No hospital became a hell of cursing, groaning, screaming, mangled men.
Yet “everything was ready”—ready to defend the sacred honor of “royal” and “noble” coward parasites.
Everything was ready except one thing—the consent of the working class.
The conscripted Socialist soldiers in both armies and the Socialists everywhere throughout both countries had passed the sign of working-class brotherhood all through both armies and through both countries: “We working class men are brothers. Let us not slit the veins of our own class simply to satisfy the vicious pride of snobbish masters. Let us save our own blood and tears.”
This international brothers’ cry was like a splendid flash of lightning at midnight. Brothers saw brothers, working-class brothers, in the night, the midnight of capitalism. The soul of the working class in both these countries flashed response: “Brothers! Brothers! We understand!” The human race seemed to smile. The Swedish and the Norwegian soldiers mingled. These armed workers fraternized. Armed men embraced armed men. They shouted and wept—for joy.
They sneered at the frowns of their commanders. Proudly and promptly they refused to butcher and be butchered.[[328]]
That settled it. There was no war.
There can not be war unless the working class agree to it.
No working men were butchered, and the international misunderstanding had to be settled without opening the blood vessels of the toilers. For of course you know, reader, that the broadclothed capitalist snobs of these countries were too cowardly to fight the war themselves.
And now there are many more happy homes, happy wives, happy mothers and happy children in Norway and Sweden than there would have been if the humble working people of these two countries had permitted a precious lot of gilt-edged cowards to excite them and confuse them and then “sic” them at one another’s throats.