(15) In The Westminster Review of July, 1907, is the following suggestion of a topic suitable for discussion in women’s societies and newspapers:
“There is another insidious form of Militarism that is very widespread and popular. I refer to the Lads’ Brigades [in England] which are attached to so many churches of different denominations. Under pretext of giving them physical training, boys are taught the spirit of submission to another’s will, and to love the trappings of Militarism.... This coupling together of military training with religion has been well described by the Rev. Dr. Aked of Liverpool [now of New York], as ‘preaching heaven and practicing hell.’”
The American mother can not solace herself with the thought that what Dr. Aked referred to was a practice in far-away England and does not much concern her. For this new crucifixion of Jesus and the degradation of the little boys, a strong society exists in the United States. The United Boys’ Brigade is an organization for training the trigger-fingers and the blood-lusts of boys nine years and upward in the basement rooms of Christian churches. “The object of the organization,” as announced in the monthly magazine of the organization, The American Brigadier, is “to ... promote reverence and discipline ... to create in them a love for their country ... and while the boys are thoroughly drilled in military discipline and tactics, it only serves to make them true Christian soldiers.”[[276]] The American Brigadier announces officially that “there is nothing equal to it in drawing them into the Sabbath School.” Thus the church is to be made like a prize-fighting ring in order to make it look good to the little boys. The American Brigadier, of December, 1907, gives away its secret in a lengthy account, headed, “Securing a New Recruit,” as follows:
(One boy says to another): “We go to Bible drill every Saturday night and have setting-up exercises and Bible drill, and sometimes we visit other companies. Gee! but our company can show them how to drill. And we go camping in summer, and we have a bully time.... Bible drill?... Gee! but there are some bully stories in the Bible.... We read about Samson, the strong man that beat Sandow all hollow, and King David, the siege of Jericho, and last week we read about a shepherd boy killing a giant with a sling-shot....”
In The Brigadier of November, 1907, is an article, “What it Means to be a Soldier,” in which is the following:
“There is but one word that covers all, and that is obedience: obedience to orders and strict discipline. The foundation of all military organizations rests upon this one basis.”
Precisely: obedience.
That is to say, an innocent little fellow who has been drilled thus for several years to forget that he has a brain and a will of his own, drilled to obey all orders instantly—such a boy at the age of twenty will, of course, automatically and stupidly obey any order—no matter how vile—even the order: “Fire! Charge!”—though “the enemy,” the target, be little silk-mill wage-slave girls ten or twelve years old who must toil a whole week for $1.60, and are out on strike for a dime more per week, and while out on strike are starved into being “riotous.”
Armed rowdies—with riot guns—for starving, “rioting” children!
The American Brigadier is primarily a religious magazine, so they say; but it offers a breech-loading Springfield rifle as a premium to the boy who will send in the most subscribers. Imagine Christ making his cause popular with little boys by offering them a weapon with which to murder! The Brigadier wins the boys to Jesus by seductively baiting the savage that still lurks in the “civilized” breast; the magazine gives pictures of armories, battle monuments, gun drills, military parades, camp life, gay military uniforms, little boys with guns, swords, tents, banners, cannon, pictures also of pompous-looking, gilt-braided “big men,” famous professional human butchers. The magazine prints alluring stories of army-and-navy life; and makes a specialty of advertising military arms, military clothing, West Point story books, and so forth.