“What would you have me do? Go to the wars, would you? Where a man may serve seven years for the loss of a leg, and have not money in the end to buy a wooden one.”
“Freeing Cuba” was—was what? A change of masters for the Cuban working class, and a “fool’s errand” for the American working class soldiers, as many of them have confessed—confessed with curses for the crafty prominent people who seduced them to the battlefields.
Sixth Illustration: Standing at attention for civilized cannibals:
Consider a moment the recent war between Christian Russia and pagan Japan, a war for the capitalist control of Manchuria, the working class of course doing the fighting—as usual.
It is well-known that the economic interests of the pagan Japanese capitalists in Manchuria inspired the Japanese statesmen to the recent war with Russia. The Christian Russian capitalists had precisely the same sort of inspiration for the war. Here are presented some facts to be considered by the spiritual followers of Christ who presume to scorn the “sordid materialism of the ‘unsaved’ pagan Japanese”:
(1) For years preceding 1903 the Christian Tsar and the Christian Empress and many of their Christian friends had opposed the threatening war in Manchuria.
(2) In 1903 the Royal Timber Company was organized to scoop up many millions of dollars in profits to be made out of the vast lumber forests in the Yalu River valley “secured” from the pagan Corean government.
(3) In 1903 the Tsar and the Empress and many of their friends joined the Royal Timber Company, taking stock to the amount of many millions of dollars.
(4) Having become involved in Corea as capitalists with economic interests to be protected, the Tsar, the Empress and their friends immediately and completely reversed their position on the question of war—vigorously favored the war which now seemed to be necessary to protect their Yalu River lumber interests. It now, of course, became perfectly clear that “the kingdom of Christ could be advanced among the heathen”—on the point of the bayonet.
Hence the two years of butchering of brothers by brothers—who were duly informed that they were “enemies.”[[170]]