Transcriber's Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

INDUSTRIAL DESPOTISM, SHREWDLY CALLED FREEDOM.
/

(Illustrating the Wage-Earner’s “Freedom of Contract.”)

WAR—WHAT FOR?

BY

GEORGE R. KIRKPATRICK

“The cannon’s prey has begun to think, and, thinking twice, loses its admiration for being made a target.”—Victor Hugo.

“A nod from a lord is a breakfast—for a fool.”—Proverb.

“The poor souls for whom this hungry war opens its vast jaws.”—William Shakespeare.

First Edition, August, 1910.

Second Edition, October, 1910.

Third Edition, December, 1910.

Fourth Edition, April, 1911.

Fifth Edition, Thirtieth Thousand, May, 1911.

PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR,

WEST LA FAYETTE, OHIO

Copyrighted, 1910,

BY

GEORGE R. KIRKPATRICK.

All rights reserved,

including that of translation into foreign languages

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT ON PAGE 350.

WAR—WHAT FOR?

SINGLE COPY, $1.20

Liberal discounts in clubs of 3, 10 and 25 or more.

By the same author:

THINK—OR SURRENDER

About 100 pages of elementary economics, politics and organization—for the propaganda of Socialism. (Nearly ready.)

This book is dedicated to the victims of the civil war in industry; that is, to my brothers and sisters of the working class, the class who furnish the blood and tears and cripples and corpses in all wars—yet win no victories for their own class.

CONTENTS.

PREFACE.

Justice soothes.

Justice heals the wounds and sores in the social body.

Justice strikes down all robbery—illegal and legal.

Justice calms.

Injustice stings.

Injustice burns, irritates—kills sociability and creates conflict.

Injustice prevents brotherhood.

Injustice is unsocial—anti-social—and is thus a social sore.

Injustice, organized injustice, is the soul of all class-labor forms of society.

The purpose of all class-labor forms of society is ROBBERY.

The robbed resist—sometimes.

The robbers are ready for resistance—always.

In all class-labor forms of society the ruling class always have:

First, an armed guard—READY:

ready to serve as tusk and fist of the robber ruling class,

ready to suppress protesting chattel-slaves,

ready to suppress protesting serfs,

ready to suppress protesting wage-earners,

ready to defend the class-labor system,

ready to extend the class-labor system,

ready to defy and defeat and hold down and kick the robbed working class.

Second, an unarmed guard—composed of prideless purchasable human things, social chameleons, moral eunuchs, political flunkies—intellectual prostitutes—READY:

ready to make laws in the interest of the ruling class,

ready to interpret laws in the interest of the ruling class,

ready to execute laws in the interest of the ruling class,

ready to cunningly cajole and beguile the toil-cursed working class,

ready to cunningly teach meekness, humility and contentment—to the working class,

ready to cunningly teach servility and obedience—to the working class,

ready with grand words to cunningly dupe and chloroform—the working class,

ready to bellow about “Law and Order” when the unemployed call loudly for work or bread and when hungry strikers open their lips in self-defense,

ready “for Jesus’ sake” (and a salary) to glorify war and scream to the “God of Battles” (also the “God of Peace”) for victory; ready to baptize wholesale murder and flatter the blood-stained conquerors; ready to whine and mumble over the shell-torn corpses of the victims and hypocritically sniffle and mouth consolatory congratulations to the war-cursed widows and orphans—ready thus to mock their own ruined victims—for a price; ready to preach—to the workers—that they must fight like hell to “get a home in heaven.”

Many of my brothers—my betrayed younger brothers—are soldiers: they have been seduced to serve as Armed Guard. They have been deceived. And they are abused. Many of them are even driven insane. Insanity ranks third in the long list of disablements for which our betrayed brothers are dismissed from the service. (Report of the Department of War, 1908, p. 21.) A whole carload of insane soldiers were shipped through Pittsburgh—home from the Philippines—December 11, 1909.

These men are indeed betrayed and abused—and ashamed. They even destroy themselves to hide their shame and escape abuse. Twenty-six times as many enlisted men committed suicide in 1908 as in 1907; AND THIRTY-NINE TIMES AS MANY of them committed suicide in 1909 as in 1907.[^[1]]

More and more the boys in the Army are disgusted with the whole vile business, but as the boys become increasingly sick of the service and would like to run away, the War Department more and more prepares to hold them like rats in a trap—just as the Secretary of War boasted in his Report for 1908 (p. 19) that he now finally had “an elaborate system ... almost perfected 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.” Thus the boys are trapped and stung,—and some of them kill themselves.

The working class men inside and outside the Army are confused.

They do not understand.

But they will understand.

And when they do understand, their class loyalty and class pride will astonish the world. They will stand erect in their vast class strength and defend—THEMSELVES. They will cease to coax and tease; they will make demands—unitedly. They will desert the armory; they will spike every cannon on earth; they will scorn the commander; they will never club or bayonet another striker; and in the legislatures of the world they will shear the fatted parasites from the political and industrial body of society.

But these things they will not do and can not do till they are roused—roused because they understand.

Therefore, I “rise to a point of order”: The most important thing on the program in the politics of the world today is to rouse the working class to realize itself, to be conscious of itself, to see itself and also see distinctly the age-long conspiracy of the ruling class; the first thing is to rouse the working class to unite socially and unite industrially and unite politically and seize all the powers of government in all the world—for self-defense; the supreme business of the hour is to rouse the working class for the crowning victory in the evolution of mankind—for the industrial freedom of the working class, for the peace and the calm born of justice, for the beauty and the glory of the brotherhood of man.

This book is written to help instruct and rouse the working class; and if in some small measure this unpretentious book carries light to the brains of my younger brothers on the big steel battleships, in the barren gloomy barracks, and to my abused and cheated brothers (and sisters) in the mills and mines and on the farms—and thus helps stir my class to a consciousness of their class and thus helps advance the demand for justice and the demand for a reconstructed, socialized society, my reward will seem abundant.

GEORGE R. KIRKPATRICK.

July 4, 1910.

PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION:

A few amusingly oracular and pitifully (not to say pardonably) impotent voices have been raised—necessarily not very high, of course—against the style of this book. Deferring, for the present, any discussion of certain evident pedagogical exigencies, my reply is: In the ninth month from the date of first issue, the book is in its Fifth Edition, Thirtieth Thousand.

G. R. K.

May 24, 1911.

The pictures in this book add much to its interest and usefulness. Those on pages [31] and [33] were made by Mr. Ryan Walker, of New York; all the others were made by Mr. John Sloan, also of New York. The author is genuinely grateful for their kind cooperation.

Ready.

The Roman slave-owners of two thousand years ago with their armed slave-drivers; also the slave-owners of sixty years ago with their hireling slave-drivers, armed with blacksnake whips and pistols, on horseback in the cotton fields of the South—the ancient and the modern chattel slave-owners thus were ready—ready to murder the slave working class.

The lords of serfdom with armed hirelings housed near their castles were also ready—ready to murder the serf working class.

Recently, in 1907, when the number of the unemployed wage-earners in the United States numbered over three millions, it was promptly planned by the War Department serving the Caesars of industry that one machine-gun company with six rapid-fire guns of the Maxim or some similar type should be added to each of the thirty regiments of infantry and fifteen regiments of cavalry now constituting the Army—a total of two hundred and seventy of the most terrible murdering machines ever invented. With these guns, each firing eight hundred shots per minute, eight million six hundred and forty thousand cold steel nuggets of “law-and-order” and “unparalleled prosperity” could be handed out to the unemployed in just forty minutes,—to lovingly show the working class how, under the wage-system-the present class-labor system,—“the interests of the capitalist class and the interests of the working class are practically the same.”

Thus the capitalists of our day are also ready—ready to have wage-paid soldiers, militiamen and policemen murder the wage-earning working class.

“Although the conventions of popular government are preserved, capital is at least as absolute as under the Caesars. The aristocracy which wields this autocratic power is beyond attack, for it is defended by a wage-earning police, by the side of which the [Roman] legions were a toy—a police so formidable that, for the first time in history, revolt is hopeless and is not attempted. The only question which preoccupies the ruling class is whether it is cheaper to coerce or bribe.”—Brooks Adams: The Law of Civilization and Decay, p. 292.

An Insult from the Commander=in=Chief:

“The fact can not 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 enlisted men....

“The [military] service should be made so attractive that it would not be difficult to obtain intelligent and desirable men and to hold them.”—William H. Taft, Secretary of War (now President and Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy): Annual Report of Secretary of War, 1907, page 14. Mr. Taft repeated this insult in a public speech. (See New York Times, April 26, 1908.)

In the Report of the Secretary of War, 1907, page 79, is the following from the General Staff:

“The bulk of recruits come and must always come from the agricultural, artisan, and laboring classes.”

How long will strong men of the working class accept a kick as a compliment—from so-called “great” men?

CHAPTER ONE.
A Confidential Word With the Man of the Working Class.

Brother!

Whoever you are, wherever you are on all the earth, I greet you.

You are a member of the working class.

I am a member of the working class.

We are brothers.

Class brothers.

Let us repeat that:—Class Brothers.

Let us write that on our hearts and stamp it on our brains:—Class Brothers.

I extend to you my right hand.

I make you a pledge.

Here is my pledge to you:—

I refuse to kill your father. I refuse to slay your mother’s son. I refuse to plunge a bayonet into the breast of your sister’s brother. I refuse to slaughter your sweetheart’s lover. I refuse to murder your wife’s husband. I refuse to butcher your little child’s father. I refuse to wet the earth with blood and blind kind eyes with tears. I refuse to assassinate you and then hide my stained fists in the folds of any flag.

I refuse to be flattered into hell’s nightmare by a class of well-fed snobs, crooks and cowards who despise our class socially, rob our class economically and betray our class politically.

Will you thus pledge me and pledge all the members of our working class?

Sit down a moment, and let us talk over this matter of war. We working people have been tricked—tricked into a sort of huge steel-trap called war.

Really, the smooth “leading citizens” tried their best to flim-flam me, too. They cunningly urged me to join the militia and the army and be ready to go to war. Their voices were soft, their smiles were bland, they made war look bright, very bright. But I concluded not to train for war or go to war—at least not until the brightness of war became bright enough to attract those cunning people to war who tried to make war look bright to me. I have waited a long time. I am still waiting. Thus I have had plenty of opportunity to think it all over. And the more I think about war the more clearly I see that a bayonet is a stinger, made by the working class, sharpened by the working class, nicely polished by the working class, and then “patriotically” thrust into the working class by the working class—for the capitalist class.

The busy human bees sting themselves.

If I should enlist for service in the Department of Murder I should feel thoroughly embarrassed and ashamed of myself. It is all clear to me now. This is the way of it, brother:—

In going to war I must work like a horse and be as poor as a mouse, must be as humble as a toad, as meek as a sheep and obey like a dog; I must fight like a tiger, be as cruel as a shark, bear burdens like a mule and eat stale food like a half-starved wolf; for fifteen or twenty dollars a month I must turn against my own working class and thus make an ass and a cat’s-paw of myself; and after the war I should be socially despised and snubbed as a sucker and a cur by the same distinguished “leading citizens” who wheedled me to war and afterward gave me the horse-laugh;—and thus I should feel like a monkey and look like a plucked goose in January.

Indeed I am glad to see it all clearly.

I want you to see it clearly.

The “leading citizens” shall never have opportunity to laugh at me for doing drill “stunts” they would not do themselves and for going to a war they could not be induced to go to themselves. Moreover, no member of the working class can ever say that I voluntarily took up arms against my own class.

If, however, years ago, I had joined the militia or the army I should have been entirely innocent of doing voluntary wrong against my class, because I did not understand—then. But it is different now. All is changed now—because I do understand now. And I want you to understand this matter. Indeed we members of the working class should help one another understand. And this book is for that purpose. You will permit me to explain very frankly—won’t you?

You will notice that this is a small book[^[2]]—very much smaller than the vast subject of wholesale murder called war. But kindly remember that this book of suggestions—chiefly suggestions—is written for those, the working class, whose lives are too weary and whose eyes are frequently too full of dust and sweat and tears for them to read large and “learned” works on war. This book is indeed written in behalf of the working class—and the working class only. The lives and loves of the working class, the hopes and the happiness of the working class, the blood and tears of the working class are too sacred to be viciously wasted as they have been wasted and are wasted by the crafty kings, tsars, presidents, emperors, and the industrial tyrants of the earth.

This book contains no flattery.

We are flattered too much—by cunning people.

Flattery confuses most people. Flattery blinds us, and that is why business men and their unarmed guardsmen flatter the working people.

A multitude of intelligent honey bees can be confused, hopelessly confused, at swarming time, simply by beating an empty tin pan or drum near them and calling loudly the almost patriotically stupid word, “Boowah! Boowah! Woowah! Woowah!” And, indeed, down on the old home farm in Ohio we often “brain-stormed” our swarming bees by just such simple means—in order to hold them in slavery and thus have them near and tame. We wished to rob them when they worked—later on.

This device works perfectly in human society also. The capitalist class use this method with great success on the human honey bees, the working class.

Millions of intelligent working men can be confused—and more easily robbed later on—simply by flattering them carefully and then beating a drum near them and cunningly calling out the pleasingly empty words, “The Flag! The Flag! Patriotism! Patriotism! Brave boys!”

Bewildered moths rush into a flame of fire because it is bright. Bewildered working people rush to war and singe their own happiness, snuff out their own lives—like moths—because war is painted bright. In the shining candle flame moths virtually commit suicide. In the glittering “glory” of war multitudes of the working class practically commit suicide. This will be clearer to you as you read these chapters.

Brother, let me help you tear the mask off this legalized outrage against the working class, this huge and “glorious” crime called war. At this horrible “Death’s feast” we working people spit in one another’s faces, we scream in wild rage at one another, we curse and kill our own working class brothers, we foolishly wallow in our own blood and desolate our own homes—simply because we are craftily ordered to do so. Thus we are both savage and ridiculous. Ridiculous did I say? Yes, ridiculous. That word ridiculous sounds like a harsh word—doesn’t it? But, remember, in all wars the working class are always meanly belittled, wronged—outraged.

We are the plucked geese in January—patriotically.

When we working people hear a fife and drum and see some handsomely dressed, well-fed military officers and see their long butcher-knives called swords—our confused hearts beat fast, our blood becomes blindly and suicidally hot and eager.... Look out, brother! Take care! Remember: Always in all wars everywhere the working class are confused, bewildered—then shrewd people make tools, mules, fools, and foot-stools of us!

“Follow the flag!” sounds good—but strikes blind the working class.

“Follow the flag!” sounds brave and grand. Very.

“Follow the flag!” is wine for the brain—of the working class.

“Follow the flag!” makes millions of our class blind and useable.

“Follow the flag!” stirs a savage passion cunningly called “patriotism.”

“Follow the flag!” never confuses a man wearing a silk hat.

“Follow the flag!” is bait laid for fools, “rot” fed to mules, by every tyrant king, tsar and president at the head of governments used by the industrial ruling class.[^[3]]

Governments—today under capitalism—are composed of “leading citizens.”

These “leading-citizen” governments quarrel over business—markets and territory.

Being proud, these “leading-citizen” governments pompously decide to “protect their honor”—their alleged honor—“at any cost.”

Lacking sufficient brains, they can not settle their quarrel with brains.

Reverting to savagery, they decide that “might makes right.”

Being brutal, they decide to “fight it out.”

Being cowards, they decide to avoid personal danger—to themselves.

Knowing the working class are gullibly useable, these “leading-citizen” governments decide to use the workingmen as fists.

Being crafty, they decide to seize the brain of the toiler—to teach the working class:

To follow the flag—automatically—that is, patriotically

To follow the flag—blindly—tho’ “leading citizens” do not follow the flag into bloody danger

To follow the flag—blindly—cheered by silk-hatted cowards

To follow the flag—blindly—no matter where it goes, no matter how unjust the war may be

To follow the flag—blindly—tho’ the working class fighters are to be given no voice in declaring the war

To follow the flag—“patriotically”—like slaves defending masters who buy and sell them as chattels—“patriotically”—like ancient serfs defending the very landlords who robbed the serfs, insulted their wives and raped their daughters

To follow the flag—brainlessly—like dumb cattle following a “trick” bull to the bloody shambles of the slaughter house

To follow the flag, brainlessly, as a frog will swallow a bait of red calico loaded with a deadly fish-hook

To follow the flag, automatically, to the horrors and hell of the firing line—automatically, to the flaming cannon’s mouth and there butcher other workingmen and be butchered by other workingmen who are also—automatically—following another flag—like fools used as fists for cowards.

And the leading citizens have indeed succeeded in doing what they decided to do. They have had us taught disastrously.

Patriotically we have worn the yoke throughout the centuries—centuries sad with tears and red with blood and fire.

Patriotically for thousands of years we have stormed the world with the cannon’s roar—but never won a real victory for our class.

And for a hundred years—when we could vote—we have stupidly followed the political crook to the ballot-box, and then we have meekly teased for laws, whined for relief, and humbly coaxed the “reformer.”

Gullibly we swallow the traducer’s lies that paralyze our brains, bind our wrists, and lay us under the employer’s lash.

Deafened and stunned with a fool’s “hurrah,” we wade in our own blood while those we love are broken in the embrace of despair.

And when on strike for bread and for the betterment of the women and the little children, blindly on horseback we ride down and club one another, blindly we bayonet one another at the factory, blindly we crush one another at the mines, blindly with Gatling guns we sweep the streets and hills with storms of lead and steel, and in a thousand ways blindly our class destroy our class in the bitter and stupid civil war in capitalist industry—cheaply we lend and rent ourselves for our own ruin.

Ah, my friend, there is a political earthquake coming which will swallow up the political prostitutes and the industrial parasites and Caesars of society—when our class open wide their eyes and see the great red crime—not only on the battlefield, but around the factory and before the miner’s cabin door. Not blindly but proudly and defiantly the workers will then—but not till then-defend THEMSELVES.

This book is not a parasite’s platitudes, nor a hypocrite’s pretenses in a Fakir’s Parliament; this book is not a tearful lament about war nor a long-winded essay on militarism, nor a coward’s whine for peace.

This book is not intended to be harsh; it is frankly intended to be a short, shrill call: “Danger!” and also a guide-board for the producer’s road to power.

Too long, too madly and sadly, too gullibly the flimflammed working class have broken their own hearts and wet the earth with their own blood and tears; too meekly and weakly the toilers sweat themselves into stupidity and then—like cheated children—gullibly hand over the choicest culture, clothing, bread, wine and shelter to the robbers and rulers who despise them and betray them.

What for?

They have the habit.

O, my brothers of the working class, no matter what language you speak, no matter what God you worship, no matter how bitterly you would curse those who would teach you and rouse you—wherever you are, in the barracks or in the mines, in the armories or in the mills, in the trenches at the front or in the furrows on the farm—let us clasp hands—as a class. Let us talk over this matter. And in talking it over among ourselves let us be frank. We must be very frank. And let us be friends. Even as I write this, mighty fleets of gun-laden ships of steel are steaming up and down the seas provoking, insulting, challenging war; and in several parts of the world thousands of our working class brothers are slaughtering one another in wars they did not declare, and they do so simply because they do not understand one another; and they do not understand one another because THEY HAVE NEVER TALKED THIS MATTER OVER AMONG THEMSELVES in friendly frankness—like brothers, without flattery and without bitterness toward one another.

As you and I consider this matter now by ourselves and for ourselves, we may for a moment—just for a moment—disagree somewhat; but if we do disagree, let us disagree without bitterness toward one another. Let us remember that we are class brothers, and permit nothing to injure our friendship or class loyalty. Some things concerning war must be said plainly—even bluntly—things neither flattering nor complimentary to anybody. Remember, too, that a flattering friend is a dangerous friend. Therefore I refuse to flatter you.

Stamp this into your brain: The working class must defend the working class. In national and international fellowship we must stand together as a class in class loyalty.

And now, first thing, let us get an idea of what war (one phase of the great class struggle) is—for our class. But before reading the next chapter on “What Is War?” examine the photograph of hell here following:

“They say there are a great many mad men in our army as well as in the enemy’s. [In the Russian and the Japanese armies.] Four lunatic wards have been opened [in the hospital]....

“The wire, chopped through at one end, cut the air and coiled itself around three soldiers. The barbs tore their uniforms and stuck into their bodies, and, shrieking, the soldiers, coiled round like snakes, spun round in a frenzy ... whirling and rolling over each other.... No less than two thousand men were lost in that one wire entanglement. While they were hacking at the wire and getting entangled in its serpentine coils, they were pelted by an incessant rain of balls and grapeshot.... It was very terrifying, and if only they had known in which direction to run, that attack would have ended in a panic flight. But ten or twelve continuous lines of wire, and the struggle with it, a whole labyrinth of pitfalls with stakes driven at the bottom, had muddled them so that they were quite incapable of defining the direction of escape.

“Some, like blind men, fell into funnel-shaped pits, and hung upon these sharp stakes, twitching convulsively and dancing like toy clowns; they were crushed down by fresh bodies, and soon the whole pit filled to the edges, and presented a writhing mass of bleeding bodies, dead and living. Hands thrust themselves out of it in all directions, the fingers working convulsively, catching at everything; and those who once got caught in that trap could not get back again: hundreds of fingers, strong and blind, like the claws of a lobster, gripped them firmly by the legs, caught at their clothes, threw them down upon themselves, gouged out their eyes and throttled them. Many seemed as if they were intoxicated, and ran straight at the wire, got caught in it, and remained shrieking, until a bullet finished them.... Some swore dreadfully, others laughed when the wire caught them by the arm or leg and died there and then....

“We walked along ... and with each step we made, that wild, unearthly groan ... grew ominously, as if it was the red air, the earth and sky that were groaning.... We could almost feel the distorted mouths from which those terrible sounds were issuing ... a loud, calling, crying groan.... All those dark mounds stirred and crawled about with out-spread legs like half-dead lobsters let out of a basket....

“The train was full, and our clothes were saturated with blood, as if we had stood for a long time under a rain of blood, while the wounded were still being brought in....

“Some of the wounded crawled up themselves, some walked up tottering and falling. One soldier almost ran up to us. His face was smashed, and only one eye remained, burning wildly and terribly. He was almost naked....

“The ward was filled with a broad, rasping, crying groan, and from all sides pale, yellow, exhausted faces, some eyeless, some so monstrously mutilated that it seemed as if they had returned from hell, turned toward us.

“I was beginning to get exhausted, and went a little way off to ... rest a bit. The blood, dried to my hands, covered them like a pair of black gloves, making it difficult for me to bend my fingers.”[^[4]]

Would it not be a strange thing to see a banker, a bishop, a railway president, a coal baron, an anti-labor injunction judge, and a United States Senator all hanging on stakes in a pit with scores of other men piled in on top of them—all clawing, kicking, cursing, wiggling, screaming, groaning, bleeding, dying—“following the flag”—patriotically?

Such would indeed be a strange and interesting sight.

Strange and interesting, extremely so—but absolutely impossible.

And there is good reason.

Let me explain.

CHAPTER TWO.
What Is War?

War is wholesale, scientific suicide for the working class under orders from their political and industrial masters.

War is:

For working class homes—emptiness,

For working class wives—heartache,

For working class mothers—loneliness,

For working class children—orphanage,

For working class sweethearts—agony,

For the nation’s choicest working class men—broken health or death,

For society—savagery,

For peace—defeat,

For bull-dogs—suggestions,

For the Devil—delight,

For death—a harvest,

For buzzards—a banquet,

For the grave—victory,

For worms—a feast,

For nations—debts,

For justice—nothing,

For “Thou shalt not kill”—boisterous laughter,

For literature—the realism of the slaughter house,

For the painter—the immortalization of wholesale murder,

For the public park—a famous butcher in stone or bronze,

For Roosevelts—opportunity to strut and brag of blood, and win a “war record” for political purposes,

For Bryans—a military title and a “war record” for political purposes,

For Christ—contempt,

For “Put up thy sword”—a sneer,

For preachers, on both sides,—ferocious prayers for victory,

For Sunday-school teachers—blood-steaming stories for tender children and helplessly impressible boys,

For bankers—bonds, interest (and working class substitutes),

For big manufacturers—business, profits (and working class substitutes),

For big business men of all sorts—“good times” (and working-class substitutes),

For leading business men, for leading politicians, for leading preachers, for leading educators, for leading editors, for leading lecturers—for all of these windy patriots who talk bravely of war, who talk heroically of the flag, who talk finely of national honor and talk and talk of the glory of battle—for all these yawping talkers—never positions as privates in the infantry on the firing line up close where they are really likely to get their delicately perfumed flesh torn to pieces.

Thus war is hell for the WORKING class.[^[5]]

It is, of course, true that in ancient times the leading citizens did much of the fighting—but that was very long ago, in the days when the machine-gun had not yet been dreamed of. Even two thousand years ago the plutocratic snobs were beginning to show traces of intelligence sufficient to avoid going to hell voluntarily—afoot.

Says Professor E. A. Ross:[^[6]]

“Service in the Roman cavalry, originally obligatory on all who could furnish two horses, became after a time a badge of superiority. ‘Young men of rank more and more withdrew from the infantry, and the legionary cavalry became a close aristocratic corps’.... Finally the rich came to feel that wealth ought to buy its possessors clear of every onerous duty. In Caesar’s time ‘in the soldiery not a trace of the better classes could any longer be discovered ... the levy took place in the most irregular and unfair manner. Numerous persons liable to serve were wholly passed over.... The Roman burgess cavalry now merely vegetated as a sort of mounted noble guard, whose perfumed cavaliers and exquisite high-bred horses only played a part in the festivals of the capital; the so-called burgess infantry was a troop of mercenaries, swept together from the lowest ranks of the burgess population.’”

At present a movement is being promoted by Harvard University authorities to organize in the University “a fashionable troop of cavalry.”[^[7]] It does not seem likely that many members of the labor unions, so heartily despised by scab-praising ex-president Eliot, will be able to join this “fashionable troop of cavalry.” The labor unionists on strike, unarmed and helpless, may later come in handy as targets for practice by the highly educated “fashionable troop of cavalry.”

After all is “said and done” concerning wars past and present—what is really determined by a so-called great war?

Which of two warring nations is the nobler—is that what a war decides?

Not at all.

Which of the two bleeding nations is the more refined—is the more sensitive to the cry for justice, or has the greater literature, or the keener appreciation of the fine arts, or is more devoted to the useful arts and sciences, or contributes most to the profounder philosophy—which of the two warring nations is the more truly civilized—is that what is decided by war?

Not at all.

Which of the struggling nations is the more wholesomely social? Does a war make that evident?

Not at all.

Which nation has the better cause? Is that, then, what a war decides?

Not at all.

Which nation does more for the progress of mankind? Is that made clear by a war?

Not at all.

A war decides no such questions.

Well, then, what is determined when two nations go to war?

Simply this:—which can make the better fight.

That is all.

And that is exactly what is determined when two sharks fight, or when two tom-cats, or two bull pups fight, or when a cruel hawk and a sweet-throated song bird fight: which is superior as a fighter.

War is the ignoble trick of slitting open the blood vessels of the excited working class to “satisfy” the “honor” and save the pride and business of crowned and uncrowned cowards of the ruling class. There never is a war and never can be a war till the working men are willing to do the marching, the trench-digging and the actual fighting, bleeding and dying. And the working men are never willing to butcher and be butchered wholesale till influential but coarse-grained people of the capitalist class or “highly educated” panderers to the capitalist class, craftily or ignorantly excite the humble toilers to the fiend’s stupid mood of savage hate. First come the “powerful editorials,” the “great speeches,” the “eloquent sermons,” and ferocious prayers for the war; then the fife and drum; then the brain-storm of the humble, humbugged working men; then the recruiting; then the hand-waving and “Good-bye, boys, good-bye, good-bye”; then the butchering and the blood; then the tears and taxes.

It is, of course, true—grandly true—and is here gladly, gratefully acknowledged—that some educated influential people are too highly civilized, too finely noble, to stoop to the shameless business of rousing the slumbering tiger in the human breast. Some of them proudly scorn the vicious rôle of throwing fire-brands into the inflammable imagination of the weary toilers. These have courage—true courage. These we greet with profound gratitude.

But every lily-fingered snob, every socially gilt-edged coward, every intellectual prostitute, every pro-war preacher, every self-exempting political shark, and every well-fed money-glutton, who dares help excite the working class for the hell of war—these, every one of these—in case of war, should be forced to dance on the firing line to the hideous music of the cannon’s roar till his own torn carcass decorates a “great battle” field.

And to this end—as part of their own emancipation—the working class should make all haste to seize the powers of government, and thus be in position, by being in legal possession of the power, to make and enforce all laws concerning war. Beginning now, always hereafter, the labor unions, the working class political party, and all the other working class organizations should for future use, keep a careful record of all male editors, teachers, preachers, lawyers, lecturers, and “prominent business men” and politicians and “statesmen,” who speak, or write or even clap their hands in favor of war; and in case of a war thus fostered, these, all of these, should be forced by special draft to fight in the infantry, without promotion, on the firing line, till they get their share of the cold lead and the cold steel. Thus let the mouthers do the marching, let the shouters do the shooting, let the bawlers do the bleeding, let the howlers have the hell—force them to the firing line and force them to stay on the firing line—and there will be far less yawping about the “honor” and the “glory” of war, and there will be fewer humble homes of the poor damned with the desolation of war.

But, you see, for all such self-defense the working class must as soon as possible capture the powers of government. You see that, don’t you?

Friend, don’t curse the militiamen and the soldiers. No, no. They are our brothers. Explain—with tireless patience explain—to them that the capitalists seek to make tools and bullet-stoppers of them. Explain it like a brother inside and outside the ranks till our working-class brothers everywhere—inside and outside the ranks—are roused to a clear consciousness of the meaning of a Gatling gun with a working-class “man behind the gun” and a working-class man in front of the gun.

Brother, stamp this into your brain and explain it into the brain of our brothers:—The working class must themselves protect the working class.

If in imagination the mothers, sisters, sweethearts and wives of the world could get the roar of the cannon in their ears and feel the splash of blood in their faces, could see and hear the horrors of the battlefield and the agonies of the war hospital, they would never again be fooled into smiling caressingly upon the haughty and jaunty “higher officers,” when, like peacocks, these gilt-braided professional human butchers strut through the ball-rooms and through the streets on military dress parade, and these women would also regard the pro-war orator with complete contempt.

The women of the world owe a great debt of gratitude to the writers of some powerful pen pictures of war. The terrible but accurate realism of some of their descriptions of war makes one hate the word war. Emile Zola’s story, The Downfall,[^[8]] is crowded with these pictures. The Downfall should be in a million American private libraries. Following is a page of Zola’s flashlights from the battlefields of the Franco-Prussian War, 1870–71:[^[9]]

“At no time during the day had the artillery thundered more loudly than now.... It was as if all the forces of the nether regions had been unchained; the earth shook, the heavens were on fire. The ring of flame-belching mouths of bronze that encircled Sedan, the eight hundred cannon of the German armies ... were expending their energies on the adjacent fields.... The crash that told of ruin and destruction was heard.... Some lay face downward with their mouths in a pool of blood, in danger of suffocating, others had bitten the ground till their mouths were full of dry earth, others, where a shell had fallen among a group, were a confused, intertwined heap of mangled limbs and crushed trunks.... Some soldiers who were driving a venerable lady from her home had compelled her to furnish matches with which to fire her own beds and curtains. Lighted by blazing brands and fed by petroleum in floods, fires were rising and spreading in every quarter; it was no longer civilized warfare, but a conflict of savages, maddened by the long-protracted strife, wreaking vengeance for their dead, their heaps of dead, upon whom they trod at every step they took. Yelling, shouting bands traversed the streets amid the scurrying smoke and falling cinders, swelling the hideous uproar into which entered sounds of every kind: shrieks, groans, the rattle of musketry, the crash of falling wall. Men could scarce see one another; great livid clouds drifted athwart the sun and obscured his light, bearing with them an intolerable stench of soot and blood, heavy with the abominations of the slaughter. In every quarter the work of death and destruction still went on: the human brute unchained, the imbecile wrath, the mad fury, of man devouring his brother man.... Horses were rearing, pawing the air, and falling backward; men were dismounted as if torn from their saddle by the blast of a tornado, while others, shot through some vital part, retained their seats and rode onward in the ranks with vacant, sightless eyes.... Some there were who had fallen headlong from their saddle and buried their face in the soft earth. Others had alighted on their back and were staring up into the sun with terror-stricken eyes that seemed bursting from their sockets. There was a handsome black horse, an officer’s charger, that had been disemboweled, and was making frantic efforts to rise, his fore feet entangled in his entrails.... Of the brave men who rode into action that day two-thirds remained upon the battlefield.... A lieutenant from whose mouth exuded a bloody froth, had been tearing up the grass by handfuls in his agony, and his stiffened fingers were still buried in the ground. A little farther on a captain, prone on his stomach, had raised his head to vent his anguish in yells and screams, and death had caught and fixed him in that strange attitude.... After that the road led along the brink of a little ravine, and there they beheld a spectacle that aroused their horror to the highest pitch as they looked down into the chasm, into which an entire company seemed to have been blown by the fiery blast; it was choked with corpses, a landslide, an avalanche of maimed and mutilated men, bent and twisted in an inextricable tangle, who with convulsed fingers had caught at the yellow clay of the bank to save themselves in their descent, fruitlessly. And a dusky flock of ravens flew away, croaking noisily, and swarms of flies, thousands upon thousands of them, attracted by the odor of fresh blood, were buzzing over the bodies and returning incessantly.”

But let this fact burn its way into your brain to save you from hell and rouse you for the revolution—this fact:

Nowhere on all that battlefield among the shattered rifles and wrecked cannon, among the broken ambulances and splintered ammunition wagons, nowhere in the mire and mush of blood and sand, nowhere among the bulging and befouling carcasses of dead horses and the swelling corpses of dead men and boys—nowhere could be found the torn, bloated and fly-blown carcasses of bankers, bishops, politicians, “brainy capitalists” and other elegant and eminent “very BEST people.”

Well, hardly.

Naturally—such people were not there, on the firing line—up where bayonets gleam, sabres flash, flesh is ripped, bones snap, brains are dashed and blood splashes.

Why not?

CHAPTER THREE.
The Situation—Also the Explanation.

The situation, the “lay of the land,” must be clearly seen by every member of the working class who wishes to help himself and his fellow workers avoid the vicious sacrifice of the working class by the capitalist class.

In Chapter Ten of this book the unsocial nature of the present form and structure of society is explained more fundamentally; but just here notice the clash of class interests in a war. War is a “good thing” for one class and war is simply hell for the other class.

Who want war?—What for?

Who declare war?—What for?

Who fight the wars?—What for?

Get these questions straight in your mind. First study the Situation; then the Explanation. Now for the Situation. Here it is:

Capitalists—“Captains of Industry”—“Leading Citizens”:—

“We want war.

“Mr. Wage-Earner, it is none of your business why we business men want war. You are impudent even to inquire about such things. Little boys and working men should be seen and not heard. You poor deluded wage-earner, you just keep right on working and sweating till we have you ordered to the front.

“Ha, ha, when we business men want a war we have a war—whether the working people like it or don’t like it. We just show them some bright-colored calico and urge them to follow the flag. Then they promptly get ‘behind the gun’ (also in front of the gun). They like it all right—we have ’em taught to like it.

“They are so easy.”

Statesmen—Politicians—“Leading Citizens”:—

“We declare war.

“Mr. Wage-Earner, don’t you ask any impertinent questions about why we statesmen declare war. That’s our business. Attend to your own business—working—just working and sweating—till we statesmen order you to the front and ‘sic’ you on some other working people somewhere. When we conclude to declare war, we don’t consult the working men’s wishes. We simply don’t have to.

“They are so easy.”

Working Class Brothers—Off for the Front—To Kill “the Enemy,” Their Working Class Brothers:

“We fight the wars.

“Friend, please don’t ask us to explain why we fight the wars. We really do not know why we fight the wars. We modern wage-earners do just as the ancient chattel slaves and serfs did. We meekly do as we are told to do by the ‘best people.’ The sleek, glossy folks tell us to ‘rush to the front’—so we meekly march right to the front and blaze away. We furnish the tears, blood, cripples and corpses. We are dead easy—and we don’t understand it at all. Of course, we don’t like to shoot and bayonet one another. It seems so strange to us that the working men should always be ordered to shoot working men;—but our ‘betters,’ our ‘social superiors,’ the ‘men with the brains,’ tell us to ‘show the stuff that is in us’—so it must be all right. Great business men tell us frequently, ‘What this country needs is confidence.’ Well, we working people have the confidence—also the blisters and the lemons and the cold lead.

“We are so easy.”

THE EXPLANATION.[^[10]]

(A)—Capitalists want war—because—

War sends up prices—of most things.

LEADING CITIZENS: “WE want WARS”

War stimulates business—makes business brisk;—the more blood the more business.

War means more investments and more profits;—the more blood the more bonds, more interest; more land and more rent;—more unearned income.

War helps solve the problem of the unemployed. Simply have the surplus workers go into a big field and kill themselves off—butcher one another. It is so simple and easy.

War makes the working people clap their hands and yell so loudly they can’t think, and as long as the working people don’t think, it is easy to keep the bridles and saddles on them. It is surely a thoughtful scheme;—really, it is successful.

War—to advocate war, sometimes makes newspapers vastly more popular and therefore more profitable; for recent example, the Hearst papers for the Cuban war and the English jingo papers in the Boer war.[^[11]]

LEADING CITIZENS: “WE declare WARS”

War makes a larger home market for toys; that is, for fifes and drums with which the working people excite one another and get themselves into a butchering mood,—“ready to die for their homes and country,” the United States, for example, in which far more than half of all the people have no homes of their own and live in rented houses, and more than one-eighth of all the people live in mortgaged homes,[^[12]] and in which nearly all of the working class are kept so poor that they can’t even have cream—real cream and plenty of it—for their cheap coffee. The fife and drum and some patriotic wind stampede the working class easily.

“A nod from a lord is a breakfast for a fool.”

War—you see in a war soldiers produce nothing, but they consume and destroy vast quantities of many things. Thus soldiers in war create a larger market—though they create nothing whatever for that market. This is fine for those capitalists whose puny souls can hope and plan for nothing higher than more markets—and thus have more opportunity to sweat more wage-earners simply in order to make more profits. Funerals look good to the coffin trust and the undertaker, and war looks good to the capitalist class.

War—PREPARATION for war on the huge scale of the present day—furnishes a market for an enormous amount of commodities for sale by the capitalist class, such as steel, clothing, leather products, lumber, food products, horses, and the like. True, these things are worse than wasted; but just as the capitalist class are willing to destroy part of the coffee crop—in Brazil, for example—in order to keep up the price for profit’s sake, so also are the capitalist class willing to fan the flames of war and urge “preparation for war,” vast and senseless “preparation for war,” in order to have a market into which to dump at a profit immense stores of commodities.

“There is money in it.”

War is a means of opening up or protecting, for modern capitalistic exploitation, new territory, such as Egypt, Algeria, Madagascar, South Africa, India, Alaska, The Philippines, Borneo, Hawaii, Cuba, Porto Rico, China, Korea.

United States Senator A. J. Beveredge puts the matter thus:[^[13]]

“Every progressive nation in Europe today is seeking new lands to colonize and governments to administer.”

CITIZENS WHO ARE LED: “WE fight THE WARS”

J. H. Rose:[^[14]]