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[1] -
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
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 sworde - 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.[2]
Governments -
to-day 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
fishhook
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
Fakirs’ 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 flim-flammed 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.
0, 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 bell, 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.”[3]
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 - in
the next chapter - after you have, for a moment, studied another specimen of
glory:
TWELVE HOURS OF GLORY.
The
The
132,000 Russians - with 640 cannon.
133,000 Frenchmen - with 590 cannon.
12 hours of murder - the battle closed at
sundown.
The Glory:
65,000 wounded at sundown.
25,000 dead at sundown.
25,000 more soon died on the battlefield from
wounds, frost and starvation as they lay in their bath of blood and snow and
ice and glory.
Infinite fear, infinite pain, infinite
sadness, heartbreak and tears for the multitude of undecorated, unsung,
unmentioned women and children in the homes of the humble slain.
“The troops
[at
See Fraser’s
“The War Dramas of the Eagles”
and Atteridge’s “The Bravest
of the Brave.”
FOLLOWING THE FLAG IN
On
a five-acre space (on Spion Kop) dead and wounded men fell down over 100 per
hour (nearly two a minute) for more than fourteen hours.
“Heads
were found a dozen yards from their ghastly trunks: hands and legs were
scattered over the rocky surface: torn and mangled bodies were lying in all
directions, with scores of dead faces upturned, with staring eyes in the sun .
. . a gruesome, sickening, hideous picture, which the brush of Verestchagin,
with all its powers of realistic portraiture, could not match in painted
horrors from the limitless domain of artistic creation. . . . ‘Several
hundred mem [declared General Botha] lay unburried at the top of the hill, in
very hot weather, too, for three or four days.’” The British General left his dead thus
unburried, though the Boers had promptly granted an armistice of twenty-four
hours for the burial. See “The Boer Fight For Freedom,” pp.
351-52. By Michael Davitt,
M.P. Published by Funk and
“The vultures had been feeding upon them.” Webster Davis: John Bull’s Crime, pp. 187-94. Mr. Davis, a distinguished American, tells of corpses he saw on the battlefield eight days after the battle.
The
British Government forced the discontinuance of the exhibition of these
original photographs in the display windows on thoroughfares in
Original photographs furnished the author by a five-medal, honorably discharged British soldier.