It must be great, for “great men” say it is so.
“Great men” never deceive humble, common working men. Never. Of course not.
When “great men” call: “Rally to the flag, boys!” will my toiling brothers become again the fools and tools for such as they who in Parliaments and Congresses vote for this red-dripping stupidity?
$8,000,000,000 every twelve months on war and preparations for war—and yet not a single silk-hatted snob sleeps in the dingy barracks, or eats the cheap “grub” fed to the privates, or submits to humiliating insults from “superior” officers, or spills his blood on the firing line—not one anywhere in all the world.
$8,000,000,000—the annual cost of lust—war lust.
The annual cost of jungle statesmanship.
The cost the WORKING class pay for being meek, docile, obedient—ready to slaughter themselves, ready to butcher their brothers of the working class.
$8,000,000,000, the price the working class pay for being prejudiced, ignorant, unwilling to read;—and for cringing, for neglecting to place the working class in the legislatures of the world.
$8,000,000,000—this sum proves the moral bankruptcy, proves the colossal savagery—of capitalists who want war, and proves also the intellectual and moral bankruptcy, the brainless incapacity and unspeakable villainy of the gilt-edged crooks called statesmen who are always ready to declare wars and who perpetually bleed society by thus “preparing for wars” in which they themselves, like the “business men,” are too proud and cunning to fight on the firing line.
This sum also shows that the working class, stripped and dulled to supply this annual sum, ignorantly consenting to and blindly hurrahing for their own destruction, are in the condition of hypnotized children—almost utterly helpless, their eyes blinded with tears, their ears stopped with blood, their souls numb and dumb in a living death.