This sum—all this cash cost—is, in its last analysis, slyly subtracted from the lives of the producing class, the working class—sucked from the veins of the humble multitude of toilers, and the workers are so meek and weak and bloodless and stunned and stunted—so constantly in a dull, prideless stupor—that they are unable to stand erect in holy indignation, seize the powers of government and sweep this hell’s nightmare from the world.
War devours the welfare of the workers.
The capitalist class dare not place all the facts frankly before the working class. Everywhere it is: “Hush! Hush! The working class must not study the burdens of war.”
The workers? “They must not think. They must not think. They must obey.”
That is the word for the working class:
Obey.
A very eminent authority on war[[64]] says:
“Only once in recent history do I remember any attempt on the part of a European government to calculate the economic consequences of war under modern conditions. It was when M. Burdeau was in the French Ministry. He appointed a committee of economists for the purpose of ascertaining how the social organism would continue to function in a time of war, how from day to day their bread would be given to the French population. But no sooner had he begun his investigation than a strong objection was raised by the military authorities, and out of deference to their protest the inquiry was indefinitely postponed. Hence we are going forward blindfold.”
A real statesman, Senator Charles Sumner, has said:[[65]]
“All history is a vain word, and all experience is at fault, if large war preparations ... have not been constant provocatives of war. Pretended protectors against war, they have been the real instigators of war. They have excited the evil against which they were to guard. The habit of wearing arms in private life exercised a kindred influence.... The Standing Army is to the nation what the sword was to the modern gentleman, the stiletto to the Italian, the knife to the Spaniard, the pistol to our slavemaster,—furnishing, like these, the means of death; and its possessor is not slow to use it.”