War—What For?

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.