SECTION 9,—“The militia, when called into actual service of the United

States, shall be subject to the same rules and articles of war as the

regular troops.” That is to say, for the time they are “on call,” they

are virtually federal soldiers.

The law as amended by Congress in May, 1908, provides “that every

officer and enlisted man of the militia who shall be called forth in the

manner hereinbefore prescribed shall be mustered for service _without

further enlistment_.” [Italics in Report.]

“The call of the President will, therefore, of itself accomplish the

transfer of the organized militia which is called forth by him from its

state relations to its federal relations. It becomes part of the Army of

the United States and the President becomes its commander-in-chief.

“The _President_ is the _exclusive judge_ of the existence of an

emergency which would justify the calling forth of the Organized

Militia.”[191]

This law contains twenty-six sections, every one of which should be

studied carefully by the working class of the United States. The Union

labor bodies should urge local newspapers to publish parts of the law

selected by the unions. The more the law is examined the more food for

reflection will be found in it.[192]

The English capitalist government has also recently enacted a new

military law, a species of “Dick” law, called the Territorial Force Act.

This law transforms a “voluntary citizen soldier” into a “regular”

soldier. Says _Justice_:[193]

“Under the new act the Volunteer must ‘enlist’ and serve under

‘military law.’ He will be as much a regular soldier as a Life Guard

or a Lancer, and can be called out to shoot down strikers in labor

disputes as was actually done at Featherstone ... and at Belfast

only a few months ago.”

“The Volunteer,” says the _Morning Post_, “will no longer be a

citizen soldier, he will be a soldier without the blur of

citizenship.... He may be mechanic; many of the best Volunteers are

mechanics. If there is a strike in his works, ordered by the trade

union to which he subscribes, and if the Mayor is afraid of the

Strikers, and wants soldiers to shoot them, in case of need, the

Volunteer, renamed ‘man of the Territorial Force,’ is just the man

he wants; and the bill empowers the Mayor to call him out for the

purpose.”

The “Dick” law was passed by capitalist “friends of labor,” of course,

both Republicans and Democrats; and the “Territorial Force Act” was

similarly passed by capitalist “friends of labor,” both Liberals and

Conservatives. As the unarmed army of the unemployed grows threateningly

larger and the armed army of bribed butchers grows larger—ready to

murder those who starve—it is in order, in “Old England,” in “New

America,” everywhere in order, for the working class to give more

careful attention to the “good men” who are so tearfully and fearfully

“friendly to labor.”

(=12=) Why should the working class give the capitalist governments a

free hand in the murder of the workers? Why not rigorously restrict the

power to call millions of men to arms?

What would happen if the working class should refuse to fight?

“That ‘the government can not put the whole population in prison,

and if it could, it would still be without material for an army, and

without money for its support,’ is an almost irrefutable argument.

We see here [‘in passive resistance, not simply in theory, but in

practice’] at least the beginnings of a sentiment that shall, if

sufficiently developed, make war impossible to an entire

people....”[194]

Five points to be emphasized here:

(1) Require all the school teachers to teach all the children to despise

and hate war.

(2) Arm everybody or nobody.

(3) Train everybody or nobody.

(4) “The right of the people to bear arms shall not be

infringed.”—_Constitution of the United States: Third Amendment._

(5) The working class should diligently study the folly of requiring one

regiment of the working class to fight the united and class-loyal

capitalist class in strikes.

These five propositions suggest a plan that would, even under

capitalism, render the working class far less helpless and hopeless than

they are at present in their class struggle against the capitalist class

of masters who may legally order the working class soldiers to fire on

the working class.

However, the triumphantly effective work can be accomplished in this

matter when—and not until—the working class have seized the powers of

government. (See Chapter Ten, which is wholly devoted to the

fundamentals of “What to do.”)

It is significant that the first Secretary of War, Henry Knox, appointed

by President Washington, made a Report January 18, 1790, on the proper

basis for the military defense of the United States. His plan was “to

reject a standing army, as possessing too fierce an aspect and being

hostile to the principles of liberty.”

A scholar of world-renown, Francis Lieber, German-American soldier,

historian, economist and publicist, has this to say of standing

armies:[195]

“Standing armies are not only dangerous to civil liberty because

depending upon the executive. They have the additional evil effect

that they infuse into the whole nation ... a spirit directly opposed

to that which ought to be the general spirit of a free people

devoted to self-government. Habits of disobedience and contempt for

the citizens are produced, and a view of government is induced which

is contrary to liberty, self-reliance, self-government.... Where the

people worship the army, an opinion is engendered as if courage in

battle were really the highest phase of humanity; and the army, in

turn, more than aught else, leads to the worship of one man—so

detrimental.”

(=13=) “For the French and Italians and especially the German and

Russian adolescent of the lower classes ... the army is called ... the

poor man’s university.”[196]

“The poor man’s university!”—in which he is drilled and kicked into

spineless subserviency and is taught the noble art of killing himself,

his class, scientifically. The degraded, docile, and despised millions

of the working class men of the standing armies of the world are indeed

educated when they are willing to wade in their own blood in defense of

the parasitic capitalist class who rule, ride and ruin the toilers of

all the world.

A standing army is a joke and a yoke on the working class. A standing

army is a compound human machine educated to spank the working class

when it cries for milk—and bread and meat. A soldier, a militiaman, is

an educated boot with which the employers kick the working class.

(=14=) Do not rich men’s sons sometimes voluntarily join the militia?

Yes, sometimes—but very, very rarely. One of the bluest-blooded

Vanderbilts of New York was recently a captain in a specially handsome

Regiment. But, mark you—in ninety-nine cases in a hundred, well-armed,

well-trained militiamen fight unarmed, untrained workingmen (and women),

which is not so very, very dangerous—for the militiamen. To an

intelligent rich man an unarmed wage-earner on strike for an extra

nickel to buy bread, as “the enemy,” and an armed trained soldier whose

business is murder, as “the enemy,”—these look different, you know.

For years New York millionaires and all the other “best people”

“pointed with pride” to the famous Seventh Regiment of the National

Guard, the “rich men’s regiment,” the “gilt-edged regiment” of

lovely young millionaires, many of whom rode to the armory for drill

in their automobiles. This regiment of the American nobility of

lard-and-tallow-steel-coal-and-railway millionaires, ready at any

moment to defend and save the dear country from “the enemy,”—this

regiment was, indeed, the pride of the village called New York.

These glistening patricians taught the common people patriotism. “So

they did.”

Until the Spanish War broke out.

Then these fakir patriots—what did they do—then?

Resigned.

Or they did what amounted to the same thing—_voted_ not to go to the

war.

Certainly they did. Promptly, too—and intelligently.

Why not?

Surely you do not expect a lot of _intelligent_ men to leave their happy

homes, go to hell and make themselves ridiculous, do you? Why, the cost

of a rubber tire for one wheel of an automobile would pay the war wages

of a cheap man of the “lower classes” for six months.

(=15=) “Didn’t one millionaire go to the war in Cuba?”

Yes. Out of our six thousand patriotic, flag-waving millionaires, one,

just one, a young green one, went to the war in Cuba—“for a little

excitement and a lark,” he said. He found large quantities of excitement

“all right,” and some cold lead. He was killed. As a millionaire

“patriotically” going to war his case is an exception, clearly an

exception, a conspicuously lonely, vain and stupid exception; and that

exception will never be imitated. Too much intelligence—among the

millionaires. Even his millionaire friends laughed at him for going to

war. But he wanted a “hot time.” He got the “hot time”—and the cold

lead.

There were several thousand other millionaire flag-wavers instructively

conspicuous in that war—by their intelligent patriotic absence.

IT IS INSTRUCTIVELY SIGNIFICANT THAT THE CAPITALIST NEWSPAPERS GAVE MORE

THAN A HUNDRED TIMES AS MUCH SPACE TO THE DEATH OF THE ONE MILLIONAIRE

SOLDIER IN THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR AS THEY GAVE TO THE DEATH OF ANY

HUNDRED HUMBLE WORKING CLASS SOLDIERS WHO WERE SLAUGHTERED IN THE SAME

WAR.

(=16=) Were not some of the rich men of today soldiers at one

time—“years ago”?

Yes. Some of the rich men of today were soldiers at one time—years ago;

but they are not soldiers now when they are rich, and they were not rich

when, years ago, they were soldiers.

(=17=) If politicians do not go to war, what about Mr. Bryan’s case?

Didn’t Mr. Bryan patriotically go to the war in Cuba?

No. Mr. Bryan did not go _to_ the war in Cuba. He simply went _toward_

the war.

Mr. Bryan was, of course, patriotic, fervently, noisily so; but, like

the intelligent people of his class, he always had his enthusiasm under

perfect control. Mr. Bryan at no time showed an unmanageable desire to

get _up close in front, on the firing line_. And his class was true to

him, respected his strong preference for war five hundred miles from the

flaming, snarling Gatling gun; and, accordingly, his class—in power at

Washington—kept him well out of danger. At one time he got the

impression he was in danger of being sent to the front. At once he cried

out, “It’s politics!” and promptly resigned his noble command, double

quick, patriotically. Mr. Bryan, mounted on a splendid horse, with

uplifted sword in hand, grandly vowing to “defend the flag against the

enemy” as he headed his noble braves, assembled for review, and

admiration, before the _Omaha Bee_ building, ready to start _toward_ the

front—at that sublime moment Colonel William Jennings Bryan was, well,

simply beautiful, not to say pretty. As the golden tones of this

Nebraskan Achilles, this Alexander from the Platte Valley, rolled forth

in his heroic vow to bleed (if necessary) for his flag, the nation was

comforted—felt saved already.

Patriotism _is_, after all, _worth all it costs_—that is, worth all it

costs Mr. Bryan. Mr. Bryan, like Mr. Hearst and many others, is

patriotic, even intemperately so—with his mouth.

But the reader may ask, “Was not Mr. Roosevelt in the Cuban War a case

of a politician actually on the firing line?”

Clearly an exception. Name a few other “great statesmen” or

international noises who went to the Cuban War—to the actual firing

line.

Mr. Roosevelt loves excitement and danger. And what indescribable

dangers there were for the Americans in the Cuban War! The mightiest

“republic” on earth was pitted against the most toothless, decadent old

political grandma in Europe. The dangers?—equal to those that threaten

an armed, athletic hunter alone and face to face with a sucking fawn.

Mr. Roosevelt himself has heroically—and carefully—recounted and printed

his own brave deeds in that war. With Christian love and humility, with

charming modesty and delicacy, with the diffident ingenuousness of a

blushing schoolgirl, characteristic of him, Mr. Roosevelt tenderly

recites one of his noble deeds as follows:[197]

“Lieutenant Davis’s First Sergeant, Clarence Gould, killed a

Spaniard with his revolver.... At about the same time I also shot

one.... Two Spaniards leaped from the trenches ... not ten yards

away. As they turned to run I closed in and fired twice, missing the

first and killing the second [Oh, joy!].... At the same time I did

not know of Gould’s exploit, and I supposed my feat to be unique.”

Surely it requires courage, rare and noble courage, for a wealthy

graduate of Harvard University to boast in print that he shot a poor,

ignorant fleeing Spanish soldier—very probably a humble working man

drafted to war, torn from his weeping wife and children—that he shot

such a man, _in the back_. Oh, bliss—elation—ecstasy divine! “I _got_

him! with my _revolver_ too! in the _back_!” Manly pastime of an

American gentleman, a mongrel mixture of patrician and brute. Yes,

reader, Mr. Roosevelt, politician, was in the Cuban War—with a purpose;

and secured a military title and a “war record” worth at least 75,000

votes in his campaign for the governorship of New York which immediately

followed the war. For details consult _The Rough Rider_. With shrewd

patriotism, political foresight, rare courage—and girlish

bashfulness—Mr. Roosevelt’s picture is repeatedly presented in the book,

the poses expressing his usual audible modesty and ferocious gentleness.

Emerson finely says: “Every hero becomes a bore at last.”

(=18=) The noble Professor Paulsen (Berlin University) wrote:[198]

“Hate impels men to seek quarrels, and pride turns their heads....

Nay, arrogance and hatred are really always the signs of an

irritable, diseased self-consciousness.... [That] selfish, arrogant,

vain and narrow-minded self-conceit, which the flatterers of the

popular passion call patriotism.”

The distinguished Italian historian, G. Ferrero, has written:[199]

“Thus in destroying or creating, man can procure for himself strong

emotions, and persuade himself of his own superiority.... Two

passions have divided the human heart throughout the annals of human

history: the divine passion for creation, and the diabolical passion

for destruction.... Nineteenth-century man may seek after violent

and inebriating emotions that permit him to assert his superiority

over his fellows....”

Robert G. Ingersoll understood the hero-brute mongrel:

“Courage without conscience is a wild beast. Patriotism without

principle is the prejudice of birth, the animal attachment to

place.”

Thus Victor Hugo:[200]

“To be, materially, a great man, to be pompously violent, to reign

by virtue of the sword-knot and cockade ... to possess a genius for

brutality—this is to be great, if you will, but it is a coarse way

of being great.”

The cannon’s roar, the bayonet’s thrust, the crush of flesh, the splash

of blood,—such things in battle make men gentle, tender, gallant, even

heroic, fit subjects for the adoration of women.[201] For example: When

the Christian heroes captured Magdeburg:

“Now began a scene of massacre and outrage which history has no

language, and poetry no pencil, to portray. Neither the innocence of

childhood nor the helplessness of old age, neither youth nor sex,

neither rank nor beauty, could disarm the fury of the conquerors.

Wives were dishonored in the very arms of their husbands, daughters

at the feet of their parents, and the defenseless sex exposed to the

double loss of virtue and life.... Fifty-three women were found in

one church with their heads cut off. The Croats amused themselves by

throwing children into the flames, and Pappenheim’s Walloons with

stabbing infants at their mothers’ breasts.”[202]

But it may be said that those things were done far back in the

seventeenth century. Consider, then, the fact that in the French civil

war of 1871 the government’s noble heroes, having conquered the

revolutionists, took thousands of unarmed prisoners—men, women, and

children—to an open space at the city limits of Paris and shot them,

children and all; in many cases the brave, armed ruffians stood up rows

of helpless prisoners one behind the other and amused themselves by

testing their rifles on living human flesh, noting how many men, women

and children could be butchered with one bullet. Many of the “better

class,” “refined ladies and gentlemen,” “leading citizens,” conspicuous

by their elegance of manners and dress, were present _watching the fun_,

smiling encouragement and making helpful suggestions to the “civilized”

butchers.

And still more recently:

A British hero thus describes a “funny” incident in the South African

war: “Really, sir, I never saw anything quite so funny in all my life.

Just fancy, I saw a Kaffir woman pick up the headless body of her baby

and strap it on her back. Funny, oh, Lord! It makes me laugh when I

think of it now.” The same authority (the _Westminster Review_, quoted

by Walter Walsh) also gives the following case of Christian military

heroism: “A contingent of German scouts [in South Africa] took five

native women prisoners ... an officer ordered ten men to fix bayonets.

Five stood in front and five behind the women, and stabbed the women to

death.” _Ten armed, Christian heroes_ with bayonets ripping the breasts

of _five unarmed women_. Great! Isn’t it? At least it is war. One

scarcely knows which to despise the more—the soldiers or the lazy

parasites for whom they committed a thousand crimes of basest cruelty

and cowardice. Dr. Walter Walsh[203] lets the soldiers tell in their own

heroic language of their manly deeds—thus:

“‘Our progress was like the old-time forays in Scotland two

centuries ago.... We moved on from valley to valley ... burning,

looting and turning out the women and children to sit and cry beside

the ruins of their once beautiful farmsteads ... my men fetched

bundles of straw. The women cried, and the children stood holding to

them and looking with large frightened eyes at the burning house....

The people had thought we had come for refreshments, and one of them

went to get milk.... We then set the whole place on fire. They

dropped on their knees and prayed and sang, weeping bitterly the

while. One of the poor women went raving mad. When the flames burst

from the doomed place the poor woman threw herself on her knees,

tore open her bodice, and bared her breasts, screaming, “Shoot me,

shoot me, I’ve nothing to live for, now that my husband is gone, and

our farm is burnt, and our cattle taken!”’”

These foul deeds are samples of thousands.

“War, is it?” says Dr. Walsh. “Be it war: then an army is a manufactory

for cowards and a school for cowards.”

“A war hero,” says the distinguished Roman Catholic Bishop John

Spaulding,[204] “supposes a barbarous condition of the race; and

when all shall be civilized, they who know and love the most shall

be held to be the greatest and the best.”

And Robert Ingersoll thus:

“Every good man, every good woman, should try to do away with war,

to stop the appeal to savage force. Man in a savage state relies

upon his strength, and decides for himself what is right and what is

wrong.”[205]

“Nothing is plainer,” says Emerson, “than that sympathy with war is a

juvenile and temporary state.”[206]

Dr. John Fiske, historian and philosopher, makes the following

observations on the slow grand march from brutality to brotherhood.[207]

“For thousands of generations, and until very recent times, one of

the chief occupations of men has been to plunder, bruise and kill

one another. The ... ugly passions ... have had but little

opportunity to grow weak from disuse. The tender and unselfish

feelings, which are a later product of evolution, have too seldom

been allowed to grow strong from exercise ... the whims and

prejudices of militant barbarism are slow in dying out.... The

coarser forms of cruelty are disappearing and the butchery of men

has greatly diminished ... in the more barbarous times the hero was

he who had slain his thousands.... And thus we see what human

progress means. It means throwing off the brute inheritance,

gradually throwing it off through ages of struggle that are by and

by to make struggles needless. Man is slowly passing from a

primitive social state ... toward an ultimate social state in which

his character shall have become so transformed that nothing of the

brute can be detected in it. The ape and the tiger in human nature

will be extinct.”

How encouraging! We can confidently look forward to a time when not even

a pervert candidate for the presidency of a great Christian “republic”

will be either tiger enough to butcher a human being or peacock and

monkey enough to brag of doing so.

“Who loves war for war’s own sake

Is fool, or crazed, or worse.”—Tennyson.

“One of the commonest popular mistakes is to confound aggressiveness

and belligerency with genius. These qualities are almost in inverse

proportion.... But usually great energy and determination, and

especially combative qualities are associated with rather meagre

abilities.”[208]

There is really too much bull-dog greatness.

“No blood-stained victory, in story bright,

Can give the philosophical mind delight;

No triumph please, while rage and death destroy:

Reflection sickens at the monstrous joy.”[209]

“Cursed is the man, and void of law and right;

Unworthy property, unworthy light,

Unfit for public rule, or private care,—

That wretch, that monster, who delights in war.”[210]

Imagine a Sioux Indian chief, pagan Alexander, pagan Caesar, Christian

Napoleon, also the Christian bullies Emperor William and Theodore

Roosevelt, also the quiet Christ—imagine these seven “not only willing,

but anxious to fight,” mounted on foam-stained horses galloping across a

bloody battlefield strewn with wounded and slaughtered men and boys,

imagine these seven galloping, bravely and boisterously galloping,

waving red-stained swords, yelling, squawking, yawping, hurrahing for

war, “glorious” war—the iron-shod hoofs of their rushing horses crushing

into the breasts and faces of dead and dying young men and boys.

The savage Sioux, the immortal pagan brutes Alexander and Caesar, the

renowned Christian bullies Napoleon, William and Theodore—these six

“geniuses,” these coarse-grained, blood-stained egotists fit that

picture perfectly, as a shark fits the ocean, as a wolf fits the forest,

as a tiger fits the jungle, as a savage fits a cannibal feast,—as the

Devil fits Hell.

But Christ, Christ in whose breast lurked no tiger and no savage,—Christ

with a long sword, a hero’s butcher-knife in hand, plunging it into the

breast of his brothers, screaming like the “dee-lighted” brute, calling

it “great,” “splendid,” “bully!”—

Impossible!

But why impossible for Christ and “dee-lightful” for the other six?

Because, simply because, these six blood-lusting heroes are savage or at

best only civilized; but Christ was socialized.

Socialization opposes assassination—both wholesale and retail.

Christ is immortal—by his wide love and brotherhood.

The “great general” is promoted and immortalized for his narrow hates

and brilliant brutalities.

(=19=) Has not war been natural and necessary in the life of the human

race, and has not war been a potent factor in the intellectual

development of mankind?

Professor Ferrero has this to say:[211]

“Thus the duty of every well-meaning man today is to diffuse

knowledge of the fact that war no longer serves the purpose it once

served in the struggle for civilization.

“War necessary to civilization?”

Well, for a long time in the life of the human race nature was so ill

understood, man had such insufficient knowledge and control of nature,

that it was extremely difficult to get a living for all. Our ancestors

naturally quarreled; perhaps it was necessary for some of them to kill

others in order that some of them might live—ignorant as the people were

in those times of how to make nature yield bountifully and easily for

all. And no doubt the struggle developed the race—the part that did not

get killed. In those struggles were developed, at first, strong muscles,

skin-ripping claws or knife-like finger-nails, tusks in the mouth, and

thick skins; and, later, clubs, spears, cross-bows, bows-and-arrows; and

still later, rifles, cannon, battleships and lignite shells, and also

the methods and tactics of struggle;—all these were developed. Always,

too, cunning, deception, malignance, egoism, egotism, coarse-grained

dispositions, cheap ambitions, swaggering manners, fierce eyes, and the

soft, bull-like military voices and hero worship—all these were

developed.

The muscles and the mentality thus developed are still extremely useful.

Indeed, the mentality, developed in war (but neither wholly nor chiefly

in war), is worth all it cost, whatever it did cost, because with this

godlike mentality, and only with this mentality, we can now have the

higher and finer forms and phases of life, the pleasures that

distinguish man from the brutes; that is, with this mentality we can

have these more glorious forms of life: _Provided_, that the low

cunning, deception, malignance, egoism, egotism and the coarse-grained

strain of the ancient brute are not even yet too strong in our veins and

characters. In spite of one’s intelligence he may be “not only willing,

but anxious to fight.” Such a person may no longer have the skin-ripping

finger-claws, but he has the skin-ripping disposition that was developed

when the skin-ripping finger-claws were developed, and developed in the

same way.

Now, of course, we still need the muscle and the intelligence, every one

of us. But we do not any longer need the skin-rippers, or the tusks, or

the club, the “big stick,” the spear, the bow and arrow, the rifle and

the battleship; nor do we any longer need the arrogant egotism, the

cheap cunning, the prize-fighter ambitions or the tiger’s readiness to

take blood. Nor should we any longer need the ancient method of

struggle, every-fellow-for-himself, in the industrial process of life—in

a _rationally_ organized society, with our _present_ control of nature.

And we should no longer enjoy any of these brute means and methods if we

were civilized in the noblest sense, that is, if we were decently

socialized.

“Are you ready for the question?” This is the question:

Can you use, do you prefer to use—your developed mentality like a brute,

like a savage, or like a truth-seeking, socialized man? Are you “not

only willing, but anxious to fight,” or are the business and the methods

of the brute disgusting to you? What o’clock is it in your personal

evolution? Do you prefer a library to an armory, books rather than

bayonets? Is a fight natural, or necessary, or helpful in your personal

development? If a fight, actual part in a fight rifle-in-hand, is not

necessary to the preacher, the senator, the professor, the banker or the

manufacturer, why should it seem necessary in your case—and why should

you permit these “better class” citizens to have you ordered and led

around like a prize-winning bull-dog to fight in the international

prize-ring called the struggle for the world market? War as a developer

and a civilizer is a flat failure _in your case_ if the capitalist class

can seduce you for fifty cents a day to fight for a foreign market for

American porter-house steak while you and your father and mother are fed

on third-rate meat, beans, cheap syrup and mock-coffee without cream.

Brother, you may indeed be a “brave boy,” and a “good shot,” and you may

have heroically stained your hands in other men’s blood; but, really,

the “upper class” have marked you as an easy victim, a useable cheap

“guy” of the “lower class.”

(=20=) John Ruskin keenly appreciated the capitalist’s craftiness and

the workingman’s buffoonery in “a war for civilization.” He wrote:[212]

“Capitalists, when they do not know what to do with their money,

persuade the peasants that the said peasants want guns to shoot each

other with. The peasants accordingly borrow guns, out of the

manufacture of which the capitalists get a percentage, and men of

science much amusement and credit. Then the peasants shoot a certain

number of each other until they get tired, and burn each other’s

houses down in various places. Then they put the guns back into

towns, arsenals, etc., in ornamental patterns, and the victorious

party put also some ragged flags in churches. And then the

capitalists tax both annually, ever afterwards, to pay interest on

the loan of the guns and powder.”

The Italian historian Ferrero sees the swinish snout of the ruling class

greed in the wars of three thousand years of “civilization.” He

writes:[213]

“During those thirty centuries from which dates our historical

knowledge, war has been more a social system than a cruel pastime

for kings—the first most violent and brutal means adopted by ruling

minorities to acquire wealth.”

(=21=) Is it said that wars always have been and always will be?

That wars always have been is an unproved proposition.[214]

That “wars always will be” depends upon the working class. The clouds of

confusion are clearing from the mind of the working class. A revolution

is ripening in the toilers’ thought on war.[215]

(=22=) Is it said by the leading citizens that wars are necessary in

order to kill off the surplus population?

If wars are necessary for such purpose, why not have Mr. Leading Citizen

and his friends classified as a part of the surplus population on the

ground that they are criminally unsocial, and have them taken out to the

battlefield and forced to shoot one another? The theory of having the

surplus population killed off would thus quickly lose its popularity

with the “upper classes.”

(=23=) It may be said that the Napoleonic wars removed more than

7,500,000 men from competition in the labor market;[216] and it might be

argued by the working man that since war reduces the competition among

the workers, the working class should on this account welcome war.

Let us see: If four men are competing for two jobs, should two of them

be satisfied, and even glad, to have the competition for the jobs

reduced by having the other two climb upon their backs and cease to bid

for the jobs? It should be kept distinctly in mind that the workers who

do not go to war support those who do go to war—always, everywhere,

absolutely no exceptions.

(=24=) There is a somewhat popular, and simian, assumption that in

war—even in beautiful Christian war—the results are “the survival of the

fittest,” meaning, in the case of modern wars, the survival of “the more

highly civilized,” also the biologically “best.”

Of course a “bullet carefully selects its victim.”

And do not statesmen tell us on the Fourth of July all about the

“splendid intelligence” and the “noble spirit” and the “superiority” of

the “brave boys who _died_ in battle”?

Does not the recruiting officer try to get the _soundest_ men for

slaughter?

Let the orthodox worshippers answer: Is pagan Japan more fit for

survival than Christian Russia?

What show for survival would Belgium have in a contest with Turkey,

Spain or Russia?[217]

(=25=) A kindred and stupid assumption in all wars is this: _Might makes

right._

But if might makes right between two warring nations, then why does not

might make right when a strong man by force compels a weaker man to hand

over his pocket-book?

(=26=) A Scotch philosopher on the “brave boys”:[218]

“Omitting much, let us impart what follows: Horrible enough! A whole

march-field strewed with shell-splinters, cannon-shots, ruined

tumbrils and dead men and horses; stragglers remaining not so much

as buried. And those red mound-heaps: aye, there lie the Shells of

Men, out of which the life and virtue have been blown; and now they

are swept together and crammed down out of sight, like blown

Eggshells!... How has thy breast, fair plain, been defaced and

defiled! The green sward is torn up, hedge-rows and pleasant

dwellings blown away with gunpowder, and the kind seed-field lies a

desolate Place of Skulls. Nevertheless, Nature is at work ... all

that gore and carnage will be shrouded in, absorbed into manure....

“What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net purport and

upshot of the war? To my own knowledge, for example, there dwell and

toil, in the British village of Dumrudge, usually some five hundred

souls. From these, by certain ‘natural enemies’ of the French, there

are successively selected, during the French war, say thirty

able-bodied men: Dumrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and

nursed them; she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up

to manhood, and even trained them up to crafts, so that one can

weave, another build, another hammer, and the weakest can stand

under thirty stone avoirdupois. Nevertheless, amid much weeping and

swearing, they are selected; all dressed in red and shipped away, at

the public charges, some two thousand miles, or say only to the

south of Spain, and fed there till wanted. And now to that same spot

in the south of Spain, are thirty similar French artisans—in like

manner wending their ways; till at length, after infinite effort,

the two parties come into actual juxtaposition, and thirty stand

facing thirty, each with his gun in hand. Straightway the word

‘Fire!’ is given, and they blow the souls out of one another; and in

the place of sixty brisk, useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead

carcasses, which it must bury, and anew shed tears for.

“Had these men any quarrel? Busy as the Devil is, not the smallest!

They lived far enough apart; were the entirest strangers; nay, in so

wide a universe, there was even, unconsciously, by commerce, some

mutual helpfulness between them.

“How then?

“Simpleton! Their governors had fallen out; and instead of shooting

one another, had these poor blockheads shoot.”

(=27=) In that part of biology treating of parasitic life the technical

terms “host” and “guest” are used. The host is the living thing that

furnishes a living not only for itself, but also for the life-filching

intruder which fastens itself upon the body of the “host.” The intruder,

the robber residing upon the body of the “host,” is the “guest,” that

is, the parasite.

Now one of the strangest things in the entire live world is this: When

in some life-forms a certain stage of parasitism is reached, when the

guest has permanently fastened itself upon the body of the host and the

host has become thoroughly accustomed to and adjusted to the parasitic

arrangement, the host stupidly inclines to _defend the parasitic guest_.

It is remarkable (and discouraging) that this law of nature, this

tendency, is found in operation in the social life of man. For thousands

of years multitudes of men, women and children have been held in the

grip of this law, mentally strangled in their effort to think Justice

and Freedom; the vast majority of the working class are always quickly

and easily rendered “peaceful,” “law-abiding,” and “satisfied,” and

“patriotic.” Millions of chattel slaves have “loyally” defended their

parasitic masters. Millions of serfs have “loyally” defended their

landlords-and-masters. And today tens of millions of wage-earners

strongly incline to “loyally” defend their parasitic employer masters.

Moreover, the employer, by craftily praising the wage-earner, can induce

the wage-earner to ignorantly, blindly, stupidly praise and defend not

only the employer, but also the whole wage-system of robbery and social

parasitism. Not only that, the employers, by controlling certain

institutions such as the school, the library, the press, and the lecture

platform, can have the wage-earning hosts taught to teach their own

children to defend and praise the parasitic employer guests and the

parasitic social system under which their lives are belittled by being

sucked up as rent, interest and profits and fed to the parasitic

capitalist class.

What the employer calls a contented and loyal working man is simply a

stupidly acquiescent “host,” biologically considered. And a working

class man with a rifle in his hand defending the class that, as social

parasites, rob the working class—such a workingman is the best possible

illustration of the fact that the great laws of nature are careless of

the so-called “dignity of man,” totally careless of the ridiculous

spectacle of a human being reverting to the behavior of creatures far,

far down below even the simian cousins of the human race. Nature does

not care whether a man behaves like a crab or a sucker, a tiger or a

monkey, a sycophantic slave or a defiantly self-respecting man.[219]

(=28=) Toward the prideless working class as a social “host” defending

the ruling class, the defended ruling class take nature’s contemptuous

attitude. And the working-class soldier as professional defender of the

parasitic capitalist class, tho’ much flattered, is cordially despised.

What the United States government thinks of the soldier may be seen, for

example, in the fact that a Civil Service employee, in the Weather

Department, travelling about on duty on long trips, is allowed one

dollar, and even more than a dollar per meal in his expense account;

while the “brave boys” in khaki who agree to stand ready to butcher

their brothers for a living are lucky if they get a thirty-cent meal at

any time. In this connection the following from Mr. Taft’s Report as

Secretary of War for 1907 (p. 92–93) is of interest. Under the head of

“Rations” we find:

“The present ration, while _liberal and suitable_, falls

considerably short of the Navy ration in variety. Butter, milk and

molasses, or _syrup, at least_, should be _added_ to the garrison

ration. These are articles _almost_ necessary in the preparation of

desserts.... They are part of the ration in Alaska and they should

be everywhere.”[220]

The present ration “liberal and suitable,” yet lacking butter, milk and

molasses and even syrup. Such things are “_almost_ necessary!”

The reckless epicureanism thus proposed by “the great secretary” in

offering some _cheap syrup_ as an _addition_ to the _dessert_ gives us

an illuminating suggestion as to the War Department’s estimate of the

cheapness of the hungry greenhorn who can be lured into the rulers’

“service” with cheap syrup. An _ordinary_ house fly can be coaxed into a

trap with syrup—good syrup.

The United States soldier’s meals are estimated by the War Department to

be worth six and two-thirds cents apiece, as will appear from the

following passage taken from the Report of the War Department for 1907,

page 85: “The pay of the private, at present, is 43 and one-third cents

a day. Adding the [daily] cost of his ration as 20 cents, clothing

allowance and right to quarters each at 15 cents, and his remaining

privileges at, say, six and two-thirds cents, his present pay still

falls 25 cents short of the average laborer throughout the United

States.” This is the War Department’s estimate of the soldier’s average

total daily income in cash and allowances, made by the Department in

order to compare the soldier’s incentive with that of the _farm hand and

general day laborer_. On page 84 of the same Report is the Government’s

estimate of the average daily income of the “farm and the general

laborer”: For 1902 the average for these two classes was (according to

the Report) $1.20 a day; and “allowing for the increase in wages since

1902” _the government’s estimate for the “farm and general laborer” in

1907 was $1.25 per day_. This, the Report says, is $7.50 per month

better than the soldier’s incentive in 1907.

It is matter of common knowledge that the United States soldiers and

marines are forced to spend a considerable portion of their cash incomes

for food that the Government is too stingy to furnish. That is, the

ruling class have such contempt for their human “watch dogs” that they

furnish them a meaner living than is received by the most meanly paid

group of the working class over whom they stand guard and stand ready to

murder if they strike and struggle for more.

In the same Report, under the heading “Quarters,” is this:

“The fact that he is living in a $40,000 building impresses the

soldier less if he finds in it only iron bunks, cheap chairs, and

unpainted tables—the absolute necessities for his use and nothing

for his comfort. The barrack is the home of the soldier while he

remains in the service. It is possible that he might think oftener

of continuing there if it presented more the appearance of a home.

So far as the squad rooms are concerned, mere room adornment is

neither necessary nor advisable [!] ... The squad rooms are sleeping

rooms only. There is space only for bunks, lockers and a few chairs;

but these last might in part be something more than the present

cheap and uncomfortable article. But it is the reading and amusement

rooms that are meant particularly. There is no reason why they

should not be made habitable. [Indeed! Really, Mr. Taft! How daring

of you!] A few barrack chairs and rough tables, with possibly a

billiard table, ordinarily constitute their furniture now. There is

little to tempt a man to stay there. [“Tempt” is good.] ... These

rooms might be made comfortable and pleasant. A rug on the floor, a

few prints on the walls, substantial chairs, a few writing tables

and writing materials could all be supplied at no serious expense to

the United States.... There is nothing degenerating in such

furnishings; there is much that is homelike.” [Like _whose_ home?]

“A few prints”—not many of course, and cheap ones, let us say about ten

cents each; and “a rug”—a dull, unexciting mat of rags—simply these and

nothing more, lest the degenerating influences of fine art should soften

the syrup-baited lads’ blood-lusting temper too much for the more

glorious art of butchering. As Mr. Taft profoundly remarks, “There is

little to tempt a man to _stay_ there” at present; but, as he

sagaciously suggests, about 98 cents expended in baiting the bunk-room

trap with a few original Italian, or, say, Dutch, masterpieces, and a

few imported Persian fascinations of emotional red—this 98 cents for the

seductions of fine art added to a nickel’s worth of skimmed milk and

molasses _would_ be an effective allurement for the khaki heroes to

re-enlist and “stay there.”

Recently Congressmen and Senators advanced their own salaries from

$5,000 up to $7,500 per year. This is one sign of self-respect. This

advance of $2,500 per year will of course be sufficient to provide a

fair quality of syrup and skimmed milk for the statesmen’s dessert.

Does it seem probable that cheap molasses added to the dessert of the

soldier’s ration and a few ten-cent prints hung on the walls of the

soldiers’ living rooms will attract Taft’s sons or Roosevelt’s sons or

the sons of Senators and Congressmen and the sons of the “better class

leading citizens” to the dreary, barren barracks provided for men who

stand ready to slaughter for less than 50 cents a day and cheap “keep”?

Says Major-General J. F. Bell, Chief of Staff:[221]

“That men enlist believing they will love the life is likely, but

their mental picture is oftentimes so different from the reality

that disappointment is the almost inevitable consequence.”

Fifty-eight per cent. of all the desertions from the military service in

the year 1906 were desertions of men in their first year of service, and

considerably more than half of these desertions were during the first

six months of service.[222]

_Twenty-six times as many_ enlisted men in our army committed suicide in

1908 as in 1907, and _thirty-nine times_ as many of the “tempted” and

trapped young men in our army committed suicide in 1909 as in 1907. No

suicides are reported for the years 1901 to 1906 inclusive. The record

for the three years 1907, ’08, ’09 is 1, 26, 39, respectively.[223]

It would seem likely that a young fellow whose loathing for the army

life had become unendurable would desert rather than commit suicide to

escape the hideous business. But no doubt the following line from the

Report of the Secretary of War, Mr. Wright, in 1908, will help explain

somewhat the increase of suicide in the army. Mr. Wright says (page 19):

“An elaborate system ... now almost perfected is well calculated to

secure _swift and certain apprehension and punishment of deserters_ and

will ... have a marked effect in reducing the crime to a minimum.”[224]

An illustrative feature of this “highly perfected system” is to furnish

the run-away soldiers’ pictures to the police of a city to which the

lads can be traced, and offer the police $50 a head cash for the arrest

of the soldiers. The $50 results in a human “bloodhound” search. This

“highly perfected system” makes a young man’s enlistment a good deal

like swallowing a barbed fish-hook. A great number of the boys go

insane. In 1908 _insanity ranked third_ in the long list of causes of

discharge from the army for disability.[225]

Army service, even in time of peace, is not exactly a picnic dream. On

this point General Frederick Funston offers some helpful information,

thus:[226]

“There is too much of the everlasting grind of drill and practice

marches, and at some of the posts too much ‘fatigue’ in the way of

keeping the reservations in apple-pie order. It is pretty much of a

shock to many of the men who have entered the army service to taste

the delights of military life to find that, from the standpoint of

the post-commanders, the most important part of their training

consists in cutting brush and weeds.”

In his Report of 1907, page 14, Mr. Taft said:

“A noteworthy feature in the recruitment of the Army under present

conditions is the increasing number of men who fail to re-enlist and

of those who leave the Army before the expiration of their term of

service by purchasing their discharge.... The fact cannot be

disregarded nor explained away that for some reason or other the

life of the soldier as at present constituted is not one to attract

the best and most desirable class of men.”

In the excerpt just quoted Mr. Taft makes it pretty clear that in his

judgment the present enlisted men in the “regular” army are “undesirable

citizens.” Hence the “great secretary’s” recommendation of

milk-and-syrup additions to the soldier’s dessert, a few cheap prints on

the walls, and a coat of paint on the tables used by the soldiers—in

order to catch a better and more desirable class of men; that is, a

better and more desirable class of workingmen; for be it remembered the

Government does not expect to get any well-fed capitalist class men into

the army by means of cheap syrup and cheap milk and cheap ‘print’

pictures and the like. “The soldier in peace,” says the Report just

quoted, “is better fed and better clothed than the average man of _his

class_ in civil life.”[227] How interesting and instructive!

In 1905 almost 73 per cent., and in 1906 almost 74 per cent. of the

applicants for examination for enlistment in our army “were rejected as

lacking either mental, moral or physical qualifications.”[228]

President Roosevelt, in his Message of December, 1907, virtually

ridiculed the patriotism of the men in the army and those who may

contemplate entering the army. He wrote:

“The prime need of our present Army and Navy is to secure and retain

competent non-commissioned officers. The difficulty rests

fundamentally on the question of pay.”

“_Fundamentally on the question of pay._” How suggestively patriotic!

Did Colonel Roosevelt join the army for the cash there was in it? “Oh,

certainly not.” But why should he insultingly say that, for other men,

joining the army is fundamentally a question of cold cash?

The War Department, with Mr. Taft at the head, in 1907, joined Mr.

Roosevelt in his sneering contempt for the soldier’s motive in joining

the army. The Report runs:[229]

“Under a voluntary system men enlist either to aid their country or

to promote their own ends; that is, through self-sacrifice or

self-interest.... Self-sacrifice of this sort is patriotism, an

emotion necessary to arouse.... To keep it through long periods of

peace at a pitch high enough to maintain an army would be

impossible.... _Self-interest_ is, therefore, the _only_ cause of

enlistment necessary to consider; ...”[227]

It thus appears that, in the judgment of the “great secretary,” now

President, patriotism is not at all a matter of brains, of reason

steadily sustained by logic, but is, on the contrary, a matter of

emotion, passion, “brain-storm,” induced with fife and drum and

sustained with godlike sky-climbing aspiration to have one’s stomach

filled with “butter, milk and molasses, or syrup, at least”—as

“dessert.” The two Presidents, the anti-labor injunction judge and the

lion-hunting monkey murderer,[230] agree that what _looks_ like

patriotism in the long-service “regular” is after all simply a matter of

getting less than fifty cents a day and “keep.” Of course, such things

as this are not mentioned on the Fourth of July nor in campaign speeches

when the “great secretary” or his chattering predecessor is courting the

‘brave boys’ for their votes.

(=29=) When a young man joins the army or the navy he virtually agrees

to pocket his pride and submit to a series of insults from his

“superior” officers for a term of years. The recruiting officer is to

some degree, at least temporarily, a man of pleasant manners, and the

callow patriot taking the bait in the recruiting office is treated

alluringly. But when the youth signs his name in the books and becomes a

soldier patriot, matters take a change. It is a case of being “stuck” or

“stung.” For following the hour of his enlistment, humble, prideless

submission to strutting, swaggering bosses is the soldier’s portion.

From “superior” officers he must meekly accept insults for which, in

private life, he would promptly knock a man down. In the service he must

bend his neck and take the yoke for years. Here is a sample of the

spirit of the haughty airs assumed by the “superiors.”

Mr. Taft, speaking as Secretary of War, February 14, 1908, to the young

men at West Point Military School, said:

“The plainest of your duties is to keep your mouths shut and obey

orders. As a soldier you must forego the privilege of free

speech.... You will meet with injustices, others will get all to

which they seem entitled. Your wives will have heart-burnings. Your

children will have heart-burnings. In spite of all that you must do

your duty, honestly and devotedly.”

Here is a soldier’s letter:[231]

“... We are supposed to work eight hours a day, but we get dismissed

when the officers see fit to let us go—all for fifty-two cents a

day. The negroes working at Panama get more money and are better

treated than the enlisted men out here. Our ‘little brown brothers’

are treated better over here. And to cap the climax, over comes a

high statesman [Mr. Taft?] and makes a speech to a mob of our

‘little brown brothers’ and tells them not to judge the Americans by

the enlisted men, as the enlisted men are composed of the roughest

elements in the States....”

President David Starr Jordan (Leland Stanford University) writes of the

contemptuous treatment of the men in the ranks by the “superior”

officers:[232]

“One soldier [in the Philippines] says, ‘If the United States were

on fire from end to end, I would never raise my hand to put it out.’

Another would ‘toss in a blanket the officials at Washington, as we

toss a cheating corporal.’ Another says in print, referring to the

abuse of the soldiers by their superiors in pay: ‘Yes, I knew that

war would be hell before I got into it. But I did not know that war

would be hell deliberately and fanatically inflicted. I expected to

sleep in mud puddles with my head on a stone for a pillow, and go

hungry for days on forced marches and away from a base of supplies.

But I never dreamed that I would have to sleep in a leaky and

exposed shed when there was plenty of good shelter elsewhere, and

when thirty officers had fine apartments in which there was room for

five hundred men; neither did I expect to be fed on coffee-grounds

and foul canned meat for weeks when we were right next to a base of

supplies, and when our officers lived on the choice of the

commissary’s department.’”

But the question naturally occurs to one: Why shouldn’t the working

class soldiers be treated thus? Surely it is to be expected that the

great majority class will _get what they permit_ from their “superiors.”

Note how the soldier boys are snubbed and bull-dozed in the German army.

Says Dr. Walsh:[233]

“In a trial reported Dec. 17, 1903, a lieutenant of the infantry has

been convicted of 618 cases of maltreatment and 57 cases of improper

treatment of soldiers under him, and a sergeant in another regiment

has been convicted of 1,520 cases of maltreatment and 100 cases of

improper treatment.... The men deposed were so afraid, that nobody

ventured to complain.”

There is a yearly average of 7,000 desertions from the English regular

army. Quite naturally. Frozen, starved and despised, the thirty-cent

patriots make a break for bread and freedom from the “noble” snobbery of

the aristocratic pets in control.

The record of desertions from the American Army is, for the years 1907,

1908, and 1909, respectively, 4,534, 4,525, 5,023.

(=30=) How is it possible to interest young men in the brutal business

of war?

There are some paragraphs on this matter in the chapter following, “For

Mother and the Boys.” Here the matter of military parades is suggested

for consideration by “father and the boys.”

Sometimes the boys’ interest in war begins in so simple a thing as a

parade. A military parade is a trap—for the working class. A writer in

the New York _Tribune_, April 22, 1908, makes several artful suggestions

as to the value of military parades in snaring young toilers into the

army. He suggests:

That “parades, so far as circumstances permit, be through or

near ... sections [of the city] ... where they may encourage

enlistment among a ... class of prospective recruits ... instead of

on Riverside Drive [where the ‘better classes’ live], to which the

public has access with difficulty and which is not frequented by the

class of young men to whom the National Guard appeals.... These

suggestions reflect the views of many citizens ... with whom the

writer has conferred.”

The writer also points out that bright-colored uniforms for the paraders

have excellent effect on the imagination of the prospective recruits.

There can be no doubt that the masters are well aware of the hypnotizing

influence of marching loud, gay-colored bands, festively uniformed

infantry, and fascinating cavalrymen through the streets where they may

be seen and admired by the working class, admired by many thousands of

ill-fed, ill-clothed, meanly sheltered young men and women whose lives

are dull and sad, consumed with the killing monotony and hurry of the

factory. A cavalry captain in the United States Army, a part of whose

business is to wheedle the gullibles into the dreary army life, has this

to say of parades:

“The good influence in popularizing the army by having it stationed

in large cities is exemplified in London. The various guards and

other bodies of troops marching through the streets, preceded by

their gorgeously dressed bands, all the uniforms recalling

traditions of brave, gallant deeds, gain friends every time.”

The best known butcher of modern times (Napoleon) also understood this

matter.

“You call these toys? Well, you manage men with toys!” said that

red-stained egoist, speaking of the ribbons and crosses and other

gewgaws of his Legion of Honor.[234]

When at the street-side a boy of seven, watching a military parade,

shouts in gleeful admiration and claps his small hands in happy hurrahs,

Mars, the bloody god of war, begins to fasten his clutches on the little

fellow, the child’s imagination takes fire with visions and hopes, his

soul begins to thrill with the kill-lust, then and there he is being

prepared to enlist—when he “gets big.” How different it would be for the

small boys if, when soldiers were marched through a city, these armed

slayers of their kind should march at night with all lights out and with

the rumble of drums and the frequent boom of cannon in the darkness

making the air tremble. The working class mother might well consider

this matter. She has all to lose.[235]

In the average parade-and-review the workingman is made ridiculous. Did

you ever see prominent bankers or other “better class” business men in

large numbers trudging along afoot in the middle of the dusty or muddy

street, marching and sweating miles and miles past a gay-colored

reviewing-stand to be “reviewed” and grinned at by a bunch of

sugar-coated crooks in the “reviewers’ stand”? No! And you never will.

The trudging and the sweating, as usual, are handed over to the “common

people,” chiefly the wage-slaves. When the “very _best_ people” do take

part in the parading before the “grand-stand,” they ride, up front, in

carriages or on horseback. They laugh and chat and gaily enjoy the

stupid gullibility of the working men as the humble fellows are thus

“bell-weathered” through the dirt and heat. On the occasion of a recent

great parade in New York City a well-known capitalist gliding along in a

handsome automobile swaggeringly called out, “We’ve got the ships, we’ve

got the men, and we’ve got the money too!” A seedy, hungry-looking young

man proudly answered back, “You bet we have!” On the same occasion

thousands of ten-dollar-a-week clerks and factory workers were charmed

into hand-clapping as the gaudily dressed soldiers marched by carrying

the very rifles they were ready to use to crush the admiring toilers if

they should strike and struggle for justice.

The usual “review” is a pompous occasion on which hundreds or thousands

of meek, ill-fed, cotton-lined, callous-palmed working men “hoof it” for

an hour or so past a “reviewing-stand” occupied by some grinning,

well-fed, silk-lined, lily-fingered, decorated “great” men who scorn

even the thought of the working class having a political party of their

own for their own self-defense.

(=31=) A great many fathers and sons are thinking a good deal about an

“era of peace” to be ushered in mainly through the good offices of peace

societies. The Hague Peace Conference is, in the judgment of many

people, “the hope of the world.”[236]

The first meeting of the Hague Conference was called—in Jesus’ name, of

course—by the most infamous blood-stained butcher of feeble old men and

women and thoughtful, aspiring young men and women, in all the

world,—that is, by the Tsar of Russia. The sincerity of this crowned

murderer may in some measure be realized by a brief study of his gross

inconsistency in the year 1903 and in the years immediately preceding.

(See Chapter Six, and Sixth Illustration.)

The second meeting of the Society was held in 1907, and another is

scheduled for the year 1915.

The serene confidence the world’s rulers have in the Society is easily

seen in their frantic efforts to increase their armies and navies. They

are bleeding their people white with taxes to make the enormously

expensive preparations for what is likely to be the most vast and

terrible butchering of the working class by the working class that has

ever horrified mankind. Secretly the crowned and uncrowned ruling

butchers of the world have nothing but contempt for the Conference at

The Hague. Very naturally, however, they are all shrewd enough to make a

large and beautiful profession of faith and desire for peace through the

Conference, while at the same time they all “want for soldiers young men

who are not only willing, but anxious to fight.” The man who inaugurated

the Conference promptly scorned the Conference when he believed his

interests would be served by a war with Japan. The famous French

anti-militarist G. Hervé shrewdly pointed out the hopelessly weak place

in the “authority” of the capitalist Hague Peace Court:[237]

“Governments so far are unanimous in _withdrawing from The Hague

Tribunal all questions affecting ‘the honor and vital interests of the

country,’_ a convenient formula permitting them to _refuse_ arbitration

when they please.”

And here is a frank admission:

“The Hague Tribunal has nothing compulsory about it; all its members

are left in perfect freedom as to whether they submit questions to

it or not.... In all treaties hitherto the Great Powers have

retained power to withhold submission of questions affecting ‘their

honor or vital interest.’”[238]

“Honor and vital interests,”—convenient phrase—a matter of business—cash

and commerce, “plain dollars and cents,”—under capitalism.

It is of interest to note that another peace society, The Peace Society,

founded in London in 1816, has been busy for almost a hundred years

trying to mop up the blood, so to speak, never daring, or not knowing

how, to uncover the fundamental cause of war.

In at least some respects a “Conference” of The Hague Peace Society is,

itself, hopelessly ridiculous and, in appearance, wickedly insincere.

For example, at the “Conference” of 1907 the delegates learnedly and

laughably discussed the “Humanizing of War,”[239] and, after much

brain-fagging effort, the delegates to the fakirs’ feast duly and

heavily concluded as follows:

“It is especially prohibited to employ poison or poisoned arms.”

WELL BE IT KNOWN:—

THAT KLEPTOMANIACS’ PERIODICAL LUNCHEON, OR “THIEVES’ SUPPER,” CALLED

THE HAGUE CONFERENCE, WOULD HAVE NO MORE WORK TO DO FOR THE NEXT

THOUSAND YEARS, WOULD NEVER AGAIN HAVE ANYTHING WHATEVER TO MEET FOR, IF

ALL BULLETS AND ALL SWORDS AND ALL BAYONETS USED IN ALL THE ARMIES WERE

DIPPED IN A DEADLY POISON; FOR, IN THAT CASE, THE WORKING CLASS OF THE

WHOLE WORLD WOULD FLATLY REFUSE TO VOLUNTEER OR BE DRAFTED TO SERVE IN

ANY WAR ANYWHERE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. AND, OF COURSE, THE

SOFT-VOICED, WELL-FED “HUMANIZERS OF WAR” WOULD NOT GO TO WAR—POISON OR

NO POISON. THE UNIVERSAL USE OF POISONED BULLETS, SWORDS AND BAYONETS

WOULD MAKE WAR ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE, BECAUSE THE INAUGURATION OF SUCH A

POLICY WOULD MAKE THE WORKING CLASS THINK.

A thinking slave is the terror of the plunder-bloated rulers of the

world—always.

When the workers once think about war they will promptly do two things:

_First_, They will refuse to go to war;

_Second_, They will find the cause of war, and will remove it.

Of course, it requires the deep and prayerful investigation of “great”

and “prominent Christian” gentlemen in peace conference assembled to

discover that it _is_ wrong for men to butcher men with swords and

bullets dipped in poison, but that it is _not_ wrong for men to destroy

men with clean lead and clean steel, their souls charged with hate as an

adder’s fang jetting venom into its victim’s flesh; to discover that it

_is_ wrong to have soldiers thrust poison-dipped bayonets into one

another’s stomachs, but that it is _not_ wrong for a “Christian business

men’s” government to feed its soldiers on poisoned canned beef. The poor

dupes who butcher one another at the word of command are, of course, too

“common” and ignorant to understand the logical legerdemain of these

prayerfully discovered distinctions; but the learned and prominent

gentlemen in peace conference assembled, far, far from the battle line,

smoking 50–cent cigars, quaffing the world’s costliest champagne—these

noble braves, these bottle-scarred heroes, can tell us all about it.

Certainly.

With thoughtful tenderness many Christian governments, influenced by

peace societies, have made an international agreement that, in case of

war, no bullet used weighing 14 ounces or less shall be an explosive

bullet,—that is, a bullet that easily expands, flattens and shatters

_when it strikes flesh_. However, these same “more refined and

civilized” nations are all at perfect liberty to use a cannon bullet, or

shell, weighing hundreds of pounds, charged with explosives,

flesh-tearing materials and deadly gases, arranged with time-fuses in

order to explode over the heads of, or among, a great body of men on the

field, or in the midst of men when it has pierced the armor of a war

vessel.

It is not definitely known how these wise Christian statesmen and

scholars discovered that a three-hundred pound explosive bullet might

properly and lovingly be used by gently sensitive Christian butchers,

but that a thirteen-ounce explosive bullet might not with propriety be

used by these loving followers of the gentle Jesus. Possibly the

discovery was made by some deep-seeing pot-house statesmen and scholars

after a prayerful study of the Sermon on the Mount,—with champagne on

the side.

War is “human” or “inhuman” according to the orations, discussions,

confusions, delusions, conclusions, decisions and provisions of these

perfumed, patent-leathered fighters after a long fast—on terrapin,

porter-house and “Mumm’s Extra Dry.”

The eloquence of the Hague Peace Conference literature concerning its

long list of extremely “glorious achievements” would lead the

uninstructed to suppose that till this organization came on the field

there had never been a dispute settled without war. It modestly claims

everything in view.

Note here the fact that:

_“There is no period known to history in which instances are not found

of arbitration as a substitute for force, and we can only wonder when we

consider the historical antiquity of the former that the latter should

have maintained its hold so long, so constantly and so fiercely.”_[240]

“Where are thy portents, Peace?

What sign on land or sea

Of thy great coming, of thy rule to be?

The fighting and the drumming do not cease;

Gun-thunder smites the air,

And shakes the earth beneath.

Bait we not the war-dogs in their lair,

And toil at harvesting of dragon’s teeth?...

Must it forever be a poet’s dream—

The land secure, the mind at rest,

The cut-throat tamed and laboring at an oar,

The braggart silent and ashamed,

The toiler as a monarch seem,

The woman with her baby at her breast,

Aglow with joy that war shall be no more?...”

—J. I. C. Clarke, in New York _Times_.

Prominent people—prominent chiefly because they are elevated upon the

shoulders of the working class—have been _talking_ about peace for a

long time. But peace born of _justice_, peace founded upon

_fairness_,—that is neither thought of nor talked of, by the ruling

class, in the pompous and pretentious peace conferences; it is not on

the program.

Father and the boys of the working class will themselves have to place

peace on the program of mankind. And one of the first things to do is to

bring up the subject of war and peace in every working class

organization in the world—_for discussion_. (See pages 272, 283–289.

Index: “Carnegie.”)

=A Special Notice to the Hague Peace Society:=

As to “limited armaments”—whether the swords are long or short, the

working class more and more clearly see that you intend that the

working class shall continue to do all the fighting in case of war.

=A Special Challenge to the Hague Peace Society:=

That all delegates to the Conferences shall discuss, not the

problems of “disarmament,” but (1) the problem of striking the bands

from the wrists of the wage-slaves; (2) the artificial arbitrary

restriction placed upon the consuming power of the wage-earners, out

of which fact grows the imminent world-struggle for the

“world-market.”

=A Second Special Challenge to the Hague Peace Society:=

That the Society shall frankly announce in all its Conferences, in

all its Reports, in all its leaflets, in all its lectures and

sermons, that the Socialist Party’s method of preventing war is to

frankly and loudly WARN THE VICTIMS OF WAR, the working class, just

what war always means to the working class; and that this method has

succeeded in preventing two wars in recent years in cases where the

Hague Peace Society was powerless.

=A Third Special Challenge to the Hague Peace Society:=

That the Society shall explain why the Capitalist masters of the

Hague Peace Society will not _permit_ their vassals in the

Conferences to accept the Second Challenge.

[Illustration: THE BENEFICIARIES OF HELL, FLIRTING WITH “HEAVEN”]

The author of WAR—WHAT FOR?, in the summer of 1910, attended a

National Peace Conference in New York City. The Conference was

attended by some of the most distinguished peace-wishers in the

United States, including capitalists, orators and college

professors. The author was given the floor to address the

Convention. Everything went well until the author began to urge that

all who want peace should make every possible effort to WARN THE

VICTIMS of war, the working class, of what war means to the working

class. Instantly there was manifest discomfort all through the

audience, and very soon the chairman left his seat, came close to

the speaker and urged that the speech be concluded at once. No other

speaker was thus interrupted.

[Illustration]

-----

Footnote 182:

Charles Seignobos: _Political History of Europe Since 1815_, p. 819.

Footnote 183:

Similar practice was common in our Civil War.

Footnote 184:

But see Index: “Four Historic Events.”

Footnote 185:

May 21, 1909. Italics mine. G. R. K.

Footnote 186:

Report of the United States Pullman Strike Commission: Carroll D.

Wright, Chairman.

Footnote 187:

See Chapter Ten on “What Shall We Do About It?”

Footnote 188:

See article by Labor Commissioner C. D. Wright: _North American

Review_, June, 1902; also R. T. Ely: _Outlines of Economics_, Edition

of 1908, pp. 397–98.

Footnote 189:

_International Journal of Ethics_, April, 1908.

Footnote 190:

C. D. Wright: _Practical Sociology_, p. 38.

Footnote 191:

See Report of Secretary of War, 1908, p. 155. Italics mine. G. R. K.

Footnote 192:

An excellent edition of the law with notes, analysis, history, and

suggestions by Mr. Ernest Untermann, can be had for 5 cents, of any

Socialist literature agent.

Footnote 193:

London, March 21, 1908.

Footnote 194:

Miss Jane Addams: _Newer Ideals of Peace_, p. 232.

Footnote 195:

_Civil Liberty_, pp. 116–117.

Footnote 196:

G. Stanley Hall: _Adolescence_, Vol. I., pp. 222–23.

Footnote 197:

_The Rough Riders_, p. 139. Found in Edition of 1899, published by

Charles Scribner’s Sons; page 152, as published by G. P. Putnam’s

Sons.

Footnote 198:

_System of Ethics_, p. 660.

Footnote 199:

_Militarism_, pp. 60–61.

Footnote 200:

_William Shakespeare_, Pt. 3, Bk. 3, Ch. I.

Footnote 201:

See Chapter Eight, Section 11,—of special interest to women who

incline to be “perfectly delighted” with soldiers.

Footnote 202:

Quoted by Thomas E. Will, _Arena_, Dec., 1894.

Footnote 203:

_Moral Damage of War_, pp. 146–47.

Footnote 204:

_Education and the Higher Life_, p. 171.

Footnote 205:

_Works_, Vol. IV., Dresden Edition, p. 124.

Footnote 206:

“Lecture on War.”

Footnote 207:

_The Destiny of Man_, pp. 100–103.

Footnote 208:

Lester F. Ward: _Applied Sociology_, p. 264.

Footnote 209:

Bloomfield: “Farmer’s Boy.”

Footnote 210:

Pope’s Homer’s “Iliad.”

Footnote 211:

_Militarism_, p. 316.

Footnote 212:

Quoted by John A. Hobson: _John Ruskin: Social Reformer_, p. 346.

Footnote 213:

_Militarism_, p. 317.

Footnote 214:

See Chapter Eleven.

Footnote 215:

See Chapter Ten, also Index: “Revolution of Opinion.”

Footnote 216:

See McCabe and Darien: _Can We Disarm?_ p. 56.

Footnote 217:

See Index: “What War Decides”; also “Blood Cost of War.”

Footnote 218:

Thomas Carlyle: _Sartor Resartus_, Book II., Chapter 8.

Footnote 219:

See Index: “Parasites.”

Footnote 220:

Italics mine. G. R. K.

Footnote 221:

_Report_, 1907, p. 73.

Footnote 222:

See Report of Department of War, 1906.

Footnote 223:

See Annual Reports of the Secretaries of War for the years named; also

Preface of the present volume.

Footnote 224:

Italics mine. G. R. K.

Footnote 225:

See _Report of the War Department_, 1908, p. 21; see also Index:

“Insanity.”

Footnote 226:

_The World’s Work_, May, 1907.

Footnote 227:

Italics mine. G. R. K.

Footnote 228:

See Reports of the Department of War for the respective years.

Footnote 229:

_Report of the Secretary of War_, 1907, p. 72.

Footnote 230:

Mr. Roosevelt’s kill-for-pleasure hunting trip in Africa in 1909–10

included, according to the press reports, “a splendid time,” “a

corking time,” shooting monkies—murdering his ancestral cousins, so to

speak—“a careful count being kept of the exact number” of the jolly,

playful little creatures butchered for the brave and noble gentleman’s

amusement on his “old home” trip.

Footnote 231:

A private, writing from the Philippines, in _Everybody’s Magazine_,

April, 1908.

Footnote 232:

_Imperial Democracy_, p. 272.

Footnote 233:

_The Moral Damage of War_, pp. 150–51.

Footnote 234:

Quoted by Professor E. A. Ross, in his _Social Control_, p. 89.

Footnote 235:

See Chapter Eight: “For Mother and the Boys,” Section 1.

Footnote 236:

See Index: “Bankruptcy, Danger of.”

Footnote 237:

_The International_, July, 1908. Italics mine. G. R. K.

Footnote 238:

_Documents of the American Association for International

Conciliation_, 1907–08, p. 22.

Footnote 239:

See _The Peace Conference at The Hague_, pp. 93–120, and 151.

Footnote 240:

_Harper’s Magazine_, Vol. 87. See International Conciliation—Documents

of the American Association for International Conciliation, 1907–08:

Third Paper—“A League of Peace.”

CHAPTER EIGHT.

For Mother and the Boys and Girls.

Topics for consideration, especially by the mothers in the working

class.[241]

(=1=) “Will there be, indeed, more wars?”

Yes, undoubtedly.[242]

“What shall be done about it?”

There are two things to be done, by the mother, right away: Think about

war and talk about war with other mothers and the boys—also with the

girls.

Let us see:

In the next war whose sons shall be shot?

The aristocrat’s wife is not worrying about whose children are to be

destroyed in the next war. She knows already that her sons will not be

destroyed in battle; her sons will not stand before Gatling guns; her

sons will not be torn and lie bleeding, groaning, screaming and cursing

on the steel-swept battlefield by day or through the long night; her

sons will not fester and sicken and die in dismal battlefield hospitals;

she knows that her sons will not be pitched into nameless

trenches—buried like dogs; her flesh and blood, her slain sons, will not

be brought home to mock her aching heart.

That is settled—positively.

She belongs to the _ruling_ class.

The ruling class protect her and the men and boys she loves—loyally.

But the working class mother—the humble mother of wage-slaves—she feels

no such security. Herod and Mars invade her home to steal the men and

boys she loves. The rude fist of war is ever ready to crush her. This

humble woman is wholly unprotected against war by the ruling class. She

is also unprotected against war by the voting men of her own class.

This woman must protect herself—for the present.

Let it be remembered that in the gentle heart of a humble mother whose

loving sons have been butchered in battle, it is always winter. The

cheap rhetoric and hypocritical compliments of the coarse-grained

political orator, the honeyed words of any man in any profession—sacred

or secular—craftily exempted from the war which slew her loved ones,

these can not charm the wintry desolation of her life into rare June

weather. Nor can the wound in her mother heart be healed with a stingy

quarterly allowance of filthy money called a pension. When her loved

ones were slaughtered her joys were slain.

This woman must indeed protect herself; and she can protect herself,

somewhat,—if she will.

She can do this: She can teach her child to hate—to hate war.[243]

(=2=) Mother, is your five-year-old son strong, healthy and handsome?

Yes? Well, that is fine. But think of him at the age of twenty in

slaughtering clothes, being transformed into a swaggering armed bully.

Mother, if he should be tricked into the army and butchered and his torn

corpse should be brought home to you, you would then know what _other_

mothers feel when their boys, whom your son butchers, are brought home

to them. Then, perhaps, war would seem quite different—far less “great”

and “glorious” to you. You see, mother, in a war _some_ mothers’ boys

must be butchered. Perhaps a false patriotism has been taught to

you—just as a false patriotism is taught your sons. Both the mother and

her sons are confused. To get the working class boy ready for war the

capitalist must first confuse and trick the mother.

Kings, emperors, presidents, tsars, and capitalists of all lands are

lovingly interested in the problem of “race suicide,” the problem of

small families,—interested in the “food-for-powder” crop, the

“bullet-stopper” crop,—EAGER THAT EVERY WORKING CLASS MOTHER SHOULD

BECOME A BREEDER. After Napoleon Bonaparte had had multitudes of the men

and boys of France butchered, making it difficult to find soldiers, he

impatiently exclaimed, “What France needs is mothers!” What he meant was

that France needed more human breeders flattered into bearing and

rearing more butchers for Napoleon. Of course Napoleon was shrewd enough

to confuse the humble mothers with plenty of cheap flattery concerning

their “patriotism.”[244] Capitalists today want larger working class

families for more soldiers, also for a larger army of unemployed—in

order that the capitalists may, in the industrial civil war, more

tyrannically dictate the wage terms to the workers and also more easily

secure substitutes in case of a war.

And to this end the capitalists are willing to pay the price; that is,

willing to pay for the social chloroform, for the false teachings,

necessary to beget a slave’s blind enthusiasm for the master that

betrays him—called patriotism.

(=3=) Thomas Carlyle called working class soldiers simpletons. A person

of good mind, however, _if caught young_, can be confused till he will

actually volunteer to butcher his fellowman. This can be done in many

ways; for example, take Fitchburg, Massachusetts, May 29–30, 1908. The

very small children, also ten-year-olds, and those still older, were

assembled, according to age, in halls, churches, the Young Men’s

Christian auditorium, and elsewhere, May 29; and for long weary hours

gory stories of “bravery” in war were recited to them, horrible pictures

were displayed before them, blood-curdling suggestions were urged upon

them, cheap lusts for cheap glory were inspired in the helpless

youngsters,—just as a savage might teach his little sons to rip the

scalp from a screaming victim’s skull. And humble mothers of the working

class were tricked into co-operating in this anti-social “patriotism.”

Such abominable performances stunt the children. Their social

development is arrested. They become jingoists, ignorant little

bigots—utterly incapable of sincere international love. Their political

philosophy is a shallow and silly “Hurrah!” Their “patriotism” becomes a

belittling conceit and a readiness for cruel deeds.

Everybody, of course, loves a frank, finely social child. International

and national murder is a coarse and unsocial thought; and when parents,

teachers, preachers, or lecturers, speak enthusiastically of wholesale

murder or of famous national and international murderers in the presence

of a child, the child’s social development is checked, stunted; when a

few suggestions of international jealousy and malice have been

ignorantly (or cunningly) thrust into a child’s mind it becomes simply

impossible for the child to develop into an “international man,” a

finely social person sincerely loving his fellowmen. This would be a

charming world if all men and women were social—socialized, unblasted,

unstung by shriveling national jealousy and malice; but everywhere the

vile business of blasting the social nature of the rising generation is

being extended. The school, even, is invaded. The Rev. Dr. Walter Walsh

warns parents thus:[245]

“The school has become not only the training ground, but actually a

recruiting ground for the army. The British War Office issues a

circular pressing secondary schools to teach boys over twelve the

use of the rifle; issues Morris tube carbines to schools having

suitable ranges; and supplies ammunition at cost price. The

inevitable next step is the formation of cadet corps in the schools,

with inspection by military chiefs.... The capture of the schools by

the militarists is one of the most ominous signs of the times. The

militarist has long looked with wistful eye at this happy hunting

grounds.... Parliaments have already been strongly urged to make

military drill compulsory in all public schools.... The scholar is

rapidly transformed into the conscript.”

The shameless audacity of using a socializing institution, the school,

to cultivate national malice in the helpless children!

(=4=) If only the children could get one good look at the hell behind

the curtain it would be more difficult to beguile and betray them.

Let the wonderful Zola tell what the boys in the public schools are

_not_ taught and are _not permitted to realize_ till later when they are

grown up and are seduced to the battlefield with the crafty cry, “Follow

the flag!”

Here following are some paragraphs on the battlefield hospital. A

military hospital, it may be said, is an institution in which sick and

shell-torn men are hastily repaired in order that they may go again to

the battle line—perchance to faint or be ripped to pieces again. Thus

Zola:[246]