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?