“That the letter to young Scharfenberg may have as far-reaching influence as possible, it was made public at the President’s direction today. It is as follows:
“‘My Dear Young Friend:—I heartily congratulate you upon being declared by the Public School Athletic League to stand first in rifle shooting among all the boys of the High Schools of New York City who have tried during the last year. Many a grown man who regards himself as a crack rifle shot would be proud of such a score. Your skill is a credit to you, and also to your principal, your teachers, and to all connected with the manual training school which you attend, and I know them all. [The usual diffident confession of omniscience.]
“‘Practice in rifle shooting is of value in developing not only muscles, but nerves.... It is a prime necessity that the volunteer should already know how to shoot.... The graduates from our schools and colleges should be thus trained so as to be good shots with the military rifle. When so trained they constitute a great addition to our national strength and great assurance for the peace of the country.’”
That is to say: Tho’ the capitalists should refuse to employ 5,000,000 men and virtually spit in their faces and order these willing-to-work men out of the factories and mines to shiver and starve in rags, and thus infinitely humiliate millions of working class wives and daughters with the terrors of poverty—no matter, the rifle-practiced graduates of high schools, colleges and universities will be “ready for use,” ready to crush the unemployed if they loudly protest, ready to help the master class thrust all the injustices of a class-labor system into the lives of the working class, ready to thrust bayonets into the out-of-work wage-slaves who cry aloud for work, for bread, for justice in the industrial civil war of capitalism.
Bright and early every school day, in New York City, about 600,000 children are compelled to salute the flag and recite some mocking lies about the “glorious freedom they have” and the “bounteous blessings they enjoy”—under the “friendly folds of the Stars and Stripes”—tho’ a whole half million of the children have no homes of their own and in a hundred ways are stung with the lash of poverty.
(17) Many additional instructors in military tactics have in recent years been appointed to service in high schools, colleges and universities. United States Army officers are now in ninety-three universities, colleges and schools, drilling 22,910 students in “military departments.”
Improved rifles, riot cartridges, and killing equipment are being distributed among the State militia forces; local armories are being improved and made attractive,—all made “ready for use” when needed to pacify the out-of-work wage-earners. Recently in one State, Colorado, military training was being systematically taught in the high schools of six of the largest cities. The Secretary of War in 1909 reported forty-four schoolboy rifle clubs. In the newspapers and magazines, in the sermons and speeches and especially in the public school,—by all such means—the size and perfection of rifles, cannon, battleships and the like, are held up to the children for their admiration and as evidences of our superiority and of our “splendid civilization.” The children are taught to clap their hands for our readiness to engage in some great international butchering contest. But the children are not taught what arsenals, armories, cannon, rifles, soldiers, militia, riot guns and riot cartridges—what all these things mean and what war means for the working class. Never!
(18) Let a philosopher speak to the mother and her children in plain language:
“Europe is still in arms: each nation watching every other with suspicion, jealousy, or menace.... And what is the result? Russia overwhelmed with a military cancer, a prey to social confusion such as has not been seen in this century. Germany, with her intelligence and industry, bound in the fetters of military service, governed as if she were a camp, as if the sole object of peace were to prepare for war. France staggering.... Italy weighted with a useless army, uneasy, intriguing, restless.... Spain weak from the drain of a series of wars.... England uncertain, divided in action, continually distracted and dishonored by an endless succession of miserable wars in every quarter of the globe.
“Such is the picture of Europe after a generation of imperialism and aggressive war.