Because it is profitable.
Thus in all Christian nations the Cross dips obsequiously to the red-throated cannon—and to the cash-register.
Business is business; the rulers rule; and gold is God.
That is, under capitalism.
Reader, name one “civil” war or one international war of modern times powerfully, effectively hindered by the Church of the Man of Peace.[[292]]
Just one.
But no matter! Since long before the slaughter of the Carpenter our brothers of the working class have furnished the blood and tears—cheap blood, cheap tears,—about forty cents a day for American “regulars” in the “year of our Lord” 1910.
Learn this, you toilers: The capitalists have the preacher cornered and shackled. The working class must be their own saviors from the horrors of war. In Chapter Ten I shall explain how this can be done and even now begins to be done by the working class.
But the workers should learn from history and keep distinctly in mind this great lesson: With noble individual exceptions the ministry, the religious leaders, have in times past defended chattel slavery with its unspeakable horrors for the working class; and have defended serfdom with its hell for the working class; and have ignobly defended all Christian national and international wars of modern capitalism praying on both sides to the “God of battles” for “glorious victory” regardless of the blood spurting from a million wounds in the torn breast of the working class.
The path of human progress in modern times is steep and slippery with the carcasses and blood of the socially despised working men—and the Church has not defied the cash-register idolater and demanded peace.