Brother, let me help you tear the mask off this legalized outrage against the working class, this huge and “glorious” crime called war. At this horrible “Death’s feast” we working people spit in one another’s faces, we scream in wild rage at one another, we curse and kill our own working class brothers, we foolishly wallow in our own blood and desolate our own homes—simply because we are craftily ordered to do so. Thus we are both savage and ridiculous. Ridiculous did I say? Yes, ridiculous. That word ridiculous sounds like a harsh word—doesn’t it? But, remember, in all wars the working class are always meanly belittled, wronged—outraged.
We are the plucked geese in January—patriotically.
When we working people hear a fife and drum and see some handsomely dressed, well-fed military officers and see their long butcher-knives called swords—our confused hearts beat fast, our blood becomes blindly and suicidally hot and eager.... Look out, brother! Take care! Remember: Always in all wars everywhere the working class are confused, bewildered—then shrewd people make tools, mules, fools, and foot-stools of us!
“Follow the flag!” sounds good—but strikes blind the working class.
“Follow the flag!” sounds brave and grand. Very.
“Follow the flag!” is wine for the brain—of the working class.
“Follow the flag!” makes millions of our class blind and useable.
“Follow the flag!” stirs a savage passion cunningly called “patriotism.”
“Follow the flag!” never confuses a man wearing a silk hat.
“Follow the flag!” is bait laid for fools, “rot” fed to mules, by every tyrant king, tsar and president at the head of governments used by the industrial ruling class.[[3]]