“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.