Politicians do not join the militia and the army for actual service on the firing line—oh, no! No, thank you. They pass laws “to make the service attractive”—but they are so very careful not to let the attractions attract them.
The fact is, my friend, the “cold shoulder” from superior officers, and cold victuals, cold tents, cold lead, cold steel, and a puny fifteen or twenty dollars per month for murdering and being murdered—and the cold, cold ground for their own cold corpses—with infinite heartache, sighs, sobs, tears, and loneliness for their own dear ones—these things have no attraction for the shrewd men who profit by war and the crafty men who declare war.
Capitalist statesmen—that is, small men with big manners—politicians of the capitalist class, politicians financed by and for the capitalist class—these all band together, stand together. The capitalist “reformer” always stands for CAPITALISM—tho’ he is willing to spray it heavily with perfume. These are CLASS loyal. They manipulate all the powers of government—including the department of war—in defence of the capitalist CLASS. They even hire working men—with rifles.
(C)—The working men fight the war:
Because they are meek and modest and humble and docile, and are always gullibly ready to obediently do whatever their crafty political and industrial masters order them to do. So, whenever the capitalists want war and the politicians declare war, the flimflammed, bamboozled working man straps on a knapsack, shoulders a rifle (or takes a policeman’s club), kisses his wife and children good-bye, and marches away to fight a war he didn’t want, a war he didn’t declare, a war that belittles and wrongs him by injuring his class,—and marches away to butcher other working men whom he doesn’t know and against whom he has no quarrel. He yells, kills, and slaughters—because—simply because—because—some crafty crooks, called “prominent people,” tell him to do so. He screams and gets slain, he yells and gets slaughtered—simply because he does not understand the sly, devilish trick that is thus being played upon him and his class. Young working men are shrewdly flattered into joining the militia and the army in order to help the capitalist class force the working class to keep still and starve; or accept cheap food, cheap clothing, cheap shelter and cheap furniture as all of their share for all their work for all their lives.
Suppose the working man has a son in the local militia company, and suppose Mr. Workingman goes out on strike for two or three more nickels per day with which to buy better food for the young militiaman’s own mother and his little brothers and sisters. This young man in the militia company can be ordered to shoot or bayonet his own father who, on strike, is struggling for a few cents more with which to buy better food for the humble mother and hungry little brothers and sisters—if the father on strike doesn’t keep quiet and remain docile while the local industrial masters starve him back to his old job at his old wages. The capitalist holds the whip of hunger over the working class father’s back, and the working class son holds a rifle at his own father’s breast. The father must surrender. Thus the young militiaman wrongs his own class, outrages his own father, helps humble his own little brothers and sisters, and spits in his own mother’s face.
The war is the class war.
The militiamen and policemen are local soldiers ready for orders to shoot their neighbors, friends and relatives in the struggle for existence. In the industrial civil war the capitalist class starve, seduce and bribe the working class to fight BOTH SIDES OF THE BATTLES.
The rulers rule. They think—and win BY THINKING.
Think it over, young man. Be loyal to your own father and mother and your own brothers and sisters—and your own class. Be class loyal.