War—What For?

Following are “Topics for Discussion,” commended especially to working men as themes for conversations by fathers (and mothers) and sons, daughters also. It is hoped, too, that many of these themes may be brought up for discussion by labor union bodies.

The reader will kindly refer to the footnote on page 13.

The divisions—or “sections”—of the present chapter and of the succeeding chapter are not always materially related, and for the author’s purpose it is not necessary that they should be. The section numbering is for convenience in cross reference and for indexing.

(1) The Tsar of Russia and Germany’s famous general Von Moltke positively refused to permit the young soldiers to see Verestchagin’s pictures of war. Why? Because the pictures are true: they look like hell. Hell is not alluring.

“If my soldiers should think carefully, not one of them would remain, in the ranks.”—Frederick II.

Did you ever notice the attractive pictures of well-dressed, well-fed soldiers and marines displayed as our government’s advertisements for army and navy recruits? The pictures are lovely. They are intended to make war look good to the young and hungry wage-earners, especially to those out of a job. But let me tell you: Recently when a crowded transport reached San Francisco back from the Philippines, some of the soldiers, on seeing again the advertising pictures displayed as decoys in San Francisco, shook their fists at the pictures and loudly and bitterly cursed them as part of the bait used to lure them to the hell of war. They had been thinking it all over. A good time to think it over is before you enlist—before you agree to go to hell.

(2) Comment on war:

German proverb: “When war comes the devil makes hell larger.”

The Rev. Doctor Albert Barnes: “War resembles hell.”

Bishop Warburton: “The blackest mischief ever breathed from hell.”

Lord Clarendon: “War ... an emblem of hell.”

William Shakespeare: “O, War, thou son of hell.”

General W. T. Sherman: “War is hell.”

Well, really, it does seem as if the workingmen should at least be sharp enough to stay out of hell.

Now, since “war is hell” and the business men want hell and the politicians declare hell—why not let these gentlemen go to hell?

(3) Suppose we should have two laws passed and suppose we were in political position to rigidly enforce these two laws:—

First Law,—Requiring that when Congressmen and Senators are elected there shall be elected at the same time an alternate for each and every one of the Congressmen and Senators elected—to fill easily and promptly any vacancies that may occur from any cause.

Second Law,—Requiring that all Senators and Congressmen who vote for war and thus “declare war” shall be forced, according to this law, to instantly resign their offices, and, by special draft provided for in this law, be forced to join the army immediately, infantry department, and, with the common instruments of war (rifles, swords, etc.), fight on the firing line, as privates, without promotion, till the war is finished or till they themselves are slaughtered.

It is significant that:

“Universal military service, adopted by all the great states on the Continent, in imitation of Germany [following the Franco-Prussian War], has, by making the young men of wealthy families join the army, personally interested the members of the governments and parliaments in avoiding war.”^[182]

When, in 1909, the Spanish War in Africa became intense and dangerous, the Spanish government renewed an old “exemption” law permitting wealthy and “noble” and elegant Spanish gentlemen to send substitutes to the war and thus avoid the hell of the firing line themselves.^[183]

Our “Dick” Military Law, passed by Congress in 1903, exempts Congressmen, Senators, judges, etc.,—also (by agreement with the State laws) preachers and priests—exempts all these from the clutches of the War Department, though that same law sweeps millions of other men—all able-bodied, male citizens over eighteen and under forty-five years of age—sweeps millions more than before into the absolute control of the Department of Slaughter. (See Section 11, below.)

Does it not seem that if war is good enough to vote for or pray for it is good enough to go to rifle in hand? If not, why not?

Those who vote for or pray for blood-stained victories should be forced to go after them. (See Chapter Eight, Section 14.)

(4) Mr. Workingman, would you for any reason permit any statesman or other leading citizen to compel you personally and individually to go out into a neighboring pasture-field and open fire with a Winchester upon your neighbor who had done you no injury, against whom you felt no enmity? Scorn the thought!

Well, suppose you are multiplied by 500,000 and your neighbor is also multiplied by 500,000, and instead of a neighboring pasture-field you have a neighboring territory on the other side of some national boundary line, and no quarrel, no enmity, no injury to be righted between the two groups of 500,000 workingmen—what then? Can’t you see the point—till you have a bayonet thrust into you?

Suppose the Congress of the United States and the Diet of Japan should declare war against each other. Why not have all the fighting and the bleeding and the dying done by the Mikado and the national legislature of Japan and our President and our national legislature? Simply have these two small groups of glistening strutters forced to face each other with rifles, swords and Gatling guns out on some nice level county fair-ground or big cornfield—forced to furnish the blood, cripples, corpses and funerals. This plan would be far more fun and less worry and less work—for the working class; it would require so much less time and money and blood and tears.

Take the last great war between Germany and France, in 1870–71. The King of Prussia and the Emperor of France had a personal quarrel about who should be or who should not be the new King of Spain—which was none of their business. They got “real mad.” War was declared. The “honor” of this precious pair of handsome parasites was at stake. Nothing but blood would wash out the stain upon their “honor.” Of course, royal blood was too precious for this laundering process. “Noble blood” was, of course, not available—for such purposes. The blood of common working class men would do very well for these two brutes to do their washing in. They were too cowardly to take each a sword and a Winchester and go out behind the barn or into the woodshed and “settle it,” risking their own putrid blood.... No—oh, no! The red ooze of kings and nobles is not to be wasted as long as a lot of cheap wage-slaves are standing around willing to be butchered—with pride,—for the experience and honor of it.

“To the front! To the front! A million men to the front!”

Instantly a multitude of the strong men of the working class blindly rushed to the front—as ordered, and asking no more questions about the justice of the war than the cavalry horses asked.^[184]

Did the working people of France and Germany have any grudge against one another? Not the slightest. But they butchered one another by the tens of thousands.

It is true that the King of Prussia and the Emperor of France were actually in this war, “at the front” (somewhat—or “as it were”). But the working class reader should not be deceived by that fact. The King and the Emperor were rarely in any danger whatever—up very close. They “enjoyed” the battles from the high ground overlooking the slaughter—watching bravely through telescopes.

“How, then, did the Germans capture the Emperor at the Battle of Sedan?”

His troops were overwhelmed by the Germans. His soldiers swept back—crowded into Sedan. Five hundred German cannon pounding the town made the Emperor long for home. He did his grandest deeds of heroism—in trying to escape. He hadn’t time to get out of the way. Bravely he dressed in women’s clothes in order not to be recognized, hoping by a perfectly ladylike manner to get back to his throne on which his heroism would be more apparent and his martial spirit more assertive.

(5) Well-paid federal injunction judges, well-paid generals and naval officers (and their widows) are provided with liberal old-age government pensions—to make sure that their last years may be absolutely secured against toil and worry and the humiliation and social damnation of poverty. Now if these well-paid men, receiving salaries of from $2,000 to $12,500 a year for many years,—if these and those they love should be carefully protected against want and worry in their gray old age, then why should not useful industrial workers who serve long and well in the mills and mines and on the farms and railroads for a meagre living where their lives are full of risk—why should not these also be made absolutely secure when the sunset of their lives draws near? Why not?

The present annual cost of our two Departments of Murder—the Army and the Navy—(including interest on war bonds and the loss of the “regular” soldiers’ labor-power, but not including the military pensions) would furnish an annual old-age industrial pension of more than $290 each for one million four hundred and fifty thousand people. You old men and old women of the working class, wouldn’t it give you a feeling of peace and confidence if you were absolutely certain that, after a life of useful labor in the grand army of industry, you, every pair of you, would receive yearly, not as charity, but as a right provided for all, over $580? The lives of many working class men and women are today filled with fear of hunger and rags and shelterless, helpless days when they pass the capitalists’ deadline, the employers’ “age-limit.”

Says the New York World:^[185]

“The unemployed of New York ask that on Decoration Day there be a service in the honor of the workingmen who have lost their lives at the post of duty. Not much attention has been paid to the suggestion.... These are the legacies which a people devoted to industry have received from an ancestry devoted to war. The heroes most honored in all ages have been warriors, and yet every generation has produced countless examples of devotion and sacrifice remote from the field of carnage.

“More than any other great nation this republic might be expected to glorify the martyrs of industry, whose lives have been as truly for progress as any of those sacrificed in the ranks of armies. There are many dangerous callings in which the risks are as great as those of war. There are hundreds of thousands of working men and women fighting fiercer battles daily than many a soldier ever knew. On the industrial firing line, where no quarter is given to the invalid or the incompetent, courage is not sustained by excitement and passion, and there are no illusions of fame to strengthen the faltering toiler when he comes face to face with defeat and death.

“It is well that we should remember the fine patriotism of our citizen soldiers, but even they were workers before they were warriors. If we would celebrate heroism it is to be found all about us in the humble stations among the men and women—even the children—who toil.”

Think about this matter, carefully, you men and women of the working class. Discuss it with your children and your neighbors.

(6) The owner of a factory, protected by law, by the constitution, by the flag, by the politicians and the soldiers and militia, can “turn down” a skilful, effective wage-earner because his hair is gray, because he is “too old,” is “past the age limit”—even though his old wife starve for support. The “glorious flag” protects even such vile industrial tyranny. The flag that the old man has worshipped, the constitution he defended, and the politicians he voted for—all these are no protection for him. Thus our old industrial soldiers are helpless even though the industrial tyrant spit on their gray beard.

(7) The patriotic militiamen and the “regulars” often say: “We believe in protecting property in time of strikes.”

How much property have you? And what kind of property is it? Is your property in danger? Indeed, was your property even remotely threatened? Do those who own the property you protect actually help you in protecting their property—help you in actual struggles where the lead flies?

American capitalists often refer to the “splendid service” of the militia and the regular troops in Chicago in 1894 in “protecting railway property from being burned by the strikers.” But let us see:

Certain railway companies in 1894 knew that the government of Chicago could be forced or “persuaded” to pay for all the cars destroyed within the city limits during the strike by claiming insufficient protection of property had been furnished. If, then, hundreds of old worn-out cars worth “old-iron” prices could be destroyed by fire within the city limits during the strike, and if the railway companies could by trickery collect from the city, say, $500 for each such car burnt, it would be “good business” to have such cars set on fire by paid incendiaries. The burning of this precious property would also create powerful sentiment against the strikers when “played up” luridly by the capitalist newspapers. Thus there was powerful motive for having the precious property burnt. It would be both awful and profitable. Employees of some of the railways entering Chicago have told the writer that old worn-out cars from railway shop towns far out in Iowa were actually hauled to Chicago and burnt within the city limits in 1894.

Did you know that in 1895 in court the railway union men were charged with burning the cars during the strike; and did you know that when the union men brought into court the proof that detectives were caught in the act of setting fire to cars, court adjourned, and the case has never been called since, though there has been a standing challenge to the courts to do so? Thousands of such facts as these are suppressed.

“It is in evidence and uncontradicted,” says Carroll D. Wright,^[186] “that no violence or destruction of property by strikers or sympathizers took place in Pullman [Illinois], and that until July 3d [when the federal troops came upon the scene] no extraordinary protection was had from the police or military against even anticipated disorder.”

(8) In 1907 there was a bitter strike at the iron mines in northern Minnesota. In all the “strike” mining towns, except one, armed men, “special guards,” were officially placed on duty at once—ready to “keep order,” ready to “quell the riots,” etc. In Sparta, an iron-mining town, there were over three hundred men on strike, hotly eager to win the strike. But the strikers and the town officials united in an urgent request that no special armed guards be sent to Sparta. The strikers and the town officials agreed that “the guards only stir up trouble,” and without the guards they could and would keep order themselves.

Guards were sent to all the “strike” towns but Sparta.

Turmoil and bitterness promptly broke out and continued for weeks in every “strike” town except Sparta.

There was no trouble whatever in Sparta during the entire strike. The only man arrested in Sparta for disorder during the entire strike was a special guard that sneaked into the town and got viciously drunk. He was promptly thrust into jail by the police, with the glad sanction of the strikers, and on the following morning he was escorted to the town limits and forced to get away and stay away. Another day during the strike several special guards came to the borders of the town, plainly seeking trouble. They were promptly forced to leave.

Well-fed, well-paid, well-armed men in a strike town ready to bayonet poor fellows struggling for crusts against a brutal corporation—simply stir up trouble. And the capitalist employers know this well.

Surely you have noticed that during troublous times of strike the chief use made of police, militia, cossacks and “regulars” is to protect the haughty employer who blurts out: “Nothing to arbitrate!” He would promptly come to terms—there would instantly be “something to arbitrate”—if he did not feel sure that the toilers would be promptly jailed or shot if they became maddened in their fear and hunger and humiliation.

(9) You must have noticed that in turbulent strike times in your community hungry, humiliated, angry men never for a moment think of doing the least damage to the publicly-owned school houses, the publicly-owned libraries and the publicly-owned art galleries and the State University and the publicly-owned park. You see, the workers are in a more social relation to this social property. And if the mills, mines, factories, and railways and the like were socially owned and socially controlled, the workers would also be in a far more social relation toward this socialized industrial property. Then there would be no class war raging around the mines and shops. Then this property would need no protection from cheated, hungry, humiliated, maddened working people nor from detective crooks in the service of capitalists as incendiaries. Then the workers could not be haughtily turned down with the brutal “Nothing to arbitrate!” Then indeed there would be no industrial kings and emperors to demand: “Bring out the Gatling guns and the cossacks! This is our business!”

Notice:

Political justice is impossible under a political despotism.

Political democracy is the only known cure for political despotism.

Industrial justice is impossible under an industrial despotism.

Industrial democracy is the only cure for industrial despotism.

Industrial democracy would end the civil war in industry.

“The right to rule the political state is mine!”—says the king.

“You are wrong!” answer the most enlightened people.

The king steps down. He must.

The people step—up—to power. They must.

This is progress.

“The right to rule in industry is ours!” say the capitalist industrial masters, the industrial kings.

“You are wrong!” is the increasing answer of the increasing multitude of the increasingly intelligent members of the working class.

The kings of capitalism will come down. They must.

The working class will go up—to industrial democracy. They must.

This will be progress.

If despotism is all wrong in politics, it can not be all right in industry.

Increasing democracy is on the increasing program of mankind.

The master of ceremonies is the political party of the working class to secure, to inaugurate, to “render the next number on the program,”—industrial democracy.

This is the “road to power.”

Forward! Forward! On!—to the last great battle in the civil war in industry.

“Evolution makes hope scientific.”

Evolution leads to revolution.

That is a law of nature.

Laws of nature cannot be ignored, suspended, amended or repealed.

Learn the road to power, great splendid multitude of toilers.

The world is ours just as soon as we learn the road to power.

Prepare for the revolution—and Life.^[187]

(10) That there is civil war in industry under capitalism has concrete illustration in the facts of strikes and lockouts. Here are some of them for a short term of years—in our own country:—

From 1881 to 1901 there were in the United States 22,793 strikes, which involved 117,509 establishments, threw 6,105,694 persons out of employment for an average of 21 and 8/10

days, lost these workers in wages $257,863,478, consumed $16,174,793 in assistance from labor organizations, and lost to the employers over $122,731,121. Of these strikes less than 51 per cent. succeeded, slightly more than 13 per cent. partly succeeded, and over 36 per cent. failed altogether. During these same years there were 1,005 lockouts which involved 9,933 establishments, threw 504,307 persons out of employment for an average of 97 days, lost $48,819,745 in wages, cost $3,451,745 in assistance from labor organizations, lost for the employers $19,927,983. About 51 per cent. of these lockouts succeeded, less than 7 per cent. partly succeeded, and about 43 per cent. failed.^[188]

“In legalizing labor wars,” says Waldo F. Cook,^[189] “the state virtually recognizes industrial classes as belligerents; and enough time has now elapsed to enable one to say that the long series of these wars and their highly probable continuance for an indefinite period under present conditions, establishes the presumption that the wage-system is a failure and must sometime be replaced by another, which will not produce industrial classes with hostile interests and exacerbate society by their class antagonisms and hates. For the labor war, no less than the war between nations, cultivates prejudice, bitterness and hatred—only these feelings affect classes within a nation rather than the nations themselves in their relations with each other.... Law makes violence by nations right; law makes violence by strikes wrong.”

“War is a collision of interests.”—General Von der Goltz. (Quoted by Mr. Cook, above.)

(11) The Dick Militia Law: A quiet revolution. Everywhere our capitalist government prepares to serve the capitalist interests in the “collision of interests,”—in the civil war in industry.

The highest literary honor that can come to an officer of the United States Army is the Gold Medal of the Military Service Institution. This honor was won in the year 1908 by Captain Bjornstad of the Twenty-Eighth Infantry—with an essay urging a standing army of 250,000 men and a reserve army of 750,000 men.

Would not the following be a fruitful subject for discussion in the labor union halls: What is the connection between the threatening increase in the insulted, starving army of the unemployed and the threatening increase of the bribed standing army?

Study and discuss this matter till our class realize that strong men of the working class are bribed with bread to slay those who earn bread.

All working men should read the Annual Report made by Mr. Elihu Root, Secretary of War, in 1902–3. Mr. Root, shrewd, shameless and powerful lackey of the capitalist class, forcibly set forth in his Report the great advantages that would result (to the capitalist class) from certain almost revolutionary changes that could be easily made by vastly increasing the “State” militia forces and at the same time constituting these “State” forces as an organic, instantly commandable part of the national army—to be used precisely like “regular” troops for any purpose desired by the capitalists in control of the national government. Mr. Root’s Report attracted instant wide and favorable attention. The capitalists were delighted. The workers were deluded. Immediately the Report became the basis of the “Dick Militia Law” which was passed in 1903.

The author of War—What For? has urged capitalist editors all over the United States to publish this law. He has offered to pay for space at liberal advertising rates in which to print from ten to one hundred lines of this law. He has not succeeded in finding a capitalist editor who would thus reveal the treachery of his class lurking in this law. This law is a rough-ground sword against the rousing, rising working class in the United States, a law more important to the working class than any other law passed since the middle of the nineteenth century. This law is loaded with death for the workers when in future years the army of the unemployed or the ill-paid toilers gather around the mines and factories and roar for work or bread. Instead of work they will get sneers. Instead of bread they will get lead and steel—provided for by this Dick Militia Law.

The capitalists do not dare permit the working class to read and study this “Dick” law in the newspapers. Note some of the features of this law:

The purpose: “An Act to promote the efficiency of the militia and for other purposes.”

What is meant by “other purposes” will become clearer as the army of the unemployed grows larger. “Other purposes”—exactly: food for reflection when out of work and hungry.

Section 1,—“The militia shall consist of every able-bodied male citizen of the respective States, Territories, and the District of Columbia ... who is more than eighteen and less than forty-five years of age.”

The males of military age, all from eighteen to forty-five inclusive, in 1890 numbered 13,230,168.^[190]

Section 4,—“... It shall be lawful for the President to call forth for a period not exceeding nine months such number of the militia as he may deem necessary ... and to issue his orders ... as he may think proper.”

The law was amended with an iron hand during the winter and spring of the hard times of 1907–8, when millions were thrown out of employment and into the muttering, angry army of the unemployed. For example, the nine-months limit was struck out of Section 4, which is more food for reflection—for any one who has brains enough to reflect with.

Section 7,—“Any officer or enlisted man of the militia who shall refuse or neglect to present himself to such mustering officer upon being called forth ... shall be subject to trial by court martial, and shall be punished as such court martial may direct.”

The law creates a vast reserve army now rapidly being perfected. The law, especially as amended recently, gives the President power greater than is possessed by some of the most dangerous and hated tyrants on earth today. Issuing a general order by telegraph and post, the President could suddenly place under orders from five to ten millions of the strongest men in the land—including the strikers themselves; and to neglect or refuse to obey such orders would mean a “court-martial” trial with rigorous punishment. A court-martial jury is not noted for gentleness; famously different from a jury of one’s “old neighbors.”

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.