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.