The truth about socialism

Ask the first man you meet if he is in favor of war and he will tell you he is not. Mr. Wilson is opposed to war. The Czar of Russia is opposed to war. The King of Italy is opposed to war. The Sultan of Turkey is opposed to war. The King of England and the German Emperor are opposed to war. Every king and emperor in the world is opposed to war. Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Bryan, Mr. Morgan, Mr. Carnegie, Mr. Taft—everybody, everywhere, is opposed to war.

Yet, Mr. Taft, not so long ago, flung an army in the face of Mexico, and dispatched powerful warships to the coast of Cuba. The King of Italy, not so long ago, attacked, by land and sea, the people of Turkey. Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Bryan, a little longer ago, enlisted in the war against Spain. Mr. Morgan, only a few years ago, helped to furnish the sinews of war with which Japan fought Russia. At this moment, the King of England and the German Emperor are threatening their respective nations with bankruptcy in order to augment their enormous machinery for the slaying of men. And, Mr. Carnegie, having grown rich, in part by the manufacture of armor-plate for warships, is now using some of his money to further a peace-movement that brings no peace.

Plainly, here is something mystifying—a world that wants to stop fighting and cannot. Why cannot it stop fighting? Mr. Wilson cannot tell you. Mr. Morgan will not tell you. Mr. Roosevelt has not told you. Mr. Bryan and Mr. Carnegie seem not to know. No one who should know seems to know. Yet, they must know. Common sense says so. The men who make wars know why they make them. Wars do not happen—they are made. Somebody says: “Bring out the guns.” Somebody says: “Begin shooting.” Somebody knows what the shooting is about.

What is it about? Be careful, now. Don’t answer too quickly. Don’t say “the flag” has been insulted. Don’t say “the national honor” has been impugned. These are old reasons, but they may not be true reasons. We Socialists are willing to stake everything on the statement that they are not true reasons. If we are right, we are worth listening to. War is hell. During the 132 years that we have been a nation, we have had war hell at average intervals of 22 years. We are already preparing for our next war. We are arming to the teeth. It may not last so long as the Civil War, but it will be bloodier. We have all of the most improved machinery for making it bloodier.

On the sea we are armed as Farragut never was armed. Any of our dreadnoughts could sink all of the ships, for which and against which, Farragut ever fought. And, on land, we are armed as Grant never was armed. Grant drummed out his victories with muzzle-loading rifles. No rifle could be fired rapidly. No bullet could kill more than one man, nor any man unless that man were near. But the modern rifle can be fired 25 times a minute, and it will kill at four miles. More than that, a single bullet from a modern rifle will kill every man in its path. It will shoot through 60 inches of pine. It will string men like a needle stringing beads. It will literally make a sieve of a soldier. Seventy bullet holes and more were found in the body of many a man who fell on the plains of Manchuria.

Toward such a war—or worse—we are speeding. Indeed, it will be hell. But it will not be hell for the men who make it. It will be hell for the men who fight it. The men who make it will stay at home. Their blood will drench no battlefield. Their bones will lie in the mire with no sunken ship. But the blood of the workers will drench every battlefield, and their skeletons will march with the tides on the floor of the sea.

Good Christian gentlemen who abhor war hold out no hope that war will soon cease. Good Christian gentlemen who abhor war pretend not to know why, in a world that is weary of war, war still persists. Or, if they do pretend to know, they account for the persistence of war by slandering the human race. They say the race is bad. Its brain is full of greed. Its heart is full of murder.

The mind of the race is not, nor ever has been filled with the greed that kills.

The heart of the race is not, nor ever has been, filled with the black blood of murder.

It is only a few whose minds and hearts have been thus poisoned by greed for gain or lust for power. Probably we should all have been thus poisoned if we had been similarly circumstanced—if we had been great capitalists. But most of us, lacking the capitalist’s instinct for profits, never chanced to see the easy loot and the waiting dagger lying side by side. The gentlemen who have seen them have made our wars. And the gentlemen who do see them are making our wars to-day and preparing others for the future.

We Socialists make this charge flatly. We smear the monstrous crime of war over the face of the capitalist class. We mince no words. We say to the capitalist class:

“Your pockets are filled with gold, but your hands are covered with blood. You kill men to get money. You don’t kill them, yourselves. As a class, you are too careful of your sleek bodies. You might be killed if you were less careful. But you cause other men to kill.

“And you do it in the meanest way. You do it by appealing to their patriotism.

“You say: ‘It is sweet to die for one’s country.’

“You don’t dare say: ‘It is sweet to die for Havemeyer,’ as many Americans died during the Sugar Trust war to ‘free Cuba.’

“You don’t say: ‘It is sweet to die for Guggenheim or Morgan,’ as many Americans would have died if Taft’s army had crossed the Rio Grande.

“You don’t say: ‘It is sweet to die for the Tobacco and other trusts,’ as many Americans died during the war with the Philippines.

“You don’t dare say any of these things, because you know, if you did, you would not get a recruit. You know you would be more likely to get the boot.”

We Socialists, who make these charges, know they are serious. They are as serious as we know how to make them. If they lack any of the seriousness they should have, it is because we lack some of the vocabulary we should have. The facts upon which the charges are made are serious enough to justify the full use of any vocabulary ever made. The facts are the facts of colossal murder for gain. And they are as old as history.

The small rich class that lives in luxury from the labor of the great poor class has a reason for clinging to the control of government. That reason is not far to seek. Without the control of government, the small, rich class would not be rich. Government, in the hands of the rich, is a sort of two-handed claw with which golden chestnuts are pulled out of the fire. One claw is the governmental power to make and enforce laws. The other claw is the power to grab by force that which cannot be grabbed by laws.

One nation cannot make laws for another nation. But the capitalists of one nation may possess property that is wanted by the capitalists of another nation. Or the capitalists of one nation may see a great opportunity for personal profit in transferring to their own nation the sovereignty that another nation holds over a certain territory. That was why Great Britain made war against the Boers. Certain rich English gentlemen believed they could make more money if the British flag waved over the diamond and gold fields of the Transvaal. For no more nearly valid reason, the capitalist class of Japan made war against the capitalist class of Russia. Russia had stolen Korea and Japan wanted it. Korea belonged to the Koreans, but that made no difference. Two thieves struggled for it and one of them has it.

The moment that the capitalist class of one nation determines to rob the capitalist class of another nation, the machinery for inflaming the public mind is set in motion. This machinery consists of tongues and printing presses. Tongues and printing presses immediately begin to foment hatred. Every man in each country is made to feel that every man in the other country is his personal enemy. But that is stating it too mildly. Every man in each country is made to feel that every man in the other country is as much worse than a personal enemy as a nation is greater than an individual. Fervent appeals are made to “patriotism.” “The flag” is waved. It is not “sweet to die” for Cecil Rhodes, for Rothschild or any one else—“It is sweet to die for one’s country.” And thousands of men take the bait.

They bid farewell to their homes. They embark upon transports. They sail strange seas. They disembark upon strange shores. They see strange men. Men whom they never saw before. Men against whom they have no possible sort of grudge. Men who never harmed them. Men whom they never harmed. Common workingmen, like themselves.

But they shoot these men and are shot by these men. They spill each other’s blood. They break each other’s bones. They break the hearts of each other’s families. And, when one army or the other has been crippled beyond further fighting, there is peace. The peace of the sword! The peace of death! The peace that leaves the working classes of both countries poorer and the capitalist class of only one country richer.

Was it not a great victory? Yes.

It was a great victory for the capitalists of the world who lent money to both belligerents. (But it was not a great victory for the workingmen of both countries, who, through weary, weary years, will be shorn of part of their earnings to pay the interest upon the war bonds.)

It was a great victory for the capitalist group who plunged for plunder and got it. (But it was not a great victory for the capitalist group that lost its plunder.)

It was a great victory for the generals, who, from a safe distance, directed the fighting. (But it was not a great victory for the workingmen who, at close quarters, fell before the guns and were buried where they fell.)

It was no sort of a victory for the working class of either country. At least, any victory that came to the working class of either country was merely incidental. Great Britain whipped the Boers, but the British people did not get the gold mines and the diamond mines. The Japanese whipped the Russians, but the Japanese workingmen did not get any of the plunder for which the war was fought. The Japanese capitalists got all of the plunder. The common people of Japan were so poor, after they had fought a “successful” war against Russia, that, within six months of the termination of the war, the Mikado urged the sternest self-denial upon them as the only means of saving the country from bankruptcy. And, notwithstanding the victory of the British over the Boers, the common people of England were never before so poor as they are to-day.

What is the use of blinking these facts? They are facts. Nobody can disprove them. They stand. They stand even in the face of the further fact that some wars have helped the working class. The American Revolution helped the working class of America. But the American working class would not have been in need of help if the English land-owning class who ruled the British government had not been using the government to plunder and oppress the people of America.

But that is only one side of the story. Let us look at the American side. The common people of America gained something from the war. They slipped from the clutches of the English grafters. But they did not get what they were promised. Read the Declaration of Independence and see what they were promised. Read the Constitution of the United States and see what they were given. Between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States there is all the difference that exists between blazing sunlight and pale moonlight. No finer spirit was ever breathed into words than that which appears in the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson wrote it, and he wrote splendidly, though the Declaration, as it stands, is not as he first wrote it. Jefferson was so afire with the idea of liberty that his associates upon the committee that drafted the Declaration shrank from the light. They compelled him to tone down his words. But the Declaration as it stands spells Liberty with a big “L.” And, Liberty with a big “L” can be nothing but a republic in which the people, through their representatives, absolutely rule.

The people, through their representatives, have never ruled this country and do not rule it to-day. The Constitution of the United States will not let them. It will not let them vote directly for President. In the beginning, the people did not even choose the electors who elected the President. State Legislatures chose them. No man except a legislator ever voted for the electors who chose Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison and some others. To this day the Constitution denies the right of the people to choose United States Senators and Justices of the United States Supreme Court. In the few states where the people practically choose United States Senators they do so only by “going around the end” of the Constitution. They exact a promise from legislative candidates to elect the senators for whom the people have expressed a preference. But this is wholly extra-constitutional. If the legislators were to break their promises, the United States Supreme Court would be compelled to sustain them in their constitutional right to do so.

Now, here is the point. Granted that the American Revolution was of value to the American working class. Granted that the ills that followed from American rule were not so grievous as the ills inflicted by the ruling class of England. Grant all this and more. Still, is it not true that if it had not been for the ruling class of England, there would have been no occasion for a war? Is it not true that the English people, if they had been in control of their own government, never would have harmed the people of America? When did the English people, or any other people, ever harm anybody? When did a thievish, murderous ruling class neglect to harm any people whose plunder seemed possible and profitable?

The idea that the people of one country, if left to themselves, would ever become embittered against the people of another country, is absurd. Test this statement by your own feelings. Are you so angry at some Japanese peasant who is now patiently toiling upon his little hillside in Japan, that you would like to go to Japan and kill him? Is there any person in Germany whom you never saw that you want to kill?

Of course not. But if you are a “patriotic” American citizen, you may some day cross a sea to kill somebody. If you believe in “following the flag,” the flag may some day lead you into the hell of war. If you believe “it is sweet to die for one’s country,” you may some day be shot to pieces. But if so, you will not die for your country. Your country wants you to live. You will die for the ruling class of your country. If you should expire from gunshot wounds in Mexico, you might die for Mr. Guggenheim, or some other noble citizen who will be far from the firing line. Wherever you may die from war-wounds, you will die to put more money into somebody else’s pockets.

It has always been so. Why did we go to war against England in 1812? Because the English people had wronged us? The English people, left to themselves, never wronged anybody. We went to war with England in 1812 because the ruling class of England, then deep in the Napoleonic wars, were holding up American ships upon the high seas to take off alleged British subjects and jam them into the British Navy.

Such action, of course, was harmful to American pride, but really it did not deeply concern the American working class. Most of the workers lived and died without ever having seen a ship. Nevertheless, the American working class was summoned to the slaughter. My paternal great-grandfather, a humble farmer in the Hudson River Valley, was drafted into the ranks, and to this day I honor him because he would not go without being drafted. And, when the war was ended, the working class of America was worse off than it was before.

So was the working class of England. Some were dead. Some were shattered in health. The living lived less well because they had to pay the cost of hell. The impressment of alleged British subjects upon the high seas ceased only because Great Britain chose to end it. The treaty of peace contained no stipulation that she should end it. Thus ceased this criminally stupid war, which never would have begun if the people of England, instead of a small ruling class, had ruled their own country.

The war with Mexico was so monstrous that General Grant, who fought in it, denounced it in the strongest language at his command. In the second chapter of the first volume of his “Memoirs,” after characterizing the Mexican War as “unholy,” he says:

“The occupation, separation and annexation” (of Texas) “were, from the inception of the movement to its final consummation, a conspiracy to acquire territory out of which slave states might be formed for the American Union. Even if the annexation itself could be justified, the manner in which the subsequent war was forced upon Mexico cannot.... The Southern Rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican War.”

Do you get that? Two wars caused by slavery. Seven hundred thousand men killed. Twenty billion dollars’ worth of wealth either destroyed outright, or consumed for interest upon the public debt, or paid for subsequent pensions.

And for what?

To settle the question of slavery.

To settle the question of slavery that the men who framed the national Constitution, most of whom were slaveholders, permitted to exist.

To settle the question of slavery, which, never for one moment, during all of those intervening years, was anything but a curse even to the white working class.

And, what is chattel slavery? Merely a method of appropriating the products of the labor of others. Who were interested in maintaining it? Certainly not the working class, no member of which ever owned a slave. The capitalist class of the South was interested in it, because its holdings were agricultural, and slave labor was well adapted to agricultural undertakings. The capitalist class of the North was not interested in maintaining chattel slavery, because the investments of Northern capitalists were chiefly in industrial undertakings, for which black slave labor was not well suited. Yet, the North never seriously objected to slavery, as such. Men like Wendell Phillips, who did object to slavery, as such, were mobbed in the North. If the North, like the South, had been, so far as the great capitalists were concerned, an agricultural country, there is no reason whatever to suppose that the North would not have been in favor of chattel slavery. What the North most objected to was the effort of the South to extend slavery into new states, as they were admitted. The Southern aristocracy, in this manner, sought to prevent the loss of its hold upon the government. The Northern capitalists also desired to gain control of the government. When the addition of new free states stripped the South of its political supremacy, the South went to war. The North resisted the attack to save the Union.

Remember, that is why the North went to war—to save the Union, which had been attacked. It was not to free the slaves and end slavery. We have this upon the authority of no less a man than Lincoln. Lincoln once sent word to the South that if it would permit him to put one word into a peace-treaty, he would let the South put in all the others. The one word that Lincoln said he wanted to put in was “union.” Lincoln was opposed to slavery, but he was not so much opposed to it that he wanted to fight about it. It was only after the South had fought Lincoln almost to a standstill that he rose above the Constitution and destroyed an institution that was not even mentioned in the Constitution—much less prohibited by it.

That is what the Civil War was about—chattel slavery.

Something that would not have existed if men had not first existed who wished to ride upon the backs of others.

Something that would not have existed if the representatives of the ruling class who drafted the Constitution had not been eager that it should persist.

Something that never for a moment benefited the working class.

Yet, the working class fought the war—on one side to preserve slavery for the benefit of others; on the other side to maintain a union under which white men and black men alike are always upon the brink of poverty.

Seven hundred thousand men followed the Stars and Stripes and the Stars and Bars—to bloody graves. Not one of them would have been killed in war if the common people of each section had ruled each section. The common people never owned slaves. They did well if they owned themselves.

And now we come to the Spanish-American War. We believe it was fought to “free Cuba.” We believe it was fought to “avenge the Maine.” Don’t take too much for granted. Even Senator Nelson, of Minnesota, declared in the United States Senate in 1912 his belief that the war with Spain was fomented by Americans who held large interests in Cuba. He also declared his belief that the Sugar Trust was trying to foment another revolution for the purpose of bringing about annexation and thus ridding itself of the 80 percent. tariff that is now levied upon American sugar.

But there is more to the story. To this day, there is no proof that the Maine was destroyed by Spaniards, Cubans, or anyone outside of her. For fourteen years the government of the United States did not seem to want to know. The Maine, with the bones of 200 or 300 workingmen aboard her, was permitted to lie in the mud of Havana harbor where she sank. And, when the wreck was tardily raised, nobody was able to say that the ship was not destroyed by the explosion of her own magazines. Now, the hull of the old ship is down far in the ocean, with no hope that the facts will be known.

But the interests that wanted war had no doubt of the facts in 1898. Their newspapers thundered their theory every day. The Maine had been destroyed by Spaniards! We must “Remember the Maine.” We did remember the Maine, but we forgot ourselves. We forgot to be sure we were right. And, even if we were right, we forgot that the killing of a few thousands of Spanish workingmen would be no fit punishment for the crime of the Spanish ruling class that wrecked the Maine.

We also forgot to watch what Wall Street was doing at the time. Read some paragraphs from the New York Tribune of April 1, 6, 9 and 20, 1898:

“Mr. Guerra, of the Cuban Junta, was asked about the Spanish-Cuban bonds against the revenues of the island. He replied that he did not know their amount, which report fixed at $400,000,000....”

“These bonds are payable in gold, at 6 per cent. interest, ten years after the war with Spain had ended....”

“The disposition of the bonds of the Cuban Republic has been a question discussed in certain quarters during the last few days, and the grave charge has been made that the bonds have been given away indiscriminately in the United States to people of influence who would therefore become interested in seeing the Republic of Cuba on such terms with the United States as would make the bonds valuable pieces of property.” (Kindly note that the bonds would be worth nothing unless Spain were driven out of Cuba.) “Men of business, newspaper, and even public officials, have been mentioned as having received these bonds as a gift....”

“A congressman said in the house on Monday that he had $10,000 worth of Cuban bonds in his pocket, while H. H. Kohlsaat, in an editorial in one of the Chicago papers, charges the Junta with offering a bribe of $2,000,000 of Cuban bonds to a Chicago man to use his influence with the administration for the recognition of the Cuban government.”

“Mr. Guerra made the somewhat startling statement that a man representing certain individuals at Washington has sought to coerce the Junta into selling $10,000,000 worth of bonds at 20 cents on the dollar. ‘This man practically threatened us that unless we let him have the bonds at the price quoted, Cuba would never receive recognition. He said he was prepared to pay on the spot $2,000,000 in American money for $10,000,000 of Cuban bonds, but his offer was refused.’”

You probably do not remember these items. Perhaps, at that time, like many other citizens, you were too busy “remembering the Maine.” If so, what do you think of these items now? Do they mean anything to you? Do they offer any explanation as to why this government, after having paid little or no attention to six rebellions in Cuba during a 50–year period, suddenly determined to “free Cuba”?

In any event, remember that whatever Spain did to Cuba was done by the ruling class and not by the people of Spain. The ruling class was bent upon the robbery of the Cubans. The people of Spain did not profit from the robbery. Nor was the working class of the United States helped by the expulsion of Spain from Cuba. The Sugar Trust and some other great American interests were helped, but the American working class was not. The working class had only the pleasure of doing the fighting, the dying and the bill-paying.

The American working class profited no more from the war with the Philippines, which was fought solely to provide a new field for the dollar-activities of American capitalists. There is no American workingman who now finds it easier to make a living because of the generally improved conditions brought about by the war with the Philippines. General conditions have not been improved. They have been made worse to the extent that the cost of the war is a burden upon industry. If working-class interests had been consulted, the war never would have been waged. No working class interest was involved. The workers had everything to lose, including life, by going to the front, and nothing to gain. But they “followed the flag”—and some of them never came back. They stayed—six feet under ground—that the Tobacco Trust, the Timber Trust, and many other great capitalist interests might stay on the islands above the ground.

Look wherever you will, you cannot find a working class interest that should or could cause workingmen to slaughter each other. Nor is this situation new. It is as old as war itself. It is a fact that men of sense and honesty have always recognized. Tacitus said:

“Gold and power are the chief causes of war.”

Dryden, the poet, said: “War seldom enters but where wealth allures.”

And Carlyle, in this striking fashion, showed the utter absence of working-class interest in 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 some thirty stone, avoirdupois.

“Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are selected, all dressed in red and shipped away, at public expense, some two thousand miles, or, say, only to the south of Spain, and fed there till wanted.

“And now, to the same spot in the South of Spain, are sent 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 a gun in his hand. Straightway the order ‘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.”

That is the cause of war between nations—“the governors fall out.” And who are the governors? Nobody but the representatives of the ruling class, who clash in their race for plunder and deceive workingmen into doing their fighting for them.

Now, let us go back a bit. You may recall that I said that the ruling capitalist class uses government as a two-handed claw with which to pull golden chestnuts out of the fire. One hand of this claw is the power to make and enforce laws. The other hand—the power to wage war—is used to grab what cannot be grabbed with laws. Wars between nations illustrate one form of effort to get what laws cannot give. Here is another:

The United States is dotted with forts, arsenals and armories. Far in the interior, where, by the widest stretch of the imagination, no foreign army could come, we see these grim reminders and prognosticators of war. Under the Dick Military Law, the President of the United States, without further legislation, can compel every man in the United States, between the ages of 18 and 45 years, to enlist in the militia of his state and serve under the orders of the President of the United States. The President, therefore, has it in his power at any time to raise an army of about 12,000,000 men and place them in the field.

What for? To fight a foreign foe? Not much. The Constitution of the United States forbids the President to make war against a foreign nation without the explicit authorization of Congress. But the Dick Law authorizes the President to raise this enormous army and to command it.

Here is the question. At whom is this enormous potential army aimed? Why is the land strewn with arsenals and armories that could be of little or no service in a foreign war?

To quote a word from Carlyle, “Simpleton,” do you not know that all of these arrangements are made to shoot you if the capitalist class should ever decide that you should be shot? Nor, have you never noticed against whom the state militia is invariably used?

If you have noticed none of these things, perhaps it would be well for you to wake up. The militia of the states is practically never used except to beat down workingmen who have revolted against the outrageous wrongs heaped upon them by their employers. American workingmen do not readily revolt. Nowhere are they any too prosperous. Millions believe from the bottoms of their hearts that they are being robbed. Yet, they keep on. Only when they are ground into the dust, as they were by the Woolen Trust at Lawrence, or by the Coal Trust in Pennsylvania, do they rebel.

Please, therefore, note this monstrous situation:

Under the laws of the land, the capitalists have a right to grind their employees as deeply into the dust as they can grind them.

While this process is going on the national and state troops are quite still. But when human nature, unable to bear up longer, explodes and a few window panes are broken, the troops come scurrying to the scene. Soldiers fill the streets, citizens are ordered this way and that, guns are fired recklessly, perhaps a man or two or a woman or two are killed; the soldiers deny the killing and charge it to the strikers themselves, and eventually the strike is broken.

Can you recall when the militia of a state was recently used for anything else?

Now, we Socialists do not believe in violence, even by strikers. We are supposed to be greedy for blood, but we are not. We do believe, however, the best way to end violence caused by robbery is to end the robbery. We believe it is contemptible for a government to be blind to robbery so long as it proceeds without an outcry from the victim. We believe it is criminal for the government to shoot the victim simply because, in his distress, he breaks a pane of glass in the factory or mill in which he was robbed. We can understand why such crimes are committed, because we know that the same capitalist interests that control industry also control government. But, understanding the offense does not make us approve it. We are against the great crime of war, whether it be practiced upon a huge scale abroad, or upon a small scale at home.

But the President is also opposed to war, the Czar of Russia is also opposed to war, and the German Emperor is also opposed to war. No Socialist can outdo any of these gentlemen in deploring war. The smallest Socialist, however, outdoes any of these gentlemen in making good upon his declaration. Socialists will not go to war. They will not join the army, the militia, or the navy. All over the world this is true. They preach against war in season and out of season. They preach against anything that tends toward war. They preach against dressing little boys as soldiers and calling them “scouts.” And wherever Socialists hold seats in national legislative bodies, their attitude is “No men; no money.” They will vote for no bill that seeks to draw another man or another dollar into the horrible game of war.

Those who do not understand us, or who do not want us to be understood, charge us with lack of patriotism. If blood-letting for dollars be the test of patriotism, we certainly are not patriotic. We refuse to kill men for money, either for ourselves or for any one else. Nor do we believe that Frenchmen, Englishmen, Germans or any others are less our brothers than are Americans. We regard all nationalities and races as members of the great human family. We want this family to live in peace. We preach peace. We live peace.

But how can there be peace when great groups of capitalists are contending for profits? How can there be peace when great groups of capitalists controlling their respective governments, build great fleets and muster great armies to struggle for trade and profits? How can there be peace when these same capitalists, through their control of government, teach even school children that the warrior’s trade is glorious and that the citizen’s duty is to “stand by the flag”? Our flag has often stood where it had no moral right to stand. It has stood for the wrongs of capitalism when it should have stood for the rights of the people. Our flag will always stand for the wrongs of capitalism, so long as capitalism controls the government.

In such circumstances, there can be no assured peace. Peace tribunals, like that of The Hague, may be established until their sponsors are black in the face, but still there will be no peace. There can be no peace. Profits prevent. The gentlemen who attach themselves to these tribunals want peace—if. Peace if it can be maintained without hurting profits. Peace if it can be maintained without restraining capitalistic brigands who wish to descend upon the property of others. Peace if it can be had without price.

So war continues in a world that is weary of war. Heavier and heavier becomes the burden of armaments. The workingman staggers under the weight of the fourteen-inch gun. The workingman may go hungry. The gun must be fed.

Only one machine can smash this gun, and that is the printing press. The greatest gun can shoot only twenty miles or so. The Socialist press can shoot and is shooting around the world. When the working class controls its printing presses, war will end.

Do you really want war to end, or is a string attached to your wish? If you mean business, you can help end it. But if you want the privilege of aiding in this great work for humanity, you will have to vote the Socialist ticket. It is the only ticket that always and everywhere is sternly against war, as the Socialist party is the only party opposed to the profit system that makes wars.

I cannot close this chapter without calling the attention of readers to a book entitled “War—What For?” by Mr. George R. Kirkpatrick. It is published by the author at West Lafayette, Ohio. Between darkness and daylight, one night, I read it all. I can never forget it. If all the world had read it, there would be no more war.