“Who is the gainer? Is the poor Russian moujic, torn from his home to die in Central Asia or on the passes of the Balkans, doomed to a government of ever deepening corruption and tyranny? Is the workman of Berlin the better, crushed by military oppression and industrial recklessness? Who is the gainer—the ruler or the ruled? Is the French peasant the gainer now that Alsace and Lorraine are gone, and nothing exists of the empire but its debt, its conspirators, and its legacy of confusions?
“... Who is the gainer by this career of bloodshed and ambition?... We hear the groans of the millions—the working, suffering millions—who are yearning to replace this cruel system, none of their making, none of their choice, by which they gain nothing, from which they hope nothing.”[[279]]
Who indeed is the gainer? The workers lose; and the mothers lose most of all—their children. Yet everywhere complete contempt for the working class mothers of the whole world, absolute scorn for the blood of men and the tears of women—of the working class.
What magnificent protest will roll round this world when the working class is roused to think of these things!
(19) In the dollar-hunting spirit of the age it may be inquired: Doesn’t war make business brisk, and thus furnish work for the wage-earners?
Yes, certainly. But so also would a lunatic in the streets armed with a repeating shotgun shooting down the children at play: he would make business brisk for the coffin trust, the undertakers and their employees—and the grave-digger.
(20) Following are several special suggestions for the mothers and fathers of the working class:
(1) Teach the children anti-war recitations and declamations.
Faithfully and patiently help the boys and girls master a half dozen or more passages of the strongest prose and poetry to be found against war; help them in this work till they understand—till their eyes kindle, till their hearts burn, till their imagination is aflame with disgust and detestation for war and for the foul rôle of the armed guard of the ruling class. (See page [350], last two lines.)
(2) Teach the children the pledge on the first page of Chapter One of the present volume. Teach them to teach that pledge, or some similar pledge, to other children.