“Where are thy portents, Peace?
What sign on land or sea
Of thy great coming, of thy rule to be?
The fighting and the drumming do not cease;
Gun-thunder smites the air,
And shakes the earth beneath.
Bait we not the war-dogs in their lair,
And toil at harvesting of dragon’s teeth?...
Must it forever be a poet’s dream—
The land secure, the mind at rest,
The cut-throat tamed and laboring at an oar,
The braggart silent and ashamed,
The toiler as a monarch seem,
The woman with her baby at her breast,
Aglow with joy that war shall be no more?...”
—J. I. C. Clarke, in New York Times.

Prominent people—prominent chiefly because they are elevated upon the shoulders of the working class—have been talking about peace for a long time. But peace born of justice, peace founded upon fairness,—that is neither thought of nor talked of, by the ruling class, in the pompous and pretentious peace conferences; it is not on the program.

Father and the boys of the working class will themselves have to place peace on the program of mankind. And one of the first things to do is to bring up the subject of war and peace in every working class organization in the world—for discussion. (See pages 272, 283–289. Index: “Carnegie.”)

A Special Notice to the Hague Peace Society:

As to “limited armaments”—whether the swords are long or short, the working class more and more clearly see that you intend that the working class shall continue to do all the fighting in case of war.

A Special Challenge to the Hague Peace Society:

That all delegates to the Conferences shall discuss, not the problems of “disarmament,” but (1) the problem of striking the bands from the wrists of the wage-slaves; (2) the artificial arbitrary restriction placed upon the consuming power of the wage-earners, out of which fact grows the imminent world-struggle for the “world-market.”

A Second Special Challenge to the Hague Peace Society:

That the Society shall frankly announce in all its Conferences, in all its Reports, in all its leaflets, in all its lectures and sermons, that the Socialist Party’s method of preventing war is to frankly and loudly WARN THE VICTIMS OF WAR, the working class, just what war always means to the working class; and that this method has succeeded in preventing two wars in recent years in cases where the Hague Peace Society was powerless.

A Third Special Challenge to the Hague Peace Society:

That the Society shall explain why the Capitalist masters of the Hague Peace Society will not permit their vassals in the Conferences to accept the Second Challenge.

THE BENEFICIARIES OF HELL, FLIRTING WITH “HEAVEN”

The author of WAR—WHAT FOR?, in the summer of 1910, attended a National Peace Conference in New York City. The Conference was attended by some of the most distinguished peace-wishers in the United States, including capitalists, orators and college professors. The author was given the floor to address the Convention. Everything went well until the author began to urge that all who want peace should make every possible effort to WARN THE VICTIMS of war, the working class, of what war means to the working class. Instantly there was manifest discomfort all through the audience, and very soon the chairman left his seat, came close to the speaker and urged that the speech be concluded at once. No other speaker was thus interrupted.