
(9) Boy, kill one human being, and you will be called a murderer—despised and hanged. But kill a thousand human beings in war—and you become “great”! Deluded women smile upon you, little children gape at you, preachers praise you, politicians pet you, orators glorify you, capitalists grin at you, universities honor you, and the Government medals and pensions you;—but lonely, war-orphaned children and war-robbed widows, these despise you exactly in proportion as they understand you.
Remember, boy, the soldier’s sword reaches through the slaughtered father to others—reaches the hearts of helpless women and helpless children.
Which would you rather be, boy, a dead and useless slaughterer of men, or a live and useful man of peace?—a dead butcher or a live brother?
(10) Here, of course, the thought of patriotism occurs.
A great American, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote:
“We hesitate to employ a word so much abused as patriotism, whose true sense is almost the reverse of the popular sense. We have no sympathy with that boyish egotism, hoarse with cheering for one side, for one state, for one town; the right patriotism consists in the delight which springs from contributing our peculiar legitimate advantages to the benefit of humanity.”
And thus James Russell Lowell:[[253]]
“There is a patriotism of the soul whose claim absolves us from our other and terrene fealty.... When, therefore, one would have us throw up our caps and shout with the multitude, ‘Our country, however bounded!’ he demands of us that we sacrifice the larger to the less, the higher to the lower, and that we yield to the imaginary claims of a few acres of soil our duty and privilege as liegemen of Truth. Our true country is bounded on the north and the south, on the east and the west, by justice.... Veiling our faces, we must take silently the hand of Duty to follow her.”
The fallacy of false patriotism is exploded in the following quotation by James Mackaye:[[254]]
“There is a school of patriotism more or less popular which teaches that a man owes to his country a duty which he owes to no other aggregate of the human race, and that he should render service to the constituted authorities thereof, whatever policies they may choose to pursue. The motto of this school is ‘My country, right or wrong.’ Had this been the motto of Washington and his compatriots the United States would still be a part of the British Empire. The particular aggregate of men which constitutes a nation is a matter of the merest accident.... Indeed the patriotism whose dictum is ‘My country, right or wrong’ is but one degree of egotism, for if my country right or wrong, why not my state right or wrong; if my state right or wrong, why not my town ... my neighborhood ... my family ... my great uncle ... or why not myself right or wrong?”
George Washington was disloyal to his own government, the greatest national government in the world in his day, simply because that government did not do things to suit him. Washington took up arms against his own government because it did not suit him. Washington was unpatriotic toward his great national government because it did not please him. Washington even trampled upon the flag of his own national government because that government’s policy did not suit him.
But Washington was loyal to his own interests. He was patriotic toward the new revolutionary government that did suit him. He transferred his allegiance to a new flag and a new constitution and a new government and thus protected his economic interests.
And all these things are true, strictly true, of almost every great American in the times of Washington. Nearly every “leading citizen” in England at that time thought the behavior of the great Americans was “simply awful,” “outlandishly anarchistic.”
The “patriotic” great men in England were protecting their economic interests and used their government to protect those interests.
The “unpatriotic” Americans were protecting their economic interests, and they despised the government that would not protect their interests, and they straightway constructed a government which they could use in protecting their interests. Then they became patriotic toward the new government which they were using to protect their interests.
Always those in possession of the powers of government use the Government to protect themselves—that is, to protect their interests; and they never fail to shrewdly shout, “Patriotism!” and teach “patriotism”; nor do they ever fail to shout, “Unpatriotic!” at any group or class who seek to reorganize government in self-defense.
“Patriotism!” “Love of our country!” Yes, indeed! But, doesn’t the average American working class man look ridiculous shouting, “Hurrah for our country—our land of the free”? He has no voice in the control of the factory where he works; has no voice as to the use of the militia and the soldiers; has no right to demand a job and thus defend his life; he could not have the service of one petty village marshal, to open up a “shut-down” factory, even though the opening of the factory would save him and five thousand other men and their twenty-five thousand women and children from starvation; in the mill and mine and factory he has no voice as to who shall be his foreman or superintendent any more than black chattel slaves in Georgia cotton fields in 1850.
Our country! Land of the free! Where the president of the American Federation of Labor could be clapped into jail if he should use the “freedom of the press” to publish even a short list of boycotted industrial tyrants; where the officers of the Western Federation of Miners were kidnapped and the kidnapping was declared to be constitutional by the highest court in the land, and the untried prisoners (constitutionally entitled to all the presumptions of innocence) were declared guilty by the cheap President of the political mockery called a “free republic.”
(11) Mothers and fathers are not permitted to learn of many of the foul things happening at barracks or far away whither their sons have been “flimflammed” for bullet-stoppers.
For President William H. Taft’s official testimony on the sexual degradation of the soldier sons of loving mothers, see Chapter Four, Section One, of the present volume.
“On the 17th of July, 1899, the staff correspondents of American newspapers stationed in Manila stated unitedly in public protest:
“‘The [Press] censorship has compelled us to participate in this misrepresentation by excising or altering uncontroverted statements of fact, on the plea, as General Otis said, that “they would alarm the people at home,” or “have the people of the United States by the ears.”’”[[255]]
Some things, you know, must be concealed. President D. S. Jordan (Leland Stanford University) writes:[[256]]
“Does the Outlook [editor] know what Manila is becoming under military rule? We hear of four hundred saloons on the Escolta, where two were before; that twenty-one per cent. of our soldiers are attacked with venereal disease, that according to the belief of the soldiers, ‘even the pigs and dogs have the syphilis.’”
Following the Spanish war, venereal diseases as cause of ineffectiveness and cause for discharge from the army increased two and a half fold; that is, two hundred and fifty per cent.[[257]] The statement by the Secretary of War, Mr. Dickinson (Report for 1909, p. 17) is sufficient to disgust and anger every woman in the land with the entire filthy business of militarism. For the startling statement see Chapter Four, Section One, of present volume.
In this connection read the words of an officer in the Department of War, Col. John Van Rensselaer:[[258]]
“I have but one word to say. I am an officer of the Medical Corps of the Army, and will speak on this important subject from that standpoint.
“Every soldier excused from duty on account of sickness of any kind has a record made of his case. By reason of this fact, I believe I may safely say that military vital statistics, including venereal diseases, are the most complete extant.
“The authorities observing that there has been in recent years a progressive increase of these diseases in the Army, until the non-efficiency from them with us now exceeds that of any other army, and despairing of help from the civil control of prostitution, have instituted a plan within the service by which they hope to reduce the excessive non-efficiency from venereal. Medical officers are required to instruct the men in the nature and dangers of these diseases, the non-necessity of exposure to them....
“Such instruction is valuable to a certain extent, but only to a certain extent.... We cannot, therefore, expect all of our men, so many of whom are at the age of highest virility, to avoid exposure by reason of any moral suasion we may bring to bear. Some certainly will not, so we say to them, ‘Be continent, but if you cannot, then protect yourself!’ And we tell them how to do it.”
PREPARING BOY-SCOUT HIRED HANDS.
(See sample of “finished product” of a Boy Scout, pages [51], [53] and, especially, opposite page [207].)
How splendid, how grandly noble, it must have been to see a regular army physician, wearing the official professional uniform marked “U. S.,” going, officially, at stated intervals, to the officially “segregated” houses of prostitution in Manila to officially examine the condition of professional prostitutes, and, having examined them, officially report them “unfit” (for whom?)—or “fit” (for whom?). How sublime! How patriotic! How lovingly Christian! Great flag-waving, constitutional government, performing a noble function nobly and, of course, constitutionally! All in the name of Christ, of course—for “This is a Christian nation”—officially.
Life on board a war vessel is unnatural. So far as social and sex relations are concerned the men are virtually kept in solitary confinement for weeks, even months, at a time. Under such profoundly unnatural conditions human beings behave unnaturally. Many strong characters and all the weak ones collapse, utterly collapse; and the wild, ugly, worse than brute monster, Perverted Sex Appetite, has a vile festival weeks at a time, enticing, embracing, befouling, devouring many of the finest youths in the land.
It is said to be common knowledge with many who know and with many it is a source of horrible jest—that under such unnatural conditions on board a battleship men sexually associate with men in ways worse (if possible) than the most degrading ways mentioned (and cursed) in the Old Testament. And when, after weeks or months at sea, the warship touches at a port for a few days or weeks, there is a wild rush of unfortunate boys for unfortunate women whose diseased condition is an unspeakable abomination. And this should be known too: Certain Christian and un-Christian governments’ officials provide the boys with certain preventive chemicals (as they leave the ship for a “lark” on shore), knowing that the boys, many of them, are sure to be the victims of victims reeking with disease.
And then if the reader could witness the “round-up” the night before the ship sets out to sea again,—could see scores of fine young marines, pride of loving mothers,—if the reader could see them taken on board dead drunk and horribly befouled, taken on board in wheel barrows and dumped like big lumps of diseased, drunken, snoring and slobbering flesh, to be sobered up and “treated” when the ship gets out to sea,—if the reader could see all this and very much more, for example in New York harbor, he would then better understand why very few of “our very best people” of the “upper class” are not easily wheedled into giving up their own sons to defend our great and glorious country on board a big steel fighting machine called a battleship—to cruise and carouse around the world. Just in proportion as the working class mother thinks about this matter her sons will be safer from the wheedling seductions of the recruiting officer.
Mothers, what is the blind sentiment that makes you clap your hands in admiration of the “great statesmen” or the “great government” that has prostitutes examined for the sons you bore and carefully reared and tenderly love?
“Lead us not into temptation,” said Jesus Christ. Yet a “civilized” Christian government recently not only examined, but provided prostitutes for the soldier boys. The great British Government within recent years provided prostitutes for her soldiers in India. Circular memoranda were sent to all the cantonments of India by Quarter-Master General Chapman, in the name of the commander-in-chief of the army of India (Lord Roberts). Here are three excerpts from those documents and from official reports:[[259]]
“In regimental bazaars it is necessary to have a sufficient number of women; to take care that they are SUFFICIENTLY ATTRACTIVE; to provide them with proper houses, and above all to insist upon means of ablution being always available [to prevent venereal diseases].... If young soldiers are carefully advised in regard to the advantages of ablution, and recognize that convenient arrangements exist in the regimental bazaar (that is, in the chacla, or brothel), they may be expected to avoid the risks involved in association with women who are not recognized [that is, not examined and licensed] by the regimental authorities.”
Another commanding officer writes in his report:
“Please send young and attractive women as laid down in the Quarter-Master General’s circular, No. 21A.... There are not women enough; they are not attractive enough. More and younger women are required.... I have ordered the number of prostitutes to be increased ... and have given special instructions as to additional women being young and of attractive appearance.”
And this: “The total number of admissions to hospital of cases of venereal diseases amongst troops in India rose in 1895 to 522 per 1,000.”
And this from another authority:[[260]]
“In 1902, in India, the enormous number of 12,686 men were admitted into hospitals suffering from sexual diseases alone; more than 1,000 military victims were always in the hospital—and the report from which these figures are taken deals with the healthiest year for 20 years past. In the Home Army ... in a single period of twelve months, of 154,000 troops, there were 24,176 sexual complaint cases—or one in every six. In the author’s judgment, 80 per cent. of the entire British Army in India, and a proportion slightly smaller for the Home Army, have been at some time affected.”
“The worst of war and war service is that the soldier is a ruined man.”[[261]]
General Sherman has spoken on the refining influences of war:
“Long after the Civil War, General Sherman, defending the conduct of his troops in South Carolina, said to Carl Schurz: ‘Before we got out of that state the men had so accustomed themselves to destroying everything along the line of march that sometimes, when I had my headquarters in a house, that house began to burn before I was fairly out of it. The truth is—human nature is human nature. You take the best lot of young men—all church members if you please—and put them into an army and let them invade an enemy’s country and let them live upon it for any length, and they will gradually lose all principle[[262]] and self-restraint to a degree beyond the control of discipline. It has always been so and always will be so.’”[[263]]
(12) An anonymous author writes thus:[[264]]
“Real war is a very different thing from the painted image that you see at a parade or review. But it is the painted image that makes it popular. The waving plumes, the gay uniforms, the flashing swords, the disciplined march of innumerable feet, the clear-voiced trumpet, the intoxicating strains of martial music, the pomp, the sound, and the spectacle—these are the incitements to war and to the profession of the soldier. They are not what they are. But they still form a popular prelude to a woeful pandemonium. And when war bursts out it is at first, as a rule, but a small minority even of the peoples engaged that really sees and feels its horrors. The populace is fed by excitements; the defeats are covered up; in most countries the lists of killed and wounded are suppressed or postponed; victories are magnified; successful generals are acclaimed, and the military hero becomes the idol of the people. The over-fed, seedy malingerers of a small society join with the starving loiterers about the gin palace in applauding the execution of ruin. If their heroes are successful, what are their trophies?—prisons crowded with captives, hospitals filled with sick and wounded, towns sacked, farms burnt, fields laid waste, taxes raised, plenty converted to scarcity or famine, and vast debts accumulated for posterity. Then when these [military] heroes have done their work, the heroes of peace ... appear, and by long and patient labor amid scenes of universal lamentation seek to mitigate the suffering of their repentant fellow-countrymen.”
The poet Byron was in a war and described war thus:
“All the mind would shrink from of excesses;
All the body perpetrates of bad;
All that we read, hear, dream, of man’s distresses;
All that the devil would do if run stark mad;
All that defies the worst which pen expresses;
All that by which hell is peopled, or is sad
As hell—mere mortals who their power abuse—
Was here (as heretofore and since) let loose....
War’s a brain-spattering art.”[[265]]
(13) In connection with the foregoing section 12 examine Chapter Seven, Section 18.
“War! War! War!... God send the women sleep in the long, long night, when the breasts on whose strength they leaned heave no more.”[[266]]
Wives and mothers of the working class, as soon as the government has had your choicest sons slaughtered, the government is through with you—except to send you a miserable, blood-stained, silver sop, a sort of cash bribe, once a quarter. Then as you receive the vile cash, you can, in imagination, hear the shrieks of your dead loved ones. The government seeks to win your approval and to silence your hearts’ protests against human butchery with the cheap jingle of some filthy dollars—as if you had sold your sons and husbands for a price. Such a pension is a form of hush money.
“If the stroke of war fell certain on the guilty heads, none else ... but alas!
That undistinguishing and deathful storm
Beats heaviest on the exposed and innocent;
And they that stir its fury, while it raves
Safe at a distance send their mandates forth.”—Crowe.
Robert G. Ingersoll wrote:[[267]]
“Nations sustain the relations of savages to each other....
“No man has imagination enough to paint the agonies, the horrors, the cruelties, of war. Think of sending shot and shell crashing through the bodies of men! Think of the widows and orphans! Think of the maimed, the mutilated, the mangled!...”
Let the working class mothers beware of crafty and cowardly politicians and business men seeking to excite them with the shallow cry: “The flag! Our country! Our homes!” For the mothers’ sake it is worth the space to restate the fact here: That more than half of all the mothers in the United States have no homes of their own and must live in rented homes, and more than one-eighth of them live in mortgaged homes.[[268]] And vast numbers of the mothers in the United States live in mean, small houses with scarcely a single modern convenience.
Mothers, keep your eyes on the bankers and the manufacturers and the other “leading citizens”: they and their sons and sons-in-law are not shedding a large quantity of their “blue” blood for “our” country and “our” homes and “our” flag; and they can not be wheedled into doing so. Watch them closely, mothers, both before a war and during a war. Don’t get excited. Remember Christ’s “Put up thy sword.”
St. Paul said, “Follow peace with all men.”
You have heard of this doctrine: “Thou shalt not kill.”
“War has no pity,” said Schiller.
“God is forgotten in war, and every principle of Christianity is trampled under foot,” said Sidney Smith.
“To be tender-minded
Does not become a sword.”—Shakespeare.
“War is one of the greatest plagues that can afflict humanity; it destroys religion ... it destroys families. Any scourge, in fact, is preferable to it.... Cannon and fire-arms are cruel and damnable machines.”—Martin Luther.
The gentle and charming lover of little children, Eugene Field, wrote: “I hate wars, armies, soldiers, guns, and fireworks.”[[269]]
“And he shall judge among the nations, and he shall rebuke many people. And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”[[270]]
James Russell Lowell:[[271]]
“The laborin’ man and laborin’ woman
Have one glory and one shame;
Ev’y thin’ thet’s done inhuman
Ingers all on ’em the same.”
And Tolstoi thus:[[272]]
“Every war—even the briefest—with its accompaniment of ruinous expenses, destruction of harvests, thefts, plunder, murders, and unchecked debauchery, with the false justifications of its necessity and justice, the glorification and praise of military exploits, of patriotism and devotion to the flag, with the pretense of care for the wounded, etc.,—will, in one year, demoralize men incomparably more than thousands of thefts, arsons and murders committed in the course of centuries by individual men under the influence of passion.”
Let the women’s literary clubs and circles, many of them devotees of John Ruskin, consider the following lines from his pen:[[273]]
“But Occult Theft—Theft which hides itself even from itself, and is legal, respectable, and cowardly,—corrupts the body and soul of man, and to the last fibre of them. And the guilty thieves of Europe, the real sources of all deadly war in it, are the Capitalists,—that is to say, those who live by percentages on the labor of others.—The Real war in Europe—is between these thieves and the workman, such as these thieves have made him. They have kept him poor, ignorant, and sinful, that they might without his knowledge gather for themselves the produce of his toil. At last a dim insight into the fact of this begins to dawn upon him.”
As to thieves: Think of stealing several years of a man’s life when he is in the prime of young manhood, by tearing him from his own friends and loved ones, forcing a rifle into his hands, and compelling him for years to learn the vile science and art of human butchery. Thus are the best years of millions of the choicest young men in Europe stolen—stolen by a class,—a class of prominent kidnappers, industrial and political thieves, “leading citizens” hypocritically wearing a mask called “Patriotism.” Think of many millions thus stolen—stolen from their parents, stolen from their brothers and sisters, stolen from their wives and children.
When the working class think about war and see the vast theft of their lives they will astound the world with their protest.
And the mothers will take part in this protest.
(14) Didn’t Christ say in substance: “I came not to send peace, but a sword?”
Yes. At least that is what some of the gentle Christ’s followers are said to have reported that they heard he had been reported to have been heard to say. And it is true, too, that tyrants, hypocritically mumbling interpolated malignance ascribed to Christ, draw the sword to combat the brotherhood of man—as, doubtless, Christ expected they would do. But it is worse than blasphemous nonsense to teach children—young or old—that Christ, the Great Lover of Mankind, was a cheap jingoist, recommended the sword and counseled wholesale butchery of brothers by brothers. The distinguished intellectual prostitutes who argue Christ into the same butchers’ list with Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon and the Tough Rider, are pridelessly down on their faces in the dust cringing before their industrial masters; they are simply betraying Christ again for “thirty pieces” of blood-stained silver called salaries.[[274]]
Christ, according to the reports, also said: “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” Also: “Ye have heard it hath been said: ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth’; but I say unto you: ‘That ye resist not evil.’” And this: “They that take up the sword, shall by the sword perish.”
And this on authority: “Thou shalt not steal.”
One of the most eminent bishops in the United States went, in the winter of 1907–8, before a Congressional Committee and argued eloquently for a large cash donation from Congress for a certain “boys’ academy” managed by his church. His chief argument was that the little fellows “are carefully trained in the use of arms and would be ready for use in case of trouble.”
Many schools thus prepare boys to murder hungry working men who are out on strike for a few pennies a day to feed their families—which is a “case of trouble.” Now imagine Christ training tender boys for human butchery and teasing the brutal government of his time for cash with which to buy spears and swords for the children!
“There is a powerful section of the Christian church which teaches its entire membership that the Church has a right to exempt them—the clergy—from the usual duties of citizenship, and especially from military duty.”[[275]]
Now, it does not matter what church we may or may not be members of, all the men and all the women of the working class—in all the churches and out of the churches—should band together in a world-wide fellowship and effort of the working class to drive war from the world and thus protect the helpless women and children. Remember, mothers, it is not fair that your husbands and sons should be torn from your homes, have cruel rifles thrust into their hands, and be forced into a war where they may be destroyed,—and you be thus widowed and your younger children be left fatherless; and, at the same time, the minister who by prayer and public speech exerted powerful influence to bring about the war,—that he should be exempted from the horrors of the battlefield, the horrors up close, where human blood and brains are pounded into the mud by cannon balls and the hoofs of horses. Remember, too, that tens of thousands of ministers have no wives and no children to be desolated. Does it not seem rather that these wifeless, childless men who want war should themselves go to the war instead of having your lovers go?
It should be repeated:
No matter what denomination they belong to, those men who pray for war or pray for victories in war, or help train boys for war—those men should go and fight the war.
If a war is good enough to pray for it is good enough to go to. Those who want “great victories” should be forced to go after them, right up to the front too, where cannon shells burst striking hundreds with death—up to the front, into “hell’s hurricanes.”
How does this matter seem to you, mother? Won’t you think it over and bring up the subject for friendly and earnest discussion in your community? Why not urge all women everywhere to take up this subject—and thus chain the attention of society to this subject of the degradation and slaughter of the men you love?
(15) In The Westminster Review of July, 1907, is the following suggestion of a topic suitable for discussion in women’s societies and newspapers:
“There is another insidious form of Militarism that is very widespread and popular. I refer to the Lads’ Brigades [in England] which are attached to so many churches of different denominations. Under pretext of giving them physical training, boys are taught the spirit of submission to another’s will, and to love the trappings of Militarism.... This coupling together of military training with religion has been well described by the Rev. Dr. Aked of Liverpool [now of New York], as ‘preaching heaven and practicing hell.’”
The American mother can not solace herself with the thought that what Dr. Aked referred to was a practice in far-away England and does not much concern her. For this new crucifixion of Jesus and the degradation of the little boys, a strong society exists in the United States. The United Boys’ Brigade is an organization for training the trigger-fingers and the blood-lusts of boys nine years and upward in the basement rooms of Christian churches. “The object of the organization,” as announced in the monthly magazine of the organization, The American Brigadier, is “to ... promote reverence and discipline ... to create in them a love for their country ... and while the boys are thoroughly drilled in military discipline and tactics, it only serves to make them true Christian soldiers.”[[276]] The American Brigadier announces officially that “there is nothing equal to it in drawing them into the Sabbath School.” Thus the church is to be made like a prize-fighting ring in order to make it look good to the little boys. The American Brigadier, of December, 1907, gives away its secret in a lengthy account, headed, “Securing a New Recruit,” as follows:
(One boy says to another): “We go to Bible drill every Saturday night and have setting-up exercises and Bible drill, and sometimes we visit other companies. Gee! but our company can show them how to drill. And we go camping in summer, and we have a bully time.... Bible drill?... Gee! but there are some bully stories in the Bible.... We read about Samson, the strong man that beat Sandow all hollow, and King David, the siege of Jericho, and last week we read about a shepherd boy killing a giant with a sling-shot....”
In The Brigadier of November, 1907, is an article, “What it Means to be a Soldier,” in which is the following:
“There is but one word that covers all, and that is obedience: obedience to orders and strict discipline. The foundation of all military organizations rests upon this one basis.”
Precisely: obedience.
That is to say, an innocent little fellow who has been drilled thus for several years to forget that he has a brain and a will of his own, drilled to obey all orders instantly—such a boy at the age of twenty will, of course, automatically and stupidly obey any order—no matter how vile—even the order: “Fire! Charge!”—though “the enemy,” the target, be little silk-mill wage-slave girls ten or twelve years old who must toil a whole week for $1.60, and are out on strike for a dime more per week, and while out on strike are starved into being “riotous.”
Armed rowdies—with riot guns—for starving, “rioting” children!
The American Brigadier is primarily a religious magazine, so they say; but it offers a breech-loading Springfield rifle as a premium to the boy who will send in the most subscribers. Imagine Christ making his cause popular with little boys by offering them a weapon with which to murder! The Brigadier wins the boys to Jesus by seductively baiting the savage that still lurks in the “civilized” breast; the magazine gives pictures of armories, battle monuments, gun drills, military parades, camp life, gay military uniforms, little boys with guns, swords, tents, banners, cannon, pictures also of pompous-looking, gilt-braided “big men,” famous professional human butchers. The magazine prints alluring stories of army-and-navy life; and makes a specialty of advertising military arms, military clothing, West Point story books, and so forth.
This organization works in and through the church. It is strong and is gaining ground. It boasts of having branches in many states. In the “City of Churches,” Brooklyn, N. Y., the society is specially strong. Much of the military drill work is done openly in the streets, when the weather permits. Many pastors, “in the name of Jesus,” of course, are energetically—and patriotically—hustling for the movement, some of them proudly (and craftily) having their pictures taken with the training companies. The pastors’ poses in these pictures make the pastors look like valuable assets to the capitalists of their churches, but the poses somehow do not suggest the quiet and gentle Jesus. “Put up thy sword” is out of date with these kerosened procurers political.[[277]]
There are many thousands of innocent little church boys thus in training. October 5, 1907, twenty-five hundred of these little fellows marched on Fifth Avenue, New York City, carrying guns and swords, four of the betrayed children dragging a light cannon.
The Federal Government at Washington, by a “judicious mingling” of winks and smiles, is heartily encouraging this “Christian soldier” enterprise. Says the Commander-in-Chief, H. B. Pope, in his Report:[[278]]
“In general ... it can be said that in the quarters where we have desired to obtain recognition, our influence is greater, and the respect tendered to us is much more cordial than ever before. Our own Government has paid special attention in several directions to the work of this organization ... and our development [is] carefully followed by those highest in authority, who appreciate the possibilities of the splendid soldiery which the organization is making, should the necessity ever arise when this body might be needed [in a strike for example].... Drill should never be allowed to take the place of religious exercises. At the same time a judicious mingling of both constitutes means through which we can obtain highest results.”
And the following is from a report on a meeting of the organization held in Calvary Methodist Episcopal Church, New York City, May 13, 1907:
“There were also present a number of Army Officers, National Guard officers and veterans of the Civil War.... The Church was beautifully decorated with flags.... General Campbell presided and presented messages of good will and good wishes from the President of the United States, from Colonel Fred Grant ... and from many other influential men.”
How interestingly consistent—“Good will and good wishes” from the presidential chairman of the executive committee of the capitalist class in America; that is, the National Government,—“good will and good wishes” to the seducers of small boys to serve as fist and tusk for the ruling class.
The “Boy Scout” movement is the latest manifestation of this christened and kerosened cunning to seduce the innocent small boys for the blood-and-iron embrace of Mars and Mammon. Mothers, take notice. Be warned. Defend yourselves.
President Roosevelt (international mentor) also furnished bewildering flattery to the boys themselves who show skill in the use of the deadly rifle. The Philadelphia Public Ledger, and many other newspapers about the same date, July 16, 1907, printed the following cunning letter written by President Roosevelt to a Brooklyn school boy. The news item with the letter runs thus:
“Oyster Bay, July 17. President Roosevelt has put his hearty approval on public school rifle practice. In a letter of congratulation to Ambrose Scharfenberg, of Brooklyn, winner of the shooting trophy of the Public School Athletic League, he takes occasion to encourage the system of rifle practice inaugurated by General George B. Wingate, retired.
“That the letter to young Scharfenberg may have as far-reaching influence as possible, it was made public at the President’s direction today. It is as follows:
“‘My Dear Young Friend:—I heartily congratulate you upon being declared by the Public School Athletic League to stand first in rifle shooting among all the boys of the High Schools of New York City who have tried during the last year. Many a grown man who regards himself as a crack rifle shot would be proud of such a score. Your skill is a credit to you, and also to your principal, your teachers, and to all connected with the manual training school which you attend, and I know them all. [The usual diffident confession of omniscience.]
“‘Practice in rifle shooting is of value in developing not only muscles, but nerves.... It is a prime necessity that the volunteer should already know how to shoot.... The graduates from our schools and colleges should be thus trained so as to be good shots with the military rifle. When so trained they constitute a great addition to our national strength and great assurance for the peace of the country.’”
That is to say: Tho’ the capitalists should refuse to employ 5,000,000 men and virtually spit in their faces and order these willing-to-work men out of the factories and mines to shiver and starve in rags, and thus infinitely humiliate millions of working class wives and daughters with the terrors of poverty—no matter, the rifle-practiced graduates of high schools, colleges and universities will be “ready for use,” ready to crush the unemployed if they loudly protest, ready to help the master class thrust all the injustices of a class-labor system into the lives of the working class, ready to thrust bayonets into the out-of-work wage-slaves who cry aloud for work, for bread, for justice in the industrial civil war of capitalism.
Bright and early every school day, in New York City, about 600,000 children are compelled to salute the flag and recite some mocking lies about the “glorious freedom they have” and the “bounteous blessings they enjoy”—under the “friendly folds of the Stars and Stripes”—tho’ a whole half million of the children have no homes of their own and in a hundred ways are stung with the lash of poverty.
(17) Many additional instructors in military tactics have in recent years been appointed to service in high schools, colleges and universities. United States Army officers are now in ninety-three universities, colleges and schools, drilling 22,910 students in “military departments.”
Improved rifles, riot cartridges, and killing equipment are being distributed among the State militia forces; local armories are being improved and made attractive,—all made “ready for use” when needed to pacify the out-of-work wage-earners. Recently in one State, Colorado, military training was being systematically taught in the high schools of six of the largest cities. The Secretary of War in 1909 reported forty-four schoolboy rifle clubs. In the newspapers and magazines, in the sermons and speeches and especially in the public school,—by all such means—the size and perfection of rifles, cannon, battleships and the like, are held up to the children for their admiration and as evidences of our superiority and of our “splendid civilization.” The children are taught to clap their hands for our readiness to engage in some great international butchering contest. But the children are not taught what arsenals, armories, cannon, rifles, soldiers, militia, riot guns and riot cartridges—what all these things mean and what war means for the working class. Never!
(18) Let a philosopher speak to the mother and her children in plain language:
“Europe is still in arms: each nation watching every other with suspicion, jealousy, or menace.... And what is the result? Russia overwhelmed with a military cancer, a prey to social confusion such as has not been seen in this century. Germany, with her intelligence and industry, bound in the fetters of military service, governed as if she were a camp, as if the sole object of peace were to prepare for war. France staggering.... Italy weighted with a useless army, uneasy, intriguing, restless.... Spain weak from the drain of a series of wars.... England uncertain, divided in action, continually distracted and dishonored by an endless succession of miserable wars in every quarter of the globe.
“Such is the picture of Europe after a generation of imperialism and aggressive war.
“Who is the gainer? Is the poor Russian moujic, torn from his home to die in Central Asia or on the passes of the Balkans, doomed to a government of ever deepening corruption and tyranny? Is the workman of Berlin the better, crushed by military oppression and industrial recklessness? Who is the gainer—the ruler or the ruled? Is the French peasant the gainer now that Alsace and Lorraine are gone, and nothing exists of the empire but its debt, its conspirators, and its legacy of confusions?
“... Who is the gainer by this career of bloodshed and ambition?... We hear the groans of the millions—the working, suffering millions—who are yearning to replace this cruel system, none of their making, none of their choice, by which they gain nothing, from which they hope nothing.”[[279]]
Who indeed is the gainer? The workers lose; and the mothers lose most of all—their children. Yet everywhere complete contempt for the working class mothers of the whole world, absolute scorn for the blood of men and the tears of women—of the working class.
What magnificent protest will roll round this world when the working class is roused to think of these things!
(19) In the dollar-hunting spirit of the age it may be inquired: Doesn’t war make business brisk, and thus furnish work for the wage-earners?
Yes, certainly. But so also would a lunatic in the streets armed with a repeating shotgun shooting down the children at play: he would make business brisk for the coffin trust, the undertakers and their employees—and the grave-digger.
(20) Following are several special suggestions for the mothers and fathers of the working class:
(1) Teach the children anti-war recitations and declamations.
Faithfully and patiently help the boys and girls master a half dozen or more passages of the strongest prose and poetry to be found against war; help them in this work till they understand—till their eyes kindle, till their hearts burn, till their imagination is aflame with disgust and detestation for war and for the foul rôle of the armed guard of the ruling class. (See page [350], last two lines.)
(2) Teach the children the pledge on the first page of Chapter One of the present volume. Teach them to teach that pledge, or some similar pledge, to other children.
(3) Teach the boys and girls the historical origin of the working class. (See Chapter Eleven.)
(4) Explain to the boys and girls, page by page, all of Chapter Ten, and urge them to explain the matter to other children.
(5) Patiently and clearly explain the meaning and the purpose of the local militia and the army.
(6) Interest the children in a circulating anti-war library, and co-operate with them in promoting the enterprise.
(7) A Ten-Dollar Cash Prize for the best definition of a militiaman who is willing to shoot the fathers and brothers of the little working class children of his neighborhood when those fathers and brothers are on strike struggling to better the condition of the mothers and the children—such a prize contest would induce a great amount of helpful thoughtfulness and discussion.
(8) Further suggestions will be found at the opening of Chapter Twelve. See also Index: “Suggestions.”
(21) Following are several passages suitable for children as declamations. Also see Index, “Declamations.”
(A) The Soldier’s Creed:[[280]]
“Captain, what do you think,” I asked,
“Of the part your soldiers play?”
But the captain answered, “I do not think;
I do not think, I obey!”
“Do you think you should shoot a patriot down,
Or help a tyrant slay?”
But the captain answered, “I do not think;
I do not think, I obey!”
“Do you think your conscience was made to die,
And your brain to rot away?”
But the captain answered, “I do not think;
I do not think, I obey!”
“Then if this is your soldier’s creed,” I cried,
“You’re a mean unmanly crew;
And for all your feathers and gilt and braid,
I am more of a man than you!
“For whatever my place in life may be,
And whether I swim or sink,
I can say with pride, ‘I do not obey;
I do not obey, I think!’”
(B) Robert G. Ingersoll’s Musings at the Tomb of Napoleon:[[281]]
“A little while ago I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon—a magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a deity dead—and gazed upon the sarcophagus of rare and nameless marble, where rest at last the ashes of that restless man. I leaned over the balustrade and thought about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world.
“I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine, contemplating suicide. I saw him at Toulon—I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris—I saw him at the head of the army of Italy—I saw him crossing the bridge of Lodi with the tricolor in his hand—I saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the pyramids—I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags. I saw him at Marengo—at Ulm and Austerlitz. I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter’s withered leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster—driven by a million bayonets back upon Paris—clutched like a wild beast—banished to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an empire by the force of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of Waterloo, where Chance and Fate combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I saw him at St. Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea.
“I thought of the orphans and widows he had made—of the tears that had been shed for his glory, and of the only woman who had ever loved him, pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition. And I said, I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over the door, and the grapes growing purple in the amorous kisses of the autumn sun. I would rather have been that poor peasant, with my loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky—with my children upon my knee and their arms about me—I would rather have been that man, and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust, than to have been that imperial impersonation of force and murder, known as Napoleon the Great.”
(C) Victor Hugo’s Reflections on War:[[282]]
“The antique violence of the few against all, called right divine, is nearing its end.... A stammering, which tomorrow will be speech, and the day after tomorrow a gospel, proceeds from the bruised lips of the serf, of the vassal, of the laboring man, of the pariah. The gag is breaking between the teeth of the human race. The patient human race has had enough of the path of sorrow, and refuses to go farther.... Glory advertised by drumbeats is met with a shrug of the shoulder. These sonorous heroes have, up to the present day, deafened human reason, which begins to be fatigued by this majestic uproar. Reason stops eyes and ears before those authorized butcheries called battles. The sublime cut-throats have had their day.... Humanity, having grown older, asks to be relieved of them. The cannon’s prey has begun to think, and, thinking twice, loses its admiration for being made a target.”
“Whoever says today, ‘might makes right,’ performs an act of the Middle Ages, and speaks to men a hundred years behind their times. Gentlemen, the nineteenth century glorifies the eighteenth century. The eighteenth proposed, the nineteenth concludes. And my last word shall be a declaration, tranquil but inflexible, of progress.
“The time has come. Right has found its formula:—human federation.
“Today force is called violence, and begins to be judged; war is arraigned. Civilization, upon the complaint of the human race, orders the trial, and draws up the great criminal indictment of conquerors and captains. The Witness, History, is summoned. The reality appears. The fictitious brilliancy is dissipated. In many cases, the hero is a species of assassin. The people begin to comprehend that increasing the magnitude of a crime can not be its diminution; that, if to kill is a crime, to kill much can not be an extenuating circumstance; that if to steal is a shame, to invade can not be a glory; that Te Deums do not count for much in this matter; that homicide is homicide; that bloodshed is bloodshed; that it serves nothing to call one’s self Caesar or Napoleon; and that in the eyes of the eternal God, the figure of a murderer is not changed because, instead of a gallow’s cap, there is placed upon the head an Emperor’s crown.
“Ah! let us proclaim absolute truths. Let us dishonor war. No; glorious war does not exist. No; it is not good, and it is not useful, to make corpses. No; it can not be that life travails for death. No; O, mothers who surround me, it can not be that war, the robber, should continue to take from you your children. No; it can not be that women should bear children in pain, that men should be born, that people should plow and sow, that the farmer should fertilize the fields, and the workmen enrich the city, that industry should produce marvels, that genius should produce prodigies, that the vast human activity should, in the presence of the starry sky, multiply efforts and creations, all to result in that frightful international exposition called war.”
(D) Ingersoll’s Vision of War:[[283]]
“The past rises before me like a dream.... We hear the sound of preparation, the music of boisterous drums—the silver voices of heroic bugles. We see thousands of assemblages, and hear the appeals of orators. We see the pale cheeks of women, and the flushed faces of men, and in those assemblages we see all the dead whose dust we have covered with flowers. We lose sight of them no more.... We see them part with those they love. Some are walking for the last time in quiet, woody places, with maidens they adore. We hear the whisperings and the sweet vows of eternal love as they lingeringly part forever. Others are bending over cradles, kissing the babes that are asleep. Some are receiving the blessings of old men. Some are parting with mothers who hold them and press them to their hearts again and again, and say nothing. Kisses and tears, tears and kisses—the divine mingling of agony and love! And some are talking with wives, and endeavoring with brave words, spoken in the old tones, to drive from their hearts the awful fear. We see them part. We see the wife standing in the door with the babe in her arms—standing in the sunlight sobbing. At the turn of the road a hand waves—and she answers by holding high in her loving arms the child. He is gone,—and forever....
FOUR VICTIMS OF CHEAP PATRIOTISM
“We go with them, one and all. We are by their side on all the gory fields—in all the hospitals of pain—on all the weary marches. We stand guard with them in the wild storm and under the quiet stars. We are with them in ravines running with blood—in the furrows of old fields.... We see them pierced by balls and torn with shell, in the trenches, by the forts, and in the whirlwind of the charge....
“We are at home when the news comes that they are dead. We see the maiden in the shadow of her first sorrow. We see the silvered head of the old man bowed with the last grief....
“They sleep ... under the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the tearful willow and the embracing vines. They sleep beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or storm, each in the windowless Palace of Rest....”
(E) Ingersoll’s Vision of the Future.[[284]]
“A vision of the future rises: ... I see a world where thrones have crumbled and where kings are dust. The aristocracy of idleness has perished from the earth.
“I see a world without a slave. Man at last is free. Nature’s forces have by science been enslaved. Lightning and light, wind and wave, frost and flame, and all the secret subtle powers of the earth and air are the tireless toilers for the human race.
“I see a world at peace, adorned with every form of art, with music’s myriad voices thrilled, while lips are rich with words of love and truth; a world in which no exile sighs, no prisoner mourns; a world on which the gibbet’s shadow does not fall; a world where labor reaps its full reward, where work and worth go hand in hand, where the poor girl, trying to win bread with a needle—the needle that has been called ‘the asp for the breast of the poor,’—is not driven to the desperate choice of crime or death, of suicide or shame.
“I see a world without the beggar’s outstretched palm, the miser’s heartless, stony stare, the piteous wail of want, the livid lips of lies, the cruel eyes of scorn.
“I see a race without disease of flesh or brain—shapely and fair, married harmony of form and function, and, as I look, life lengthens, joy deepens, love canopies the earth; and over all in the great dome, shines the eternal star of human hope.”
These golden words, these words of immortal beauty, are, “like love, wine for the heart and brain.” They fire the soul, especially the mother’s soul, with a glorious joy, a splendid vision of unstained, untroubled pleasure: Mankind at Peace—Socialized. The children safe. The future vast and beautiful and kind for her and for those that call her Mother.
But again and yet again the cannon’s roar will banish the vision. The future holds agony for the mother, especially for the humble mother in the working class. Her husband and her older sons will go to war. They will even thoughtlessly sink to the level of joining the local militia for local war—for strike service. The men she loves have been poisoned—poisoned with the base teaching that brutality is bravery, that the drawn sword marks the patriot. They are ready, ready now, at the word of command from a cheap commander to murder the men of their own class, and break the hearts and mock the tears of the wage-slave mothers of the world.
These mothers must defend themselves—for the present.
These mothers can defend themselves only through their younger sons and daughters—by teaching them a class loyalty which is a new patriotism that will close the local armory, shame the assassin back to the factory, to the farm, to the mine, and silence all the cannon on all the earth.
CHAPTER NINE.
The Cross, the Cannon, and the Cash-Register.
“Never land long lease of empire won whose sons sat silent while base deeds were done.”—James Russell Lowell.
Speak! Speak!—you leaders of the toil-stained multitude whom the Great Christ of Peace so boldly defended.
Speak!
Rebuke the brutes who betray Christ’s humble followers!
Speak! There is no excuse for silence—on your part.
Speak defiantly—and clearly.
You have for nearly two thousand years held the brain of vast portions of the human race in your hands. Have you taught peace—effectively?
Look—see that gaping war-stab in the breast of the working class.
The cash cost of militarism in the world for forty-eight hours would be sufficient to provide a 150–page book against war for every person on earth who can read.[[285]] Three sermons per year against war in every one of 160,000 churches of the United States could be paid for, at the rate of $50 per sermon, with less than the cost of two first-class battleships.
“Nothing can be clearer than that the leaders of Christianity immediately succeeding Christ, from whom authentic expressions of doctrines have come down to us, were well assured that their Master had forbidden the Christians the killing of men in war or enlisting in the legions. One of the chief differences which separated Roman non-Christians and Christians was the refusal of the latter to enlist in the legions and be thus bound to kill their fellows as directed.”[[286]]
IN MY NAME! AFTER NINETEEN HUNDRED YEARS!
Eagerly we search the world for relief from the hell’s horror of war.
There! There is the Church—the Church with her vast influence!—and she breathes, “Peace, good will to all men.”
The Church?
Will the Church save us from war?
We shall see.
Reader, let us always open wide our souls to every man and to every influence great enough to make us socially wholesomer.
Sincerely, I admire every great Priest, every great Rabbi, and every great Preacher of our time who is too fine, too proud, too nobly social and international to rent his eloquent voice to the captains of industry for the blood-spilling business of conquering the markets of the world with sword and cannon and for the equally brutal business of benevolently stealing large sections of the earth to be swinishly exploited by money-greedy capitalists.
These men are masculine—unafraid. Let us salute them: “Good cheer, noble friends!”
Boldly these greater Priests refuse to toady to industrial and political masters and thus refuse to scream for war.
Defiantly these greater Rabbis refuse to inflame the tiger lurking in every human breast and thus refuse to prepare men for war.
Nobly these greater Preachers refuse Caesar and Shylock, and thus they stand by the Man of Peace and abhor war.
But, unfortunately, these grand bold souls are in helpless minority—at present.
And thus again we find the following question burning for an answer:
Which way shall the working class turn for deliverance from the curse of war?
Who will rescue the working class from these cyclones of lead and steel?
The Church? The Clergy?
Let us study this matter.
Long ago when the deluded soldiers of an “established” church “patriotically” murdered the Great Carpenter, the “established” church of his locality hypocritically stood by the pagan Roman government, lending assistance to the pagan government and urging the pagan soldiers to slay Jesus Christ. And today the Christian church flatters the soldiers, “stands by the government,”—any and all “Christian” governments,—in any and all wars, and thus refuses to protect the working class from the sword and cannon; refuses to draw the bayonet from the breast of the humble working man; refuses to defend the working class woman from the blood and tears of war; refuses to shield the faces of the little children of the working class from the steel-shod hoofs of the galloping war horse.
This Chapter is a discussion of one of mankind’s misfortunes, to show the despotism of the dollar,—TO SHOW THE TYRANNY OF THE ECONOMIC ELEMENT OF HUMAN LIFE; and let me here give most sincere assurance that this Chapter is written with not even the slightest degree of malice toward the Church. However, the Church taught me: “Speak the truth.”
Well, here is a truth, a truth to be stripped naked and expressed because it is so vitally important to hundreds of millions who toil:—
The three mighty hosts of the Peace-Preaching Christ, the Greek Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant Church, these, bitterly at war with one another and defending the industrial despotism called capitalism,—refuse, flatly refuse, to unite their powerful voices in a defiant and effective declaration against war; refuse thus to help lift the huge burden and curse of war from the toil-bent shoulders of the working class; refuse to remove the thorn-crown of war from the brow of labor. The working class, millions of them loving Christ sincerely as I do, must learn and face the fact that the Church of the Great Carpenter Christ refuses to save the working class from the periodic baptisms of blood and fire called war.
“Put up thy sword,” said Christ.
“Business is business! There is no sentiment in business! We must conquer the markets of the world,” say the capitalists.
And there is the parting of the ways for toads and men, for the time-server and the prophet, for the emasculate and the masculine.
In 1898 a certain man lived in a small western “city”—and took notes. A local company of working class volunteers was organized to go to Cuba to slaughter the working men in the Spanish army and thus secure greater opportunity for American capitalists. On the day of departure of the volunteer company the people, thousands of them, assembled on a wide public square, surrounding the local volunteers. Suddenly, when interest was intense, a high table was rushed to the center of the square, a banker thoughtfully assisting. Hastily a meek and lowly follower of the Peaceful Jesus—a preacher—took his place upon this table, his eyes flashing hate and his chest bulging heroically. All hats were off. All heads, but two, were bowed in prayer. With head erect and eyes open the preacher, in prayer, addressed—the audience. With his eyes to the sky, the preacher, praying, used the name of God and the ears of the people. There was no “praying in secret” about that “eloquent effort.” The prayer was “powerful.” That prayer was an assault—an assault upon the finest sentiments that bloom in the human heart, the sentiments of the brotherhood of man.
But what of that? “Business is business.”
That eloquent prayer electrified the vast audience. The preacher became an incendiary—he committed arson. His ferocious rhetoric set on fire the gullible souls of young men, humble women, innocent small boys and tender little girls. With crafty eloquence he petted the working class volunteers till they stood more erect in manly pride and licked their lips for the blood of almost equally ignorant Spanish working men; with flattering phrases he seductively praised the plain women who bore these “brave boys” now ready to butcher, praised them till these gentle, humble mothers were warm with an elation known only to mothers of strong men, praised them till they were keen with a savage gladness that they had borne these men now burning to slaughter humble toilers from the working class homes in Spain. With artful power of phrase and voice the preacher praised the small boys present, praying for “more brave boys in future years to stand by the flag”—caressed them thus till the poor little fellows longed to be men in order that they too might rend the flesh of humble working-class men in war—somewhere, anywhere, somehow, sometime. And then with cunning suggestiveness and with vulgar boldness this handsome panderer to capitalist masters rudely invaded the holy of holies, the innocent imagination of tender little girls present, brutally outraged the sacred instincts of kindness natural to these dainty little maids till these young doll-lovers were half excited with a dim but horrible hope, till their faces flushed in anticipation of the patriotic part they too in future years might have in sending their assassin sons to the front.
The prayer ended. The preacher rolled his fine dark eyes and fervently bellowed, “Amen!”
He had done his work. He had played his part. Souls had been branded. Human brotherhood had been suffocated in the hearts of gullible working men—strangled with elegant (and pious) eloquence.
Then the thousands of humble working class people moved off, “hoofing it,” marching behind the soldiers to the railway station. A half dozen bankers, a dozen lawyers, and many other “leading business men” lingered, left their carriages, surrounded the preacher and congratulated him on his “splendid effort”;—and that was part of his pay for his eloquent ferocity. Well-dressed women of the “best families in the city” gave the preacher their gloved right hands and practically embraced him with the virtuous and caressing fondness in their eyes;—and that was part of his pay for scarring the souls of men, women, and little children with the branding-iron of Old Testament ferocity. That savage prayer made him more popular in the city;—and that was part of his pay for his noble ferocity. He was now more secure in his job;—and that was part of his pay for his ecclesiastical buncombe and flap-doodle,—for his jungle growl of civilized ferocity. The collections were for some time larger in his church;—and that, yea, that also, was part of his pay for serving the cash-register and thus playing the rôle of betrayer of the Prince of Peace.
The handsome preacher had performed a miracle. He had so fixedly riveted the attention of the “brave boys” upon the Spaniards that the gullible volunteers noticed nothing strange in the fact that strong, healthy bankers, lawyers, merchants and preachers (patriots all of them of course)—with the stealthy quiet of a cat on a carpet—remained at home just at the very time when “great deeds of glory and patriotism” and manly heroism were to be done.
Doubtless many a shot-torn boy soldier wallowing in his own blood, his chest half crushed with the hoofs of galloping cavalry horses, his splintered bones grinding together at every move, the roar of cannon and the din of curses, prayers, yells, sobs and groans of dying comrades crowding into his ears—thinks of his well-fed, soft-voiced pastor at home far away (and safe), the good man, the nice man, who fired his and his fellow-fighters’ hearts with “lust of death and vulgar slaughter,” who helped betray him and his fellows to the human butchering field. No doubt many working class people fondly hope that the ministers of the Christ of Peace will presently combine and use their vast influence against war—to drive the red demon from the earth that it may no longer desolate the homes of the humble.
Vain hope.
Long ago the cynical, shrewd (and carefully baptized) Napoleon Bonaparte remarked, with biting irony, “God is always on the side of the heaviest battalions.”
Today it is easy to see that not Christ,[[287]] but the Church of Christ, is on the side of the business man and the politician concerning war.
And thus the bayonet still sticks in the breast of the working class.
Thus the Cross dips to the cannon.
Really, will not the followers of the gentle Christ of Peace presently sweep war from the world?
They most certainly will do nothing of the kind—as long as war is profitable for the “leading citizens.”
“Leading citizens” actually lead. They are the capitalists. Industrially and politically the capitalists have the world by the throat. They force their ambitions, their purposes, and their policies upon both the preacher and the wage-earner. Their purpose is: profits, more profits and still more profits. Their policy is: more markets and more territory—for more profits, at all hazard, in absolute defiance of Confucius, in defiance of Buddha, in defiance of Christ, in shameless defiance of the sacredness of human blood. They will, if need be,—that is, if business, commercial exigencies, require it—they will order the high-salaried generals to wash the earth with the blood of the socially despised working class, while safe in their palatial homes these “leading citizens” will masquerade as patriots, and on the “holy Sabbath day” they will virtually force their salaried pastors to pray and shout for blood-dripping victory.
This is the industrial rulers’ history.
This is the industrial rulers’ present politics.
This is the industrial rulers’ future program.
And the preacher must therefore salute the cash-register and baptize the cannon—or lose his job just like any other hired man who fails to please his economic master.
“Business is business,”—that is “the law and the gospel” of capitalism.
Let us study the matter a little further.
When a war is on the world’s stage the bright lights are so confusing that it is difficult to see the “leading citizens” in the background, “in the wings,” so to speak. For example:
The American people are still clapping their hands and hurrahing for “our noble Christian President” for his part in bringing about peace between Russia and Japan. But why—just why—did not the “noble Christian President” nobly interfere many months before he did interfere? The blood of tens of thousands of humble working-class soldiers in both armies was running down the hillsides in Manchuria in streams—months before. But no interference by the “noble Christian President” (recently so boisterously boastful of “his” own noble slaughtering on San Juan Hill).
Let us understand.
For many months it seemed that Christian Russia would surely win the war and still be able to pay interest and principal of American investments in Russia. Later the Russian Government and Russian credit became very unsteady. Immediately the capitalist actors in the background, with money invested in Russian enterprises, put on the pressure, applied “influence,” to our government, and then, and not till then, did President Roosevelt rush to the footlights of the world’s stage and whine and scream for peace.
For many months, while the blood of Japanese and Russian working class men was gushing from a million wounds, while the humble wives and children of these “common” men were wild with grief—all the while “our noble Christian President,” like all other Christian rulers, was as silent as a fish; but when principal and interest of American parasites got in danger, our “noble Christian President” promptly became nobly noisy and craftily pious and peaceful.
And that is a fair sample of a “Christian government’s” influence for peace.
At no time did the Church urge or demand peace, and at no time did the Church throw its powerful influence upon our President or upon the head of any other government to bring about peace.[[288]]
Our gentle Christian President, Mr. Roosevelt, head of the greatest Christian republic on earth, said recently to a hand-clapping Christian audience, “I want for soldiers young men not only willing but anxious to fight”; that is, anxious to murder. That foul sentiment should have been drowned with hisses. The ferocious Christian Tsars of Russia, the blood-thirsting Caesars of the ancient pagan Roman Empire, the chiefs of savage tribes and modern republics,—all the ancient and modern, savage and civilized hero rulers who have sat on thrones and stood on the necks of nations—all these bullies have always been eager to have for soldiers “young men not only willing but anxious to fight”—that is, willing and anxious to cut the throats of their fellowmen in an intertribal or international festival of blood called a patriotic war.
And always, since society was first organized on a class-labor plan, the organized “spiritual guides” of society have “stood by the government,” leagued with the hero ruler for the ruling class.
Mr. Roosevelt, for the moral improvement and spiritual guidance of small boys who may read his heroic record as a patriotic warrior, sets it down with evident pride that he shot a Spanish soldier (probably a humble workingman) in the back as the poor, ignorant, frightened fellow fled from the bloody field.[[289]] Mr. Roosevelt, as related in Chapter Eight, Section 16, urged in an Annual Message that rifle-practice ranges be provided in the public schools for young school boys—presumably that the little fellows may become “not only willing but anxious to fight.” And the Church of the Peaceful Christ did not dare rebuke the “great Christian President” for urging such a barbarous outrage upon the schoolboys’ dawning social consciousness and their finer sentiments of the brotherhood of man.
Recently a school teacher in the city of Washington, where this swaggering-bull-pup patriotism has been most effectively suggested, asked her school children: “What is patriotism?” She got the answer: “Killing Spaniards!” Thus have the little people been outraged with befouling suggestions that cheap race-hatred is patriotism. But the Church does not dare cry out, in defense of “these little ones”: “Stop that! You noisy betrayer! Cease pouring venom into the hearts of these helpless little children!”
“With a hero at head and a nation
Well gagged and well-drilled and well cowed,
And a gospel of war and damnation,
Has not an empire a right to be proud?”[[290]]
Quite naturally no protest is made.
The working man wonders why,
The working woman wonders why,
The children wonder why—
Why do not the Christian emperors, and Christian kings, the Christian tsars and Christian presidents, the Christian Parliaments, congresses, diets and cabinets of the whole Christian world promptly call a world convention of the Christian rulers of the Christian world, and in this convention declare at once that never, never again, under any circumstances, shall there be a war between Christian nations?
Yes, indeed, why not?[[291]]
For this reason:—The Christian nations are capitalist nations managed for the capitalist class. Each great Christian nation knows that it must find a foreign market for the EMBARRASSINGLY LARGE SURPLUS of goods which its capitalists do not consume or invest and its working class is, by the wage-system, not permitted to consume. Each and all these nations know that this FOREIGN MARKET MUST BE FOUND OPENED AND PROTECTED—with Christian sword and cannon if need be—in order that the capitalists of these countries may make more profits. Indeed, when markets must thus be had, Christians, Jews, Mohammedans, Buddhists, Confucians—with lust for profits—trample down all things fine, sand-bag everything noble, spit in the face of every man of peace, and shout, “Stand back! Stand back! Bring on the cannon! Business is business! There is no sentiment in business! To hell with the mollycoddles! We are in business for profits!”
With noble exceptions, at such times Christian preachers, priests, and bishops of the warring nations, with the swagger and pomp of cheap “fighting parsons,” step briskly to the front of the stage, consecrate the cannon, “bless” the sword, baptize the butcher, and, on both sides, with pious savagery scream to the “God of battles,” also to the “God of peace,” for victory “in this righteous war,” for victory in this “armed crusade for Christ,” for victory in this “glorious effort to advance His kingdom,”—always, always, of course, some lofty name, some swelling phrase, to veil the huge and pious murder.
Sacred wholesale assassinations—for the Peaceful Jesus’ sake!
Even every massacre of the peaceful Jews in Russia is sanctioned by the Greek Christian Church,—and the Roman and the Protestant churches and the Christian governments of the world do not unite and demand peace for the peaceful Jews.
“God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform,” we are piously taught.
Mysterious. Very.
But it is not mysterious why pro-war preachers, priests, and bishops are not slaughtered on the battleline and then eaten by buzzards when the cannon’s feast is finished. These men are too intelligent—too cunning—for the buzzards’ banquet.
Every distinguished professional butcher in modern times has been a “member in good standing” in his denomination and his blood-stenched fame is recited with pride.
That mysterious?
All soldiers are blessed as they march away to “Death’s feast.”
The preacher consecrates the cut-throat.
The bayonet is prepared—with prayer—to be thrust into the bowels of the toilers.
All wars are somehow pronounced “mysteriously the will of God”; and the cannoneers who hurl shot and shell into a city or village and cannonade helpless women and children—these are “the servants of the Lord”—mysteriously.
And thus to the appalling music of the cannon’s roar the Cross is dragged down into the bloody mire where men die cursing the preachers safe at home who helped trick them to the hell called war. And thus, too, the spirit of the great fraternal Christ is banished from the lives of the betrayers and the betrayed—and Christ is crucified anew.
Because it is profitable.
Thus in all Christian nations the Cross dips obsequiously to the red-throated cannon—and to the cash-register.
Business is business; the rulers rule; and gold is God.
That is, under capitalism.
Reader, name one “civil” war or one international war of modern times powerfully, effectively hindered by the Church of the Man of Peace.[[292]]
Just one.
But no matter! Since long before the slaughter of the Carpenter our brothers of the working class have furnished the blood and tears—cheap blood, cheap tears,—about forty cents a day for American “regulars” in the “year of our Lord” 1910.
Learn this, you toilers: The capitalists have the preacher cornered and shackled. The working class must be their own saviors from the horrors of war. In Chapter Ten I shall explain how this can be done and even now begins to be done by the working class.
But the workers should learn from history and keep distinctly in mind this great lesson: With noble individual exceptions the ministry, the religious leaders, have in times past defended chattel slavery with its unspeakable horrors for the working class; and have defended serfdom with its hell for the working class; and have ignobly defended all Christian national and international wars of modern capitalism praying on both sides to the “God of battles” for “glorious victory” regardless of the blood spurting from a million wounds in the torn breast of the working class.
The path of human progress in modern times is steep and slippery with the carcasses and blood of the socially despised working men—and the Church has not defied the cash-register idolater and demanded peace.
Unrebuked, right proudly the cash-register devotee, the business man, blurts out: “There is no sentiment in business.”
That proposition, “No sentiment,” is enough to make a cannibal blush. Yet that doctrine is at the heart of capitalism.
If there is no sentiment in business, then there is no brotherhood in business, for brotherhood is a sublime and beautiful sentiment.
And if there is no brotherhood in business there can not be Christian fellowship in business.
Thus business banishes Christ and the Cross retreats before the onslaughts of the cash-register.
But it is actually and sadly true that business, competitive business, is too little and belittling, too wolfishly fierce, for deep and loyal brotherhood. This is also true of the great class competition, the class struggle, the embittering clash of industrial class interests.
And where there is no deep and loyal brotherhood, no great socializing unity of interest stretching from the centre to the rim of society, including all, peace is impossible.
Thus it is that in the great competitive business world, like quarrelsome dogs, every business man’s hand is against every other business man’s hand competing in the “same line,” to “put him out of business” and thus “get more business.”
Thus local neighbors are at war in a Christless scramble for business.
Thus nations also, fiercely struggling for markets and territory, are at war—commercial war—sometimes needing sword and cannon. (See pp. [40]–41.)
Now, notice: Christian business men in this brotherless, Christless scramble called business must have the scramble made “respectable.” For this purpose the minister is most serviceable. The business men need the minister—“need him in their business”—to consecrate and sanctify the ways and means, even the sword, the cannon and the vast human slaughterings called war.
“Put up thy sword,” said Christ.
“Business is business! Bless the butcher! Grind sharp the sword,” commands the business man.
But “no man can serve two masters.”
Here the minister, just like the “common working man,” is face to face with the MOST DOMINEERING FACT AND FORCE IN HUMAN LIFE; namely, ECONOMIC NECESSITY. The preacher and the plumber, the rabbi and the sweat-shop tailor, the priest and the hod-carrier—these must live; they must “get a living.” But the capitalist controls the opportunities to “get a living.” The “common working man” is embarrassed. The minister is also embarrassed—tho’ he may be—and very often is—one of the noblest men in the world, he is embarrassed. This ECONOMIC force grips them both like a vise. They must live. To live they must kneel before the king—the kings in industry.
Obey or starve.
The inevitable follows:
The plain common working man and the haughty and cultivated minister—both of them—bow their heads and submit their necks to the cruel yoke, the yoke of capitalism.
The rulers rule.
Capitalism, internationally, is—for capitalists—a struggle for a strangle hold among jealously competing, unneighborly neighbors, a struggle for business.
Capitalism thus becomes a stupid snarl of “foreigners”—to each nation all other nations are “foreigners.”
And thus the world is petty, unsocial, “foreign,”—a war always possible and threatening between “foreigners,”—the unfortunate ministers, most of them, not to the contrary.
But, reader, there are no “foreigners”—for me and my International Friend Christ and my International Comrades.
Then why should a group of Christless, plutocratic political crooks and flunky-champagne-guzzlers in Paris or Tokio, in Berlin or London, in Madrid or Washington—why should any such group of political bunco-steerers by a pompous declaration of assassination officially decide for you and me and our brothers of some so-called “foreign nation”—that we working class brothers are “enemies” and that we must lay down the instruments of production and take up the weapons of destruction and butcher ourselves by the tens of thousands?
Why should we permit a band of cheap “statesmen” to order us to tear one another’s throats like dogs?
Why should we fight?
We have no quarrels.
The thing is ridiculous—utterly ridiculous, is it not?
And an equally important question is:—Why should we working class brothers of all the world ever permit any ecclesiastical savages to fan the flames of international hatred in our souls by means of pious prayers and sermons in favor of war?
Even more ridiculous, isn’t it?
Let us refuse to murder. The blood-spilling business is too small for brothers, too savage for socialized men, no matter what their religious faith may be.
Perhaps, brother, you and I do not agree on Christ. But we can be good friends any way, can’t we?
Now, I will tell you frankly, the Peaceful Christ seems to me to be so much grander than a war-preaching preacher, so much nobler than a flunky “fighting parson,” that he gains my sincere admiration. Such a great brave brother he was.
Christ was the most defiant preacher that ever walked the earth or flashed as a character conception in the human brain.
Christ, the historical revolutionary Christ, or Christ, splendid creation of imagination, or Christ divine—whichever or whatever he was—he wins and compels my gratitude:
Because he was neither an automaton nor a tool;
Because official ruffians even before his mockery of a trial viciously pronounced him an “undesirable citizen”;
Because “leading citizens” could not use him, could not rent his influence;
Because he scorned the opportunity to become “successful in life” in the contemptible rôle of intellectual prostitute;
Because he despised the lusting devotees of Mammon;
Because he forgave the “duly convicted” crucified thieves and whipped the unconvicted bankers from the temple;
Because with stinging words he lashed the whited sepulchres called “the very best people”;
Because he was so fine and great he promptly became extremely unpopular with coarse and savage little “prominent people”;
Because he was so gentle and terrible that the noisy and cruel “law-abiding leading citizens” in their swaggering ignorance and malignance decided he was an anarchist and proceeded to shut off his free speech;
Because he was neither narrow enough to be national nor ignorant enough to be orthodox;
Because on the last morning of his life be so proudly despised the official political bull-pups who teased him and insulted him—and could not understand him;
Because, on the same morning, he so finely scorned the bigoted little orthodox holy bullies who hindered him and wolfishly screamed for the Carpenter’s blood;
Because children charmed him;
Because the humble “common people” swarmed around him and loved him—in spite of their pious and orthodox “spiritual advisers”;
Because he scorned the “dignity” of some men and saw the Dignity of Man;
Because he came from the bottom up and never forgot—never hesitated to defend—“even the least of these,” including his sad, shamed, outlawed sister;
Because he did not whimper and cringe when certain religiously eminent small souls spat in the face of the World Soul;
Because the great wholesome brother was a true Social Soul, loving all mankind;
Because, especially because, he so finely forgave the thoughtless working class soldiers who mocked him, forced a thorn crown upon his head, drove nails through his flesh, sneered at his agonies, and thrust a spear into their working class Brother Carpenter;
Because he said, “Put up thy sword,” regarded no man as “foreigner,” and died for International Fraternalism.
A Social Man.
A Sample.
I love him.
Let us, too, brother, be social and international.
Let us bury the hatchet, break the rifle, spike the cannon, despise the sword, accept the Sermon on the Mount for its spirit of peace, and scorn any sermon that urges us to war against our own class brothers. Let us detest any sermon that stirs and fosters the tiger within us and arrests our social development.
Social development.
“Social development,” did I say? Yes, reader, that is what we need, social development.
Man on his long march upward—up from the jungle—has been impeded by a heavy burden—in his blood. He has carried the menagerie—in his veins.
Here permit me to use a very homely metaphor, a figure of speech neither to your taste nor to mine, yet needed and defensible:
In its social development the world is hindered by too much bull-pup.
A bull-pup is at a disadvantage—socially. His social development is stunted. The malignant wrinkles of his prize-fighter face obstruct his vision. His outlook is restricted. Thus his notion of the world is small. Hence the bull-pup is narrow, local and unsocial. Being socially local and mean—and therefore petty and pugnacious—he enjoys a fight. In the world of dogs he is a tough, a “rough-rider” and a “war-lord.” All other dogs are “foreigners,” “guilty,” and “undesirable citizens.”
Peace is too large and fine for the bull-pup. War is “dee-lightful,” “just bully”—for the bull-pup.
Thus even the humble dog world is worried and hindered by the socially narrow and pugnaciously strenuous bull-pups—“great” and “successful,” in their estimation.
Thus littleness and localism hinder even brutes in their social development.
And it is thus in the human world also.
Confucius was a great man.
But Confucius is hindered—hindered by littleness—little Confucians.
Christ? Christ is great, fascinatingly, commandingly great.
But Christ is hindered—hindered by the pettiness of pugnacity, hindered by littleness, little Christians.
Let us be brothers? Let us have peace?
Not yet. We can’t. We must wait. Strange, but true, we must wait for the most reasonable thing in the world—peace.
Peace is on the program—next number.
From the warring tribes of the long, long ago, up, up, upward to the federated races of the world,—that is the first number on the program—a long steep climb for the human mind, up, up through the hundreds of centuries, a half million years consumed in expanding the human heart, in refining the human affections, in strengthening the social vision to see all the way ’round the world, in widening the diameter of Society, in creating, revising, and re-creating a definition of “Brother,”—the race generating the Social Man, the World Patriot, the International Citizen.
The arithmetic of history—Given: Life. To find, or produce, or deduce, the god, the god of aspiring intelligence, the god of a socialized race. A puzzling problem—how to subtract the brute, add the brother and multiply the brains; how to proceed to the next number on the program—Peace; how to move our bruised lips to say: “Put up thy sword. We are of one blood.”
We are hindered.
Brotherhood and peace—divinely high thought!
But, alas! the thought is too high for low-browed strenuosity of the tough-rider type; the thought is too large and fine for the poor brain of a bull-dog or a human bully or a socially blunted holy man or any other breed of stunted runts.
The strutting, thin-brained rooster in the farmyard crows, “Hurrah for this our very own dunghill, the finest filth pile on earth.” Thus this spurred and feathered patriot virtuously cultivates his vanity by boisterously challenging “the enemy” in the neighboring farmyards.
“Hurrah for our tribe,” screams the savage—patriotically.
“Hurrah for our village of Squeedunk,” yells the local human shrimp. More patriotism.
“Hurrah for our great city!” squeals the boastfully “metropolitan” small man sweltering in unspeakable corruptions.
“Hurrah for the nation—right or wrong!” yelps the patriotic national mongrel.
And thus these socially puny creatures, these social runts, stand ready, as it were, to “patriotically” throw carbolic acid at their national and international neighbors.
“Hurrah for Mankind, hurrah for Life!” finely calls the socially developed man, the Increasing International Man.
Really, reader, the narrow-visioned provincial, the local sniveling, the social shrimp, the pugnacious nationalist, the racial bigot, and the stunted, sacerdotal manlet—really, these unsocial people are, as yet, too local and little and narrow for a federated world, for an internationally social Christ. Really, these unsocial human runts can not sincerely and effectively carry “to all the world” any magnificent social gospel of “peace on earth, good will toward all men,” and “make of one blood all nations”—even tho’ they be baptized.
Now please do not misunderstand me. I do not belittle the rite of baptism.
But baptism has no effect on a declaration of war by an extremely narrow local bull-dog, whether he be a humble canine wearing a brass collar, or a strutting puny human being wearing a “Prince Albert,” or a lard-and-tallow millionaire worshipping a cash-register. None of these is emotionally and socially fine. As usual, the world is embarrassed when trying to make a silk purse of a sow’s ear.
A Christian assassin mounted on the throne of Russia remains an assassin—in spite of his baptism.
A Christian bully elevated to the throne of the German Empire or to American presidential distinctions, remains a pugnacious ruffian, spoiling for trouble, always “not only willing but anxious to fight.”
Sacerdotal ceremonies have no effect on a leopard’s spots, a tiger’s stripes, a bull-pup disposition, or a cash-register ambition.
War among brothers is civil war.
All men are brothers.
Therefore all war is civil war.
But peace is hindered by local littleness—especially by the belittling, localizing effects of the sacred cash-register and its smaller unsocial time-servers.
The Confucian capitalist, the Christian capitalist, and all other kinds of capitalists of the whole world stand behind their blessed and belittling cash-registers, plot in their Wall Street dens, cheating, cheating, cheating—and snarling at one another. And this unsocial snarling is called business, and this Christless business is morally legitimated, “made respectable,” by too many unsocialized “spiritual advisers.” Some of the holy men are finely social, nobly large, splendidly fearless; and these great social souls refuse, proudly refuse, to “sic” or urge the “dogs of war.” But unfortunately these truly greater holy men are too few and they are threatened and bullied by the over-fed, fat-pursed industrial Caesars in the best pews of the house of God; and, moreover, these greater holy men are abused and outvoted in the church conventions by their less developed brethren, if they oppose a war—especially if there is a “national crisis.”
And there is always a “national crisis” imminent when greater markets must be had and new territory is to be scrambled for by the capitalists of the world.
Whenever there is a “crisis on,” whenever the cash-register captains, the politicians and unsocial “spiritual leaders” believe, or announce, that there is a “crisis upon us,”—at such times Christ, the peaceful, nobly social Christ, is thrust to the rear of the stage and forced to be silent, while the “fighting parsons” and the politicians and the money-mongers and some glory-hunting buccaneers rush to the front of the stage and scream for war—a “patriotic war.”
And more and more the actual necessity for a larger foreign market produces a “crisis.”
It is coming—another war.[[293]]
Then for brotherhood—a sneer.
Then for the man of peace—a scornful “Mollycoddle!”
Then for Christ—coarse jeers.
Then for markets, for profits—blood and tears.
Then will the malignant manikins patriotically and profitably shout for “national honor.”
Then Christ must wait.
Peace must wait.
Brotherhood must wait.
International federation, social grandeur, the human race, must wait.
All these must wait for the poor little fellows to get the emotions of the prize-fighter and the savage heat and hate of the bull-pup out of their veins; all these must wait, too, while the cash-register devotee and his man Friday get the money—and “divide up.”
Possibly, reader, some of these paragraphs seem unfair.
Very well; perhaps it will seem fair to let a clergyman speak with frankness on this matter. Here following are some paragraphs from a powerful book, The Moral Damage of War, by the fearless Dr. Walter Walsh, a distinguished and eloquent clergyman of Dundee, Scotland.[[294]] In the chapter, “The Moral Damage of War to the Preacher,” Dr. Walsh speaks to his clerical brethren with the courage and directness of the ancient Jewish prophets. Here are some illustrative paragraphs (reprinted with kind permission of publishers):
“The belief that Christianity is incompatible with war, was designed to abolish war ... was held by all the Christians of the first three centuries.... Christianity is the religion of peace. How then is Christendom still at war? We naturally turn to the professional teachers of religion for an answer.
“The paid teachers of Christendom are numbered by hundreds of thousands: Priests, bishops, ministers, catechists and so on,—while their lay helpers—deacons, church-wardens, elders, Sunday-school teachers, missioners, lay preachers—may be counted by the million and it is incomprehensible that war should continue to exist in Christendom unless by first demoralizing these formers of religious opinion. The fact also that all Christian countries alike compete in the equipment and spoils of war can be understood only as a proof of a corrupt or undeveloped conscience. The reason why Christendom is today in such straits and that so many countries wallow in debt, waste, ignorance, covetousness, poverty and misery unspeakable, is chiefly that the paid teachers of Christianity with their hosts of unpaid assistants have capitulated to the war god.... War is never pure, but is hell; and it can never be permissible to inaugurate heaven by the help of hell.... Here and there a smaller Elijah refuses to bow the knee to the military Baal, a faithful Micaiah, tho’ smitten on the mouth, continues to bear his testimony to the true significance of the gospel.... ‘For centuries the church met the hostility of a pagan and unscrupulous world and never flinched.... No revenge or bitterness marred the security of her soul.’... The appalling nature of the preacher’s defection is seen by the contrast with the magnificent opportunity war time affords him, than which prophet or apostle never had a greater.... A trial of strength between conflicting nations is also a trial of the preacher’s moral character; the height of noble opportunity to which it lifts him has its counterpart in the base opportunism to which he may descend. He may temporize like a politician.... He may accept the carnal policies of the parliament as limitations of his gospel and hang his head like a dumb dog when statesmen fling Christianity incontinently out of the house of legislation. He may soothe his conscience with the lie that war is a matter of politics, having nothing to do with the preaching of the gospel, and slide gently down into the dastard, blind equally to the humor and the atheism of his position. Between the churches which cry, “No politics in the gospel!” and parliaments which cry, “No gospel in politics!” the Son of Man is hard put to it to maintain a footing in modern affairs.... Few invocations to the Prince of Peace are heard [in time of war], but many to the God of battles.... The conscience [of ecclesiasticism] lies limp and voiceless before the uplifted sword, bribed by gold, paralyzed by fear ... shielding itself.... The federated tribes of Israel slink to their tents, murmuring some safe platitudes about peace and prayer meetings whilst the world triumphs, the flesh riots and the devil grins with infinite content.... It were hard to say which is worse,—the silence of the pulpit or the timidity or wickedness of its speech when it does find tongue.... A dumb dog is bad, but a bloodhound baying upon the trail is worse.... What is to be said of a preacher, who, when the war spirit and the peace spirit are trembling in the balance, either can not speak or speaks only to blaspheme his own gospel?... It can not be doubted that the church, exerting herself in accordance with her principles, could make all bloodshed impossible, and could have averted every war of recent times; yet on many such occasions the multitude of ministers stir no finger, preach no sermon, sign no petition, sound no note that the government, willing enough to know the temper of a nation, can interpret as hostile to their project.... The appalling truth has to be faced: that the church, contrary to every expectation that might be formed from her principles and the character of the Being she worships, is always, as a whole, for the war of the day. It is true that when peace is the popular cry, the preachers are also for peace. If there is a peace crusade on hand which excites the shallow enthusiasms of the fashionables, the preachers will also catch the excitements of the hour; but when the white banner yields to the red, the pastors beat the drums for the fighters as furiously as they had previously denounced the savagery of armed conflict.... Organized Christianity divests herself of her robe of righteousness and her garments of meek humility to clothe herself in khaki.... A thousand pulpits are manned by Bible bullies who cite every obsolete and bloody precedent of the wars of the Jews and show themselves destitute of the elementary humanities and of the faculties necessary to discriminate between Judaism two thousand years before Christ and Christianity two thousand years after him.... What can mankind do with a church that peels itself like a pugilist and reveals the murdering pagan instead of the martyred Christian; which for carnal reasons cancels the Sermon [on the Mount], contradicts the Beatitudes, flatly denies the gospel, repudiates every specific Christly ideal, and unseats Jesus in order to elevate Mars to the throne of conscience?... At frequent intervals the cross with its suffering victim recedes and out of the blood-red mist emerges the foul idol of war erect on his crimson chariot.... The sanctification of revenge is, indeed, the vilest function performed by a war-poisoned, blood-stained church.... It is thus that the masses are kept from seeing the degenerate nature of the thing.... Their pastors lead them into the blood-red fields of Jahveh when the politicians give the word, and into the green pastures of the Nazarene only when there is no national scheme of murder and robbery afoot.... The churches as they are today can not prevent war. Their palsied lips can not echo, however feebly, the words of the master, ‘Put up again thy sword into its place!’ There is not spiritual power left in organized Christianity to insure the substitution of reason for brute force.... Alas! it has hitherto been impossible to get Christianity to obey Christ.”[[295]]
That is the language of a brave Christian preacher. In connection with the reverend Doctor Walsh’s chastisement of the church in the morning of the twentieth century it is interesting to read on the same subject the words of a philosopher of the eighteenth century, Voltaire.[[296]]
“This universal rage which devours the world.... The most wonderful part of this infernal enterprise [war] is, that each chief of murderers causes his colors to be blest, and solemnly invokes God before he goes to exterminate his neighbors.... A certain number of orators are everywhere paid to celebrate these murderous days.... All of them speak for a long time, and quote that which was done of old in Palestine.... The rest of the year these people declaim against vices.... All the united vices of all ages and places will never equal the evils produced by a single campaign. Miserable physicians of souls! you exclaim for five quarters of an hour on some pricks of a pin, and say nothing on the malady which tears us into a thousand pieces.... Can there be anything more horrible throughout nature?”
And now let us get at this matter from the point of view of a political economist, a really great economist, John A. Hobson—who puts the case thus:[[297]]
“When has a Christian nation ever entered on a war which has not been regarded by the official priesthood as a sacred war? In England the State Church has never permitted the spirit of the Prince of Peace to interfere when statesmen and soldiers appealed to the passions of race-lust, conquest and revenge. Wars, the most insane in origin, the most barbarous in execution, the most fruitless in results have never failed to get the sanction of the Christian Churches.... There is no record of the clergy of any Church having failed to bless a popular war, to find reasons for representing it as a crusade.”
The following lines from a British philosopher, Frederic Harrison,[[298]] are to the point for the workingman’s instruction:
“The official priests of the old faiths accept without questioning the authorized judgment of the political government. They are engaged ... in calling upon their God of Battles (can it be, their God of Mercy?) to keep the British soldiers—the invaders, the burners of villages, the hangmen of [native] priests—in his good and holy keeping.... A system of slavery prepares the slave-holding caste for any inhumanity that may seem to defend it.... If it hardens our politicians, it degrades our churches. The thirst for rule, the greed of the market, and the saving of souls, all work together in accord. The Churches approve and bless whilst the warriors and the merchants are adding new provinces to empire; they have delivered the heathen to the secular arm.... Christianity in practice, as we know it now, for all the Sermon on the Mount, is the religion of aggression, domination, combat. It waits upon the pushing trader and the lawless conqueror; and with obsequious thanksgiving it blesses his enterprise.”
Who, indeed, shall deliver us from war?
Our pastors?
Hardly.
The pastors’ economic masters will not permit them to do so.
Tho’ the machine guns mow down a million of the world’s choicest working men, pile up windrows of human carcasses and desolate the huts, flats, hovels and “homes” of the poor; tho’ ten million pairs of calloused hands of agonizing working class women be stretched toward well-fed, comfortable pastors, begging for a united, effective declaration against war; tho’ these ten million humble working class mothers, their eyes streaming with tears, on their knees beseech the “holy men of God” to unitedly cry aloud against the accursed “Death’s feast” where their dear ones are devoured; tho’ multitudes of little working class children in mute despair dread the roar of the belching cannon that slay their fathers and brothers; still the pastors (most of them) will “stand by the administration” in any and all wars, as usual.
“The administration,” “the government,” under capitalism, is simply the executive committee of the capitalist class.
The capitalist class are internationally struggling for the world market.
In these international struggles the capitalists need the support of public opinion.
Public opinion can be created and controlled by the pastor.
The pastor must therefore be controlled by the capitalist.
The campaign begins—to capture the market and the minister.
The soldier goes to war and the capitalist goes to church.
The soldier takes a gun, the capitalist takes gold.
The soldier slays.
The capitalist prays—by proxy.
Being “the will of God” it is, of course, “mysterious.”
The capitalist occupies the very best pew in the house of God—and lays beautiful bank-bills in the collection plate.
The minister is embarrassed—and impressed.
The pastor and his master divide up.
The war? Isn’t war hell?
It beats hell.
But it is “all for the best”—mysteriously.
With conscience “seared as with a hot iron” the preacher joins the politician; and the precious pair unite their rented voices in patriotic melody in support of the capitalist class.
Brother,—you of the working class,—Jew, Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, Protestant, peaceful Buddhist or peaceful Confucian, or what else,—wherever you are, whatever you are in religion, worshipping, searching, groping through the universe for God, worship as you prefer, worship whom you prefer: I do not seek to break your church allegiance. But, sir, to save your life, to save your own wife’s tears, to defend your own children, to protect your own working class, I do wish to have you realize distinctly that:—
The working class must draw the bayonet from its own breast. So far as war is concerned the working class must band together and stand together against war. The working class must themselves protect the working class against the industrial system through which they are robbed and betrayed.
The workers of the world need a political party of their own class—and as wide as the world, International, and committed to justice and therefore to peace.
Listen to the confession of the editor of a very powerful capitalist newspaper:
“It is significant that the Socialists of different races, and speaking different tongues, strangers in blood and customs, in Germany, France, Great Britain, Austria, and Italy, constitute the one great peace party of the world.”[[299]]
Listen again—to the best-known and the best loved Christian woman in the United States, Miss Jane Addams, of Hull House, Chicago:[[300]]
“The Socialists are making almost the sole attempt to preach a morality sufficiently all-embracing and international to keep pace with even the material internationalism which has standardized [even] the threads of screws and the size of bolts, so that machines become interchangeable from one country to another.... Existing commerce has long ago reached its international stage, but it has been the result of business aggression and constantly appeals for military defense and for the forcing of new markets.”
You, you who are to be tricked and shot at the factory door and on the battlefield, go to your public library and get Christianity and the Social Order, and read there the words of a preacher great enough for the City Temple of London, great enough to be the worthy successor of the world-known Joseph Parker, read the Reverend Dr. R. J. Campbell’s splendid tribute to the Socialist Party as the only political party in the world today scorning the belittling jealousies of capitalist statesmen and working effectively for international brotherhood.
Reader, you working class reader, a special word here:
Perhaps your working class neighbor’s son is at this moment falling into a patriotic trance, gullibly planning to join the local militia or the standing army or the navy, meditating on butcheries. Go to him. With a firm grasp on his mind (if he has one) wake him, rouse him, from that race-cursing dream, rouse him from the spell that for thousands of years has damned his class. Be kind. Be patient. But—wake him. Wake him for the world movement for the working class. Wake him for the war—the war without a sword, the war without a cannon; the war with a printing press, the war with a book. Teach him that salvation is through information. Teach him that the “truth will make him free.” In his brain kindle a fire, a divine unrest, a desire that can not die, the desire for peace born of justice.
Otherwise, beware lest your neighbor’s son be wheedled at any moment into the militia or the standing army or the navy—ready to be consecrated, sanctified, blessed,—for wholesale assassination, ready as a militiaman, as a Cossack, as a soldier, to stain his consecrated sword with the blood of his neighbors and brutally—patriotically—laugh at the tears of women and children.
Read to your neighbor the next Chapter: “Now, What Shall We Do About It?”
CHAPTER TEN.
Now What Shall We Do About It?
“No people will toil and sweat to keep a class in idleness unless cajoled or compelled to do so.... There are various devices by means of which a body of persons may sink their fangs into their fellows and subsist upon them. Slavery ... is the primary form of the parasitic relation. By modifying this into serfdom the parasitic class, without the least abating its power of securing its nourishment from others, places itself in a position more convenient to it and less irritating to the exploited.... Finally, the institution of property is so shaped as to permit a slanting exploitation under which a class is able to live in idleness. The parasitic class is always a ruling class, and utilizes as many as it can of the means of control.”—Professor Edward A. Ross, Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin.[[301]]
“The various institutions, political, ecclesiastical, professional, industrial, etc., including the government, are devices, means, gradually brought into existence, to serve interests that develop within the State.”—Professor Albion W. Small, Head of Department of Sociology, University of Chicago.[[302]]
“The non-industrial or parasitic classes are often the most active.... They are wonderfully successful in creating the belief that they are the most important of all the social elements.”—Dr. Lester F. Ward, Department of Sociology, Brown University.[[303]]
The preceding chapters have, it is hoped, been of some assistance to the reader in realizing in what unqualified contempt the working class are held in our boasted civilized society,—how utterly the working class are tricked and betrayed, brutalized and bled, degraded and despised, robbed, starved and stung,—their flesh torn, their blood spilt, their bodies tossed to the buzzards and grave-worms, and even the widows and orphans insulted with thirty dirty pieces of silver in payment for the life and love and joy lost in war. Having tried to make this, and more, clear, now let me explain “what to do about it.”
What, indeed, shall the working class do to rid themselves of the curse called war?
We can do nothing, absolutely nothing, with sweeping effectiveness, till we understand the industrial structure and purpose of the present order of society, and, as a class, also understand the art of self-defense—political and industrial class-defense.
Repeatedly in preceding chapters I have written of two classes.
Are there indeed two classes?
Get distinctly in mind the three following propositions stating the three largest facts of all concerning the present order of society:
First Proposition: In the present capitalist form society is divided into two classes, two industrial classes: the capitalist class and the working class.
Second Proposition: Industrially, society is organized and managed for the special benefit of part of society—for one class, the capitalist class.
Third Proposition: Each of these two classes has industrial interests as a class; these class interests conflict; and there is, therefore, as a part of and because of the class form of society, a constant class conflict, a class struggle.
Let me try to make these three propositions clear. Please note carefully the exact wording of the propositions to be explained.
The explanation,—first proposition:
Of course you wish to live and be comfortable. To live and be comfortable you must consume useful things. But before you can consume useful things they must be produced. And since this is true of all the members of society it is readily seen that the first task of society, the primary social function, is production.
Production, industry, is the foundation of society.
Now, in performing this industrial work, in doing this first thing, we use raw materials, mines, forests, fields, mills, factories, tools, machinery, railways, etc., etc.; and these things are called the MEANS OF PRODUCTION. We make use of these things, these means of production, in applying our labor-power—that is, in producing the things society wishes to consume.
But:—
One class privately own the coal mines and iron mines and buy labor-power;
The other class work in the coal mines and iron mines and sell labor-power.
One class privately own lumber forests and marble quarries, and buy labor-power;
The other class work in the lumber forests and marble quarries, and sell labor-power.
One class privately own cotton mills, steel mills, and flour mills, etc., and buy labor-power.
The other class work in cotton mills, steel mills, and flour mills, etc., and sell labor-power.
One class privately own railroads and buy labor-power;
The other class work on railroads and sell labor-power.
Or, to say it briefly,
One class, the capitalist class, privately OWN the chief material means of production—and BUY labor-power.
The other class, the working class, USE the chief material means of production—and SELL labor power.
Surely you can see that there are two industrial classes.
There are, under capitalism, not only two industrial classes, but also two social classes. Industrial classes become social classes.
Johan Kaspar Bluntschli, one of Germany’s most eminent writers on political science, has this to say:
“Classes have very often been founded on the basis of property. In these constitutions ... property becomes the determining political force, and citizens are valued by amount of their income.... The Proletariate ... consists mainly of the waste of other classes, of those fractions of the population who, by their isolation and their poverty, have no place in the established order of society.” [That is, they are in no commanding relation to the industrially vital property.][[304]]
“Conversely, social rank depends on economic conditions; the state is made ... conservative ... by the economic interests at its foundation....
“Perhaps its [property’s] most important social effect has come to be the fact that the possession of property is so generally the basis of social differentiation. In earlier times, physical force, later, institutions of caste, were the basis of differentiation in society; wealth is the most universally recognized source of power, so that social rank is often determined by the possession of wealth.”—Professor Fairbanks, Yale University.[[305]]
And now the second proposition: Are these industries and the other industries really operated for the special benefit of part of society? The answer is clear in the following illustration:
If the profits on all these industries should, during the next twelve months, rise two billion dollars higher than usual, would the wages of the workers engaged in these industries be increased in that proportion? Most certainly they would not. You know very well they would not. But why not? Simply because these industries, like all other industries, are, under capitalism, operated for the special benefit of those, the capitalist class, who privately own these industries and buy labor-power, and, by this arrangement, live on profits,—on surplus value.[[306]]
And, finally, the third proposition: Do the industrial interests of these two industrial classes fundamentally conflict? Perhaps the answer will be clear in the following homely illustration:
If you are selling a horse, you wish to sell him for—say $300. But the buyer of the horse wishes to buy the horse for, say, $150.
Clearly there is a conflict of interests between the buyer of the horse and the seller of the horse.
A wage-earner selling labor-power wishes to sell, say, eight hours labor-power for $6.
The capitalist employer buying labor-power wishes to buy, say, nine hours labor-power for $2.50—in order to get the surplus value—that fascinating surplus.
Thus there is a fundamental conflict between the industrial interests of this buyer of labor power and the industrial interests of this seller of labor-power.
And it is just so with the two industrial classes.
There is a fundamental conflict of industrial interests between the employer class buying labor-power and the working class selling labor-power.
Between these two industrial classes there is a struggle, a class struggle—to defend their conflicting industrial interests.
This class struggle takes on many different forms—but it is always the same thing down at the bottom—a class struggle in industry.
The three propositions explained above are most important. A clear understanding of these three propositions always—always—revolutionizes the political thinking of the working class man, or woman, who has not, before, understood them. These three truths destroy old political prejudices and customs, cut the reins by which the political tricksters misguide the workers, clear the air of “hot air,” reveal the blind alleys of old party politics, point the road to power and freedom for the working class, and make a rock-bottom foundation for a working class political philosophy and policy and tactics.
The capitalist class (who rule and ruin the toilers) regard these three truths as more dangerous than any other, or all other, teachings that ever reach the working class mind. It is to the capitalists’ interest that the workers should not learn these three truths. But it is to the interest of the working class that the working class should learn these three truths.
With these three primary facts of present society clearly in mind let us proceed.
In addition to their powerful position as capitalist OWNERS OF THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION, the capitalist class have three special advantages over the working class in this class struggle:
(1) The capitalist class are more class conscious than the working class are—at present. That is, the capitalists more distinctly realize that, as capitalists, they constitute a class—with class interests to defend.
(2) The capitalists, because they are more class conscious, are, naturally, more class loyal than the working class are—at present. In obedience to the biological law of self-preservation, a class, as well as an individual, will defend themselves, as a class—that is, will be class loyal—in proportion as they are class conscious, or in proportion as they are aware of and understand the interests of their class. Tho’ the capitalists understand that they are a class with class interests, they are always cooing softly to all workers who are ignorant enough to listen, cooing sweetly about “no classes,” “all in the same boat,” “harmony of interests,” “Capital and Labor are brothers,” etc.
(3) The capitalists study tactics of class warfare—tactics of industrial struggle, far more than the working class do—at present. Being more class conscious and therefore more class loyal and consequently more eager, as a class, for self-defense, the capitalist class naturally study more patiently the ways and means for their own class defense. And because they do study more they really know more—at present—about politics, about the game called the class struggle, about the art of self-defense, class defense in industry.[[307]]
In all the modern forms of this unhappy class struggle, one phase of which is called war, the capitalist class are awake and watchful, united and victorious—seated in the saddle of power at the head of the procession; and the working class are drowsy and confused, divided and defeated—limping afoot and ridiculous at the tail end of the grand march of the world’s affairs.
All great military leaders in all wars—in all struggles—in all time have always used the two following tactics:
First: Divide the enemy, if possible, and have them crush one another; or,
Second: If circumstances hinder the first tactics, then divide the enemy and crush them one part at a time.
And the captains of industry, the capitalists, right now employ these tactics with success. They themselves band together, but they divide and rule the working class. More class conscious, more class loyal and more studious of the ways and means of struggle than the working class are, the capitalist class proceed as follows:
(A) On the Economic Field the capitalists divide the working class and have them fight one another; and thus the capitalist class are easily able to defeat and fleece the workers all the time, everywhere. The workers, having no part in the ownership of the means of production and being thus divorced from a commanding relation to the economic foundations of society, craftily fooled with false teaching of “capital-and-labor-harmony-of-interests,” sore and humble with disappointment, whipped with the lash of hunger, stung to desperation, confused and traduced by bribed pets, spies and traitors,—the workers angrily, blindly, split up into jealous groups, shamefully turn against one another, fight one another, under-bid one another, “scab” on one another, desert one another,—defeat one another. Moreover one part of the working class is flattered and cheaply bribed into volunteering to organize and arm themselves and proudly stand guard over their brothers and against their brothers; and thus the workers spy and inform on one another, arrest one another, jail one another, “bull pen” one another, bayonet one another and shoot one another—under the capitalist system—the present class-labor system.
The working class, of course, are thus easily defeated and robbed industrially.
The busy human bees sting themselves—and lose the honey of their own industry.
And all this is entirely satisfactory to the industrial masters—great and small. (See page [175], [[5]].)
The rulers rule.
(B) On the Political Field the capitalist class divide the working class into two or more groups and have them politically antagonize themselves, have all the workers all the time politically sting and defeat one another—that is,—have them cancel the political class-power of the working class.
One part of the working class vote one capitalist class party ticket, another part of the working class vote another capitalist class party ticket, another another, and so on. Thus millions of the confused working class politically defeat the working class and politically support their industrial masters by politically supporting political parties (variously and craftily labeled) which unanimously stand for the capitalist system.
Thus the confused working class are easily defeated politically—which makes it far easier to rob them industrially.
By electing to political power any political party standing for any form of the capitalist class-labor system the working class give the capitalist class complete control not only of all the political institutions, but also of all other institutions useable by a class in self-defense; because the control of political institutions carries with it the legal right to control all other institutions. In this political confusion, division and eclipse, the working class are as helpless as sheep, and, like sheep, are shorn by their political and industrial shepherds.
And this also is entirely satisfactory to the masters of industry—both great and small.
The rulers rule.
We must learn this: Everywhere, always and under all circumstances the working class must stand together in the use of all forms of power we have in defense of our class.
Having distinctly in mind, then, these important preliminaries,—and especially the fact that whatever we do in self-defense we must do as a class banded together, let us consider still further the source—the fountain-head—of the trouble called the class struggle, one form of which is commonly called war.
Society has many functions to perform. In order to perform these functions society must be organized.
Always, it is most important to note, society is organized primarily with respect to the function of wealth production, because the production of things to live on comes before every other social function.
For the performance of this function of wealth production society, developed beyond tribal communism, can be organized in two ways and only two ways:
First Possible Form of Social Organization: On the Plan of Mutualism—under which the INDUSTRIAL FOUNDATIONS of society are PUBLIC PROPERTY.
Society can be organized for the performance of this great industrial function of production on the plan of mutualism—all of the people having Joint-ownership and joint-control of the chief material means of production, all of the people of proper age and condition of health performing useful, necessary social service,—there being no industrial master class and no industrial dependent class,—the industrial independence of all the members of society being due to the fact that each is an owner, a joint owner, of the chief material means of production. Every one is thus commandingly related to the absolutely necessary means of life. With equality in ownership and equality in control of the things used in getting a living the people become equals in opportunity to get a living,—that is, industrially free. The dominant institution would be the institution of public property in the dominant means used in performing the dominant social function. This would render impossible the domination of society by a group or class within society—ALL the members of society would have their feet firmly planted upon the foundations of life, the means of life, the means of production; and could not be crowded off the foundations and robbed by private owners of these foundations.
This form of society may properly be called an industrial democracy.
The purpose of this form of society is the welfare of all the members of society.
Under this form of society there would be no industrial classes; and therefore, class robbery would not be and could not be organized, legalized and easy.
Second Possible Form of Social Organization: On the Plan of Antagonism—that is, with a Class-Labor System—under which the INDUSTRIAL FOUNDATIONS of society are PRIVATE PROPERTY,—privately owned by one class and productively used by the other class.
Society can, indeed, be organized for the performance of this great industrial function of production on the plan of a class-labor system—one part of society being in the strategic position of industrial masters, a ruling class, their mastery being due to the fact that they own as private property the chief material means of production;—the other part of society being in the helpless position of industrial dependents, a working class,—their industrial dependence being due to the fact that they have no effective share in the ownership and control of the chief material means of production.
This form of society we may properly call an industrial despotism.
The purpose of this form of society is the special welfare of part of the members of society.
Under this class-labor form of society, class robbery is organized, legalized, and easy.
The foundation institution of all despotism is the institution of private property in the economic foundations of society—that is, in the means of production. This is the rock-bottom of organized, legalized and easy robbery of the workers by the shirkers.
Historically society has been organized in a class-labor form in three different ways,—as follows:
(1) Chattel slavery, instituted thousands of years ago, was a class-labor system,—an organized, legalized opportunity for wholesale class robbery; and under that form of class-labor system, with class robbery legally arranged for, class robbery was, of course, respectable, profitable and easy—and therefore inevitable.
Peace was impossible.
The purpose of this form of society was unsocial.
Under this form of society the masters were in legal possession of the means of production and also of the forts, courts, and legislatures (such as existed); and were thus in perfect position to defend and extend their industrial robbery.
The chattel slave owners were thus parasites, aggressive social parasites.
That is admitted.[[308]]
(2) Serfdom, common in Europe only a hundred years ago, was also a class-labor system—an organized, legalized opportunity for wholesale class robbery; and under that form of class-labor system, with class robbery legally arranged for, class robbery was, of course respectable, profitable and easy—and therefore inevitable.
Peace was impossible.
The purpose of this form of society was unsocial.
Under this form the masters were still in legal possession of the means of production and also of the forts, courts and legislatures, and were thus in perfect position to defend and extend their industrial robbery.
The landlords-and-masters of the ancient serfs were thus also parasites, aggressive social parasites.
That is admitted.
(3) Capitalism, the present system, is also a class-labor system, an organized, legalized opportunity for wholesale class robbery; and under this form of class-labor system, with class robbery legally arranged for, class robbery is, today, of course, altogether respectable, abundantly profitable and temptingly easy—and therefore, naturally, inevitable.
The purpose of the present capitalist form of society is the special welfare of only a part of society, the capitalist class, and is, therefore, an unsocial purpose.
Peace is impossible—while capitalism lasts.
Under this form of society the masters, the capitalist class, are in possession of the means of production; that is, in legal possession of the industrial foundations of society, and also in legal control of the arsenals, cannon, soldiers, forts, courts and legislatures, and are thus in perfect position to defend and extend their industrial robbery.
The capitalists (so far as they receive social incomes without rendering equivalent social service) are thus parasites, aggressive social parasites. (See footnote, pages [298]–99.)
That is admitted. That is admitted, explained and condemned even by the President of the American Sociological Society, Dr. Lester F. Ward, Professor of Sociology in Brown University.[[309]]
This parasitism of capitalism is easily seen in this way:
Wealth equivalent to three hundred and sixty-nine tons of gold ($200,000,000) was given by inheritance to William H. Vanderbilt’s eight children.[[310]]
If the daughter of John D. Rockefeller, senior, should by inheritance receive one-half of the present six-hundred-million-dollar fortune, she would receive, without rendering any service whatever, wealth equivalent to five hundred and fifty-three tons of gold.
Billions of dollars’ worth of mines, railways, factories, forests and other means of production, will, by inheritance, without function,—that is, without service—legally fall into the hands of the children of the present capitalist class, whether those children are intelligent, virtuous and industrious, or stupid, vicious and lazy. And thus, like the children of kings and nobles, they will be in position to win the race of life without running, in position to prey upon others in the struggle for existence, in legal position to procure substance without service.
This whole vast scheme of robbery—social parasitism—is “correct” and “proper,”—that is, the process is ELABORATELY LEGALIZED.
Parasitism is robbery.
Parasitism does not cease to be parasitism, nor does robbery cease to be robbery, when, like chattel slavery, it shrewdly gets itself organized, baptized and legalized as an “eminently respectable” and profitable righteous institution for committing perpetual grand larceny.[[311]]
Thus at present, as in the past under slavery, as in the past under serfdom, the ruling class, as intelligent parasites, prepare for class aggression, prepare for class robbery. They as a class create and secure their opportunity for legally robbing the producing class by arranging to control the industrial structure of society and thus control the performance of the industrial function—that is, the fundamental function, the first function, of society.
The ruled and robbed working class must get it in mind distinctly and unforgettably that the foundation of all class-labor forms of society, that which gives to part of society the control of society, the foundation upon which industrial parasitism rests, the substructure of all despotism—is the institution of private property in the chief material means of production. This institution SPLITS SOCIETY INTO TWO CLASSES, namely, the producers and the parasites. Political parties do not create classes. Political parties are a consequence of industrial classes and are intended to defend industrial classes. Sometimes, to make sure of victory, the capitalist class have several political parties in the field—under shrewdly confusing names.
A class-labor system, any class-labor system, all class-labor systems—provide, by means of institutions, the LEGAL conditions and opportunities at the industrial foundations of society for part of society, a class, to act directly or indirectly as parasites; and it is entirely natural that that part of society, in pursuing their own interests, should use their opportunity to act like parasites. And it is entirely natural also that there should be resistance by the producers, and therefore class struggle, class war. Indeed all class-labor forms of society are industrially so brutally unjust and therefore so irritating that the largest fact in such societies is an eternal, internal, infernal conflict of industrial class interests—an endless civil war in industry, a class war, a class struggle, around and around the industrial foundations of society. (See pages [167]–70.)
Antagonism is thus in the Structure of class-form society.
This helps to an understanding of past and present conflicts.
It becomes evident that the source of war is to be found at the industrial foundations of society.
War—war broadly considered—the class struggle, throughout the history of civilized society is no more and no less than the natural aggressive robbery by a part of society provided with an opportunity to rob and the natural resistance of the class that is robbed.
War, the war, is aggression and resistance—robbery and resistance—plunder and protest:—
(1) The aggressive industrial robbery by one class, and
(2) The resistance to industrial robbery by the other class.
Not only in the history of civilized peoples everywhere for thousands of years, but also in our own present-day capitalist society everywhere, we see this natural aggression and natural resistance.
The result today—as in the past—is struggle, war, class war—between the parasites and the producers.
The war is the class war.
Modern “foreign” wars are simply contests between different groups of capitalists (the workers of course doing the fighting and bleeding) to extend the area of opportunity for industrial class robbery, and are thus simply phases and extensions of the class war.
War, then, begins with aggression, continues with aggression; and is at present extended by aggressive foreign wars of industrial or commercial conquest.
To summarize.
(a) War, conflict, class aggression and class resistance, are inherent in all class-labor forms of society.
(b) Capitalism is a class-labor form of society.
(c) Therefore, under capitalism there will be, there must be as long as capitalism lasts—class aggression and class resistance, class conflict—class war.
The conclusion cannot be dodged: Peace is impossible—under capitalism.
A million sermons and a million peace talk-fests cannot heal the smarting wounds in the robbed toiler’s breast; cannot pull the fangs of the capitalists from the flesh of the toilers, as long as capitalism lasts. Organized eloquence can not stop a cannon ball or persuade the rulers to resign.
Under capitalism, as under slavery and serfdom, the employers are in a position down at the industrial foundations of society to legally filch their livings from the working class—thus:—the capitalists privately own and privately control the means of production—the things the workers must use in getting a living. Like leeches the capitalist class are thus fastened to the very foundations of society. Here at the industrial foundations of society the industrial blood of society, wealth, is produced. And here are the leeches; and here they are in absolute control of the industrial blood of society. And it is natural, entirely natural, that here, in such position with such opportunity, they should, like leeches, suck this industrial blood, that is, behave like parasites.
The capitalists—with society arranged in this manner—are indeed in position to rob the world wholesale, in position to hold up all the weary producers on all the earth.
This organized, legalized hold-up and the resistance to this hold-up—this is war, the war.
The policeman, the militiaman, the cossack and the soldier are all always ready to rush upon the world’s stage to serve.
To serve whom?
In all the conflicts due to class-labor forms of society, the ruling class, as already indicated, have always a heavy social fist, a social weapon—an armed guard, such as militia, heavy police forces, and standing armies to extend the robbery and to protect the industrial ruling class in their unjust, unsocial position of legalized robbers of the working class. All talk, all hope, all prayer, for peace and quiet and harmony are idle as long as society is unjustly organized—that is, unsocially organized, down at its very foundations, one part of society being in the position of industrial masters, the other part of society being in the position of industrial dependents. The yawning chasm in society thus created between the two warring classes—can never be bridged with wishes, hopes and prayers, nor by peace conferences dominated by profit-stuffed masters and their well-fed intellectual serfs who dare not admit the fundamental cause of war.[[312]]
Thus it becomes clear what the future has for the working class—while capitalism lasts:
In spite of all the sincere and insincere hopes and prayers for peace there will always be, under capitalism, legalized wholesale plundering of the workers by the capitalist employers—a form of aggressive social parasitism by the employers and vigorous resistance by the workers in proportion to their realization of the robbery;—and consequently there will be wage struggles, wage reductions, compulsory under-consumption, “over-production,” unemployment, bread lines, soup kitchens, rent riots, evictions, “demand-work” marches, strikes, picketing, “scabbing,” boycotting, lockouts, injunctions, “bull-pens,” blacklisting, interstate kidnapping; and also anti-picket thugs,—policemen, Pinkertons, deputy sheriffs, constabulary, cossacks, militiamen and the “regulars” shooting down underpaid, underfed workers; everywhere the belittled lives and the spilt blood of the working class.[[313]]
And there will be increasing opposition to free assemblage, opposition to free speech, opposition to free press—in order to silence discussion and stop the spread of knowledge of what is fundamentally wrong.
Also there will continue to be, from time to time, naturally, under capitalism, wars of conquest to widen the field of exploitation—to enlarge the opportunity for aggressive social parasitism,—wars to open up foreign markets, wars to protect foreign markets for products which the producers’ wages will not permit them to consume and the employers are not able to consume;—and everywhere the world will be stormy with the stirring trumpet call, “To arms! To arms!”—stormy with the crafty and confusing cry, “To the front! To the front! The flag!”—stormy with the shrilling fife, the roll of drums, the rattle of musketry, the flash of swords, the booming roar of cannon, burning cities, sinking warships and the thundering tread of galloping cavalry horses,—the class struggle in a thousand visible bitter forms,—and everywhere windrows and ditchfuls of dead men, dead working men, everywhere the torn flesh, the slit veins, the streaming blood and tears of the working class: hell everywhere except in the homes of our “very best people” who in times of trouble as in times of peace are always calmly feeding (like leeches ever feeding) on the surplus legally filched from the working class.
Thus capitalist society is everywhere cursed with a festering social sore, an unhealable sore, poisoning, withering the best things in society, blasting the finer forms and feelings of brotherhood and peace. Everywhere the lives of the toilers are vulgarized and brutalized and wasted. And all these things will always be natural and unescapable facts and parts of any class-labor form of society, an unsocially organized society, with injustice organized, legalized and easy, down deep in the industrial foundations of society,—ever an endless civil war in industry between the two, the only two, industrial classes.
Now what shall we do about it?
It is as plain as “a, b, c.”
War and all the forms of the class struggle are excessive social inflammation.[[314]]
(a) Injustice violently inflames society.
(b) Social parasitism is monstrously unjust.
(c) Social parasitism therefore inflames society—and should be destroyed.
(a) Any form of society that produces and protects a class of social parasites will always inflame society, and should therefore be destroyed.
(b) Capitalism produces and protects a class of social parasites, and thus inflames society.
(c) Capitalism must therefore be destroyed.
Justice soothes society.
Society must be organized with justice in its structure.
We must search for justice—for a new social structure.
We must construct a form of society that will “make it easier to do right and more difficult to do wrong.”[[315]]
Shall we be non-resistant?
No, emphatically, no.
Non-resistance is not natural (especially for the class conscious workers)—for workers who understand their interests as a class; and non-resistance is not reasonable, is not safe, and is not possible. Non-resistance would mean defeat and degradation for the working class—forever.[[316]]
Then is peace a childish dream and is war to be an endless wrangle and blood-spilling nightmare—for the working class?
No—not necessarily.
We must resist.
But we should not resist first and only by physical force.
The working class must THINK—or they will have to struggle and bleed and weep and wait forever,—wait and whimper like babies in the woods for “some one” or some “good people” to come and “save” them.
The workers must think till they find a form of social organization in which the fundamental cause of war, that is, class robbery, will have no opportunity, and will therefore cease to exist.
What Dr. Ward calls the “spirit of aggression” will fade and finally expire when the condition (the parasitic opportunity) which cultivates the “spirit of aggression” is destroyed.
The founders of the American republic resisted fearlessly, by force too. But the working class in the United States at present should not, and cannot now, with advantage, resist by force and force alone, and that for very good reasons:
First:—We of the working class in the United States have now for our own class defense another, and better, form of power, a form of power less dangerous, less expensive, quieter and more legal and therefore more strategic,—a form of power that makes the capitalist class dread the awakening of the working class; namely, our political power—our united ballots.
Second:—Until we are intelligent enough to strategically defend our class with our united ballots we shall be too dull, even if it should be necessary, to use force of arms successfully in defense of our class. It seems unwise to counsel the use of the ruder methods of armed force until, having developed the necessary intelligence, we have by trial fairly tested our peace powers, our political powers—our united ballots. (See special paragraph, page [303].)
Third:—We are not politically prepared,—that is, we are not legally in possession of the powers of government, and therefore we are not in strong position to protect our class with all our forms of power legally. And until we are prepared we shall be used and abused.
Thus it is evident we can not, with advantage, use physical force.
What must we do?
We must destroy capitalism and close the class struggle.
In all the variations of the struggles or wars of capitalism the working class are hired, flattered, fooled, or forced to do all the actual fighting.
This must cease—as soon as possible—as a preliminary.
This will cease—when the conscious workers successfully explain capitalism and war to the confused and deluded workers. War will cease when we have explained the national and international conspiracy of the capitalist class.
War will cease when we rouse the workers of the world by explaining.
By explaining we inform.
By informing we increase intelligence.
By increasing intelligence we increase self-respect and the passion for a greater life and for the freedom necessary for a greater life.
Therefore,
Explain—inside and outside the ranks—everywhere—in shop, mill, mine and on the farm.
Explain till emperors and presidents dread their own conscripted and “volunteer” armies.
Explain till murder for board and clothes and $16 a month looks vile.
Explain till young working-class men inside and outside the ranks see the light.
Explain till an advertisement for human butchers and military fists becomes utterly disgusting to the working class.
Explain till our class becomes class conscious—till it sees itself, sees its class interest and its class power.
Explain till our class can not be fooled, hired, flattered or forced to butcher or be butchered.
Explain till our class, like the capitalist class, understand the political method of class defense.
Explain till millions of the roused workers of all political parties clasp hands at the ballot box in a political party of their own class for the defiant self-defense of their own class.
Explain till our class clearly sees and proudly declares that we must destroy the capitalist class-labor form of society and reconstruct society on a plan of rational mutualism.[[317]]
All such explanations, all such teachings tend powerfully to rouse the working class to a consciousness of themselves, make them eager to defend themselves, both on the industrial field and on the political field—with all their forms of power.
Chattel slavery has been destroyed. Certainly. Why not?
Serfdom has been destroyed. Of course. Why not?
Capitalism must be destroyed. Of course——
What! Shall we destroy the rich men, the capitalists?
No, of course not.
That would not be fair. Capitalists are capitalists legally—permitted by the working class.
By politically created laws and institutions capitalists are legally in position to rule and rob the working class.
And by politically created laws and institutions the ruling class shall cease to be in that position.
The personal destruction of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of capitalists would not in the least degree mend matters. The children of chattel slave owners became slave owners by the politically created laws of inheritance. Just so the children of capitalists become capitalists through neither virtue nor vice of theirs—they become capitalists through politically created laws of inheritance.
The legal right to own privately the industrial foundations of society must be destroyed, legally. If the capitalists should become anarchists and illegally resist legal methods they could not reasonably object to having their own laws against anarchists applied to themselves vigorously.
Of course it is true that the capitalists fleece the workers of surplus value all the time, and many of the capitalists are malignant and cruel toward the workers and by a thousand persecutions invite their own personal destruction. Some of the capitalists have destroyed themselves, have committed suicide, to escape the disgrace of their crimes. Some capitalists are now in the penitentiary; many more capitalists should be in the penitentiary—as many of their own class confess; a far larger number of capitalists, if the laws were enforced, would promptly leave the country to keep out of the penitentiary—some have done so; and a large number of capitalists are also bribing juries and prosecuting attorneys in order to avoid the penitentiary; many prominent business men, trust magnates, have had the anti-trust law changed to enable them to more easily avoid the penitentiary—so President Taft said in Columbus, Ohio, August 19, 1907.[[318]]
And the capitalist class outrage the working class in a thousand ways. This is all true. The multitude of capitalist outrages are sufficient to provoke revenge. But we do not seek revenge. Revenge is not fine. Revenge is not noble. Moreover we cannot escape war by means of revenge, and, still more important, rich men and women are not a form of society. They are members of society and they behave naturally—under the circumstances; that is, being a ruling class in a class-form society, they behave as masters.
Capitalism as a form of society must be destroyed.
Is it meant that we shall destroy the means of production—the mills, mines, forests, railroads and such things?
Certainly not. The means of production are material, mechanical things. They are not a form of society.
What then? Are we to “destroy society”? Are we to turn society upside down, inside out and “other end to,”—suddenly—“some dark night,” so to speak?
Not at all.
Here is what we must do:—Rapidly, just as rapidly as possible we must destroy the present class-labor form of society called capitalism,—and to do this we must strike at and strike out the foundation of the capitalist form of society.
But what is the foundation of this capitalist class-labor form of society?
As already pointed out, the foundation of capitalism is the institution of private property in the means of production.
The capitalists, the employers, the ruling class, stand legally between the means of production and the users of the means of production; thus a legal obstruction is raised between the workers and the things they work with in getting a living.
The capitalist class legally control the conditions under which the workers may use the means of production.
The capitalist class are in a legalized parasitic relation or connection to the means of production.
This relation is the key-stone in the arch of capitalism; this relation is the prime element in the present form of society.
This parasitic relation enables the capitalists to rule, rob and ruin the working class all the time everywhere.
This relation must be destroyed; this despotic, parasitic relation must be cut.
The capitalist class must be legally pared off, legally pushed off, legally shorn from, the chief material means of production—as PRIVATE owners.
Yes, this robbery, this organized, legalized robbery called capitalism—must be destroyed.
“The vast individual and corporate fortunes, the vast combinations of capital, which have marked the development of our industrial system, create new conditions and necessitate a change from the old attitude of the state and nation toward property.”[[319]]
The case, the circumstances, require unflinching social surgery.
You believe in surgery, don’t you. Of course you do. Surgery is recognized the world over as a rational and necessary means of saving life, the life of the individual.
Well, extend the application of the principle and practice of surgery to society—to the social body.[[320]]
Parasites never voluntarily let go their grasp on the source of their lives, never voluntarily let go the living things from which they suck their livings. And the parasitic capitalist class will stick to the means of production, as private owners, till they are legally dislodged—shorn from the means of production. What is here written concerning social parasites should not be misunderstood as malicious reflection on the ancient slave owner or the ancient feudal landlord or the modern capitalist. In the course of human evolution the appearance and activity of social parasites has been—and is now—as natural as the appearance and activity of parasites in the lower animal world and in the vegetable world. And the effort to dislodge human parasites from society should be, as far as is humanly possible, free from personal malice.[[321]]
However, on the farm, in the care of plants and animals no matter how small or helpless or innocent or beautiful parasites may be which interfere with the wheat crop or the flock of sheep, the parasites must be dislodged—rigorously and promptly. And, in society, no matter how handsome, polite, pious, learned, philanthropic, or ancestrally distinguished and blue-blooded a human parasite may be who lives on the labor of the workers, that parasite, old or young, male or female, must dismount promptly, must be forced from the shoulders of the working class. Those who, at the time of social reconstruction, endeavor to defend themselves by polishing their family coat-of-arms and climbing their ancestral trees in search of credentials, will simply be making monkeys of themselves. They will be even more ridiculous than the Royalists in the American Revolution. Those of “gentle breeding” will have to learn the gentle art of getting a living by producing a living; that awful saying, “If he will not work, neither shall he eat,” will mean more and more.
The working class must, then, legally, do whatever is necessary to protect themselves from the strangling clutches of the capitalist class.
And here is what is necessary:
The working class must themselves become organized political authority, must seize the powers of government—and thus secure legal control of sovereign political power which carries with it the legal right[[322]] to control, or revise, or abolish, or reorganize industrial institutions; must thus secure the legal right (and power) to construct and inaugurate that industrial form of society which will destroy capitalism with its organized, legalized opportunity for class robbery, and which will, at the same time, substitute organized, legalized opportunity for every member of society to make a living without being robbed, opportunity to live without wasting and vulgarizing his life in a struggle against his fellow men. And this destruction of unsocial capitalism and the construction, at the same time, in place of capitalism, the necessary social substitute, can be accomplished by the industrial reorganization of society on the following plan—