(1) Invite your pastor to preach against war, urge him to do so, and render him any assistance you can in the way of literature on war. Help get out an audience to hear the sermon. Urge others to do likewise.
(2) Inform your own children and other children concerning the class struggle and war, and urge them to talk about the class struggle and against war, at school. Teach them the cause of war. See also Chapter Eight, Section 20, and Index, “Recitations.” Rouse the children.
(3) Wherever possible—in colleges, high schools, labor unions, fraternal organizations, women’s clubs, churches, Sunday schools, at picnics, and so forth—have debates, declamations and essays on war. Help the debaters, writers and speakers, find literature on war, and, if possible, get the subject presented from a working-class point of view, showing especially the fundamental cause of war and what war always means for the working class. (See page [350], last two lines.)
(4) Have as many persons as possible call at your public library for books on war, and suggest books on war to be called for. Suggest books for purchase by your public library management. If the books you urge for the library are not purchased, discuss the reason. All the sociological works quoted in Chapter Eleven should be in your public library.
(5) Get articles and letters on war into your local newspapers and labor union journals.
(6) On the 30th of May, the 4th of July and other “great” days, when the blood-steaming praise of human butchery is poured forth by the noisy “patriotic” orators, pass around all possible literature helpful in counteracting the befouling suggestions commonly thrust into the minds of the people at such times. Chapter Two and other selections from War—What For? making an inexpensive sixteen-page booklet, may be had, printed separately, for such purpose.
It is possible to compel an entire community to think about the vast outrages against the working class. As long as the workers have the privilege of spreading the printed page, one of their highest pleasures and powers will be found in forcing society to consider the case of the working class. The first thing on the program in every community is to take the community by the shoulders, so to speak, and compel it to consider the most vital subject of the hour.
(7) A Ten-Dollar Cash Prize for the best essay or debate, or declamation on war as a phase of the class struggle by local school-children under eighteen years of age would create much interest in the vicious slaughter of men of the working class and in the new working class politics, if the proper literature were brought to the young people’s attention. See Chapter Eight, Section 20, Suggestion (7).
(8) It would be easy to make here a pretentious parade of a discouragingly long list of books on war. But War—What For? is primarily for the class of readers who are usually too busy in the present warlike struggle for existence to find time to read a roomful of books on war. However, it is hoped that the present volume may also have readers with opportunity to make extensive studies of the subject. Such readers will find abundant bibliographies already prepared. Excellent book lists for the student of war are as follows:
(a) The Political Science Quarterly, December, 1900: over 200 titles, at the close of an elaborate article of great worth, “War and Economics in History and in Theory,” by Edward Van Dyke Robinson.