CHAPTER NINE.

The Cross, the Cannon, and the Cash-Register.

“Never land long lease of empire won whose sons sat silent while base deeds were done.”—James Russell Lowell.

Speak! Speak!—you leaders of the toil-stained multitude whom the Great Christ of Peace so boldly defended.

Speak!

Rebuke the brutes who betray Christ’s humble followers!

Speak! There is no excuse for silence—on your part.

Speak defiantly—and _clearly_.

You have for nearly two thousand years held the brain of vast portions of the human race in your hands. Have you taught peace—_effectively_?

Look—see that gaping war-stab in the breast of the working class.

THE CASH COST OF MILITARISM IN THE WORLD FOR FORTY-EIGHT HOURS WOULD BE SUFFICIENT TO PROVIDE A 150–PAGE BOOK AGAINST WAR FOR EVERY PERSON ON EARTH WHO CAN READ.[285] THREE SERMONS PER YEAR AGAINST WAR IN EVERY ONE OF 160,000 CHURCHES OF THE UNITED STATES COULD BE PAID FOR, AT THE RATE OF $50 PER SERMON, WITH LESS THAN THE COST OF TWO FIRST-CLASS BATTLESHIPS.

“Nothing can be clearer than that the leaders of Christianity immediately succeeding Christ, from whom authentic expressions of doctrines have come down to us, were well assured that their Master had forbidden the Christians the killing of men in war or enlisting in the legions. One of the chief differences which separated Roman non-Christians and Christians was the refusal of the latter to enlist in the legions and be thus bound to kill their fellows as directed.”[286]

Eagerly we search the world for relief from the hell’s horror of war.

There! There is the Church—the Church with her vast influence!—and she breathes, “Peace, good will to all men.”

The Church?

Will the Church save us from war?

We shall see.

Reader, let us always open wide our souls to every man and to every influence great enough to make us socially wholesomer.

Sincerely, I admire every great Priest, every great Rabbi, and every great Preacher of our time who is too fine, too proud, too nobly social and international to rent his eloquent voice to the captains of industry for the blood-spilling business of conquering the markets of the world with sword and cannon and for the equally brutal business of benevolently stealing large sections of the earth to be swinishly exploited by money-greedy capitalists.

These men are masculine—unafraid. Let us salute them: “Good cheer, noble friends!”

Boldly these greater Priests refuse to toady to industrial and political masters and thus refuse to scream for war.

Defiantly these greater Rabbis refuse to inflame the tiger lurking in every human breast and thus refuse to prepare men for war.

Nobly these greater Preachers refuse Caesar and Shylock, and thus they stand by the Man of Peace and abhor war.

But, unfortunately, these grand bold souls are in helpless minority—at present.

And thus again we find the following question burning for an answer:

Which way shall the working class turn for deliverance from the curse of war?

Who will rescue the working class from these cyclones of lead and steel?

The Church? The Clergy?

Let us study this matter.

Long ago when the deluded soldiers of an “established” church “patriotically” murdered the Great Carpenter, the “established” church of his locality hypocritically stood by the pagan Roman government, lending assistance to the pagan government and urging the pagan soldiers to slay Jesus Christ. And today the Christian church flatters the soldiers, “stands by the government,”—any and all “Christian” governments,—in any and all wars, and thus refuses to protect the working class from the sword and cannon; refuses to draw the bayonet from the breast of the humble working man; refuses to defend the working class woman from the blood and tears of war; refuses to shield the faces of the little children of the working class from the steel-shod hoofs of the galloping war horse.

This Chapter is a discussion of one of mankind’s _misfortunes_, to show the despotism of the dollar,—TO SHOW THE TYRANNY OF THE ECONOMIC ELEMENT OF HUMAN LIFE; and let me here give most sincere assurance that this Chapter is written with not even the slightest degree of malice toward the Church. However, the Church taught me: “_Speak the truth_.”

Well, here is a truth, a truth to be stripped naked and expressed because it is so vitally important to hundreds of millions who toil:—

The three mighty hosts of the Peace-Preaching Christ, the Greek Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant Church, these, bitterly at war with one another and defending the industrial despotism called capitalism,—refuse, flatly refuse, to _unite_ their powerful voices in a defiant and _effective_ declaration against war; refuse thus to help lift the huge burden and curse of war from the toil-bent shoulders of the working class; refuse to remove the thorn-crown of war from the brow of labor. The working class, millions of them loving Christ sincerely as I do, must learn and face the fact that the Church of the Great Carpenter Christ refuses to save the working class from the periodic baptisms of blood and fire called war.

“Put up thy sword,” said Christ.

“Business is business! There is no sentiment in business! We must conquer the markets of the world,” say the capitalists.

And there is the parting of the ways for toads and men, for the time-server and the prophet, for the emasculate and the masculine.

In 1898 a certain man lived in a small western “city”—and took notes. A local company of working class volunteers was organized to go to Cuba to slaughter the working men in the Spanish army and thus secure greater opportunity for American capitalists. On the day of departure of the volunteer company the people, thousands of them, assembled on a wide public square, surrounding the local volunteers. Suddenly, when interest was intense, a high table was rushed to the center of the square, a banker thoughtfully assisting. Hastily a meek and lowly follower of the Peaceful Jesus—a preacher—took his place upon this table, his eyes flashing hate and his chest bulging heroically. All hats were off. All heads, but two, were bowed in prayer. With head erect and eyes open the preacher, in prayer, addressed—the audience. With his eyes to the sky, the preacher, praying, used the name of God and the ears of the people. There was no “praying in secret” about that “eloquent effort.” The prayer was “powerful.” That prayer was an assault—an assault upon the finest sentiments that bloom in the human heart, the sentiments of the brotherhood of man.

But what of that? “Business is business.”

That eloquent prayer electrified the vast audience. The preacher became an incendiary—he committed arson. His ferocious rhetoric set on fire the gullible souls of young men, humble women, innocent small boys and tender little girls. With crafty eloquence he petted the working class volunteers till they stood more erect in manly pride and licked their lips for the blood of almost equally ignorant Spanish working men; with flattering phrases he seductively praised the plain women who bore these “brave boys” now ready to butcher, praised them till these gentle, humble mothers were warm with an elation known only to mothers of strong men, praised them till they were keen with a savage gladness that they had borne these men now burning to slaughter humble toilers from the working class homes in Spain. With artful power of phrase and voice the preacher praised the small boys present, praying for “more brave boys in future years to stand by the flag”—caressed them thus till the poor little fellows longed to be men in order that they too might rend the flesh of humble working-class men in war—somewhere, anywhere, somehow, sometime. And then with cunning suggestiveness and with vulgar boldness this handsome panderer to capitalist masters rudely invaded the holy of holies, the innocent imagination of tender little girls present, brutally outraged the sacred instincts of kindness natural to these dainty little maids till these young doll-lovers were half excited with a dim but horrible hope, till their faces flushed in anticipation of the patriotic part they too in future years might have in sending their assassin sons to the front.

The prayer ended. The preacher rolled his fine dark eyes and fervently bellowed, “Amen!”

He had done _his_ work. He had played _his_ part. Souls had been branded. Human brotherhood had been suffocated in the hearts of gullible working men—strangled with elegant (and pious) eloquence.

Then the thousands of humble working class people moved off, “hoofing it,” marching behind the soldiers to the railway station. A half dozen bankers, a dozen lawyers, and many other “leading business men” lingered, left their carriages, surrounded the preacher and congratulated him on his “splendid effort”;—and that was part of his pay for his eloquent ferocity. Well-dressed women of the “best families in the city” gave the preacher their gloved right hands and practically embraced him with the virtuous and caressing fondness in their eyes;—and that was part of his pay for scarring the souls of men, women, and little children with the branding-iron of Old Testament ferocity. That savage prayer made him more popular in the city;—and that was part of his pay for his noble ferocity. He was now more secure in his job;—and that was part of his pay for his ecclesiastical buncombe and flap-doodle,—for his jungle growl of civilized ferocity. The collections were for some time larger in his church;—and that, yea, that also, was part of his pay for serving the cash-register and thus playing the rôle of betrayer of the Prince of Peace.

The handsome preacher had performed a miracle. He had so fixedly riveted the attention of the “brave boys” upon the Spaniards that the gullible volunteers noticed nothing strange in the fact that strong, healthy bankers, lawyers, merchants and preachers (patriots all of them of course)—with the stealthy quiet of a cat on a carpet—remained at home just at the very time when “great deeds of glory and patriotism” and manly heroism were to be done.

Doubtless many a shot-torn boy soldier wallowing in his own blood, his chest half crushed with the hoofs of galloping cavalry horses, his splintered bones grinding together at every move, the roar of cannon and the din of curses, prayers, yells, sobs and groans of dying comrades crowding into his ears—thinks of his well-fed, soft-voiced pastor at home far away (and safe), the _good_ man, the _nice_ man, who fired his and his fellow-fighters’ hearts with “lust of death and vulgar slaughter,” who helped betray him and his fellows to the human butchering field. No doubt many working class people fondly hope that the ministers of the Christ of Peace will presently _combine_ and use their vast influence against war—to drive the red demon from the earth that it may no longer desolate the homes of the humble.

Vain hope.

Long ago the cynical, shrewd (and carefully baptized) Napoleon Bonaparte remarked, with biting irony, “God is always on the side of the heaviest battalions.”

Today it is easy to see that not Christ,[287] but the Church of Christ, is on the side of the business man and the politician concerning war.

And thus the bayonet still sticks in the breast of the working class.

Thus the Cross dips to the cannon.

Really, will not the followers of the gentle Christ of Peace presently sweep war from the world?

They most certainly will do nothing of the kind—as long as war is profitable for the “leading citizens.”

“Leading citizens” actually lead. They are the capitalists. Industrially and politically the capitalists have the world by the throat. They force their ambitions, their purposes, and their policies upon both the preacher and the wage-earner. Their purpose is: profits, more profits and still more profits. Their policy is: more markets and more territory—for more profits, at all hazard, in absolute defiance of Confucius, in defiance of Buddha, in defiance of Christ, in shameless defiance of the sacredness of human blood. They will, if need be,—that is, if business, commercial exigencies, require it—they will order the high-salaried generals to wash the earth with the blood of the socially despised working class, while safe in their palatial homes these “leading citizens” will masquerade as patriots, and on the “holy Sabbath day” they will virtually force their salaried pastors to pray and shout for blood-dripping victory.

This is the industrial rulers’ history.

This is the industrial rulers’ present politics.

This is the industrial rulers’ future program.

And the preacher must therefore salute the cash-register and baptize the cannon—_or lose his job just like any other hired man_ who fails to please his _economic_ master.

“Business is business,”—_that_ is “the law and the gospel” of capitalism.

Let us study the matter a little further.

When a war is on the world’s stage the bright lights are so confusing that it is difficult to see the “leading citizens” in the background, “in the wings,” so to speak. For example:

The American people are still clapping their hands and hurrahing for “our noble Christian President” for his part in bringing about peace between Russia and Japan. But why—just why—did not the “noble Christian President” nobly interfere many months before he did interfere? The blood of tens of thousands of humble working-class soldiers in both armies was running down the hillsides in Manchuria in streams—months before. But no interference by the “noble Christian President” (recently so boisterously boastful of “his” own noble slaughtering on San Juan Hill).

Let us understand.

For many months it seemed that Christian Russia would surely win the war and still be able to pay interest and principal of _American investments in Russia_. Later the Russian Government and Russian credit became very unsteady. Immediately the capitalist actors in the background, with money invested in Russian enterprises, put on the pressure, applied “influence,” to our government, and then, and not till then, did President Roosevelt rush to the footlights of the world’s stage and whine and scream for peace.

For many months, while the blood of Japanese and Russian working class men was gushing from a million wounds, while the humble wives and children of these “common” men were wild with grief—all the while “our noble Christian President,” _like all other Christian rulers_, was as silent as a fish; but when principal and interest of American parasites got in danger, our “noble Christian President” promptly became nobly noisy and craftily pious and peaceful.

And that is a fair sample of a “Christian government’s” influence for peace.

At no time did the Church urge or demand peace, and at no time did the Church throw its powerful influence upon our President or upon the head of any other government to bring about peace.[288]

Our gentle Christian President, Mr. Roosevelt, head of the greatest Christian republic on earth, said recently to a hand-clapping Christian audience, “I want for soldiers young men not only willing but _anxious_ to fight”; that is, anxious to murder. That foul sentiment should have been drowned with hisses. The ferocious Christian Tsars of Russia, the blood-thirsting Caesars of the ancient pagan Roman Empire, the chiefs of savage tribes and modern republics,—all the ancient and modern, savage and civilized hero rulers who have sat on thrones and stood on the necks of nations—all these bullies have always been eager to have for soldiers “young men not only willing but anxious to fight”—that is, willing and anxious to cut the throats of their fellowmen in an intertribal or international festival of blood called a patriotic war.

And always, since society was first organized on a _class_-labor plan, the organized “spiritual guides” of society have “stood by the government,” leagued with the hero ruler for the ruling class.

Mr. Roosevelt, for the moral improvement and spiritual guidance of small boys who may read his heroic record as a patriotic warrior, sets it down with evident pride that he shot a Spanish soldier (probably a humble workingman) in the back as the poor, ignorant, frightened fellow fled from the bloody field.[289] Mr. Roosevelt, as related in Chapter Eight, Section 16, urged in an Annual Message that rifle-practice ranges be provided in the public schools for young school boys—presumably that the little fellows may become “not only willing but anxious to fight.” And the Church of the Peaceful Christ did not dare rebuke the “great Christian President” for urging such a barbarous outrage upon the schoolboys’ dawning social consciousness and their finer sentiments of the brotherhood of man.

Recently a school teacher in the city of Washington, where this swaggering-bull-pup patriotism has been most effectively suggested, asked her school children: “What is patriotism?” She got the answer: “Killing Spaniards!” Thus have the little people been outraged with befouling suggestions that cheap race-hatred is patriotism. But the Church does not dare cry out, in defense of “these little ones”: “Stop that! You noisy betrayer! Cease pouring venom into the hearts of these helpless little children!”

“With a hero at head and a nation Well gagged and well-drilled and well cowed, And a gospel of war and damnation, Has not an empire a right to be proud?”[290]

Quite naturally no protest is made.

The working man wonders why,

The working woman wonders why,

The children wonder why—

Why do not the Christian emperors, and Christian kings, the Christian tsars and Christian presidents, the Christian Parliaments, congresses, diets and cabinets of the whole Christian world promptly call a world convention of the Christian rulers of the Christian world, and in this convention declare at once that never, never again, _under any circumstances_, shall there be a war between Christian nations?

Yes, indeed, why not?[291]

For this reason:—The Christian nations are capitalist nations managed for the capitalist class. Each great Christian nation knows that it must find a foreign market for the EMBARRASSINGLY LARGE SURPLUS of goods which its capitalists do not consume or invest and its working class is, by the wage-system, not permitted to consume. Each and all these nations know that this FOREIGN MARKET MUST BE FOUND OPENED AND PROTECTED—with Christian sword and cannon if need be—in order that the capitalists of these countries may make more profits. Indeed, when markets must thus be had, Christians, Jews, Mohammedans, Buddhists, Confucians—with lust for profits—trample down all things fine, sand-bag everything noble, spit in the face of every man of peace, and shout, “Stand back! Stand back! Bring on the cannon! Business is business! There is no sentiment in business! To hell with the mollycoddles! We are in business for _profits_!”

With noble exceptions, at such times Christian preachers, priests, and bishops of the warring nations, with the swagger and pomp of cheap “fighting parsons,” step briskly to the front of the stage, consecrate the cannon, “bless” the sword, baptize the butcher, and, on both sides, with pious savagery scream to the “God of battles,” also to the “God of peace,” for victory “in this _righteous_ war,” for victory in this “armed _crusade for Christ_,” for victory in this “glorious effort to _advance His kingdom_,”—always, always, of course, some lofty name, some swelling phrase, to veil the huge and pious murder.

Sacred wholesale assassinations—for the Peaceful Jesus’ sake!

Even every massacre of the peaceful Jews in Russia is sanctioned by the Greek Christian Church,—and the Roman and the Protestant churches and the Christian governments of the world do _not_ unite and demand peace for the peaceful Jews.

“God moves in a _mysterious_ way his wonders to perform,” we are piously taught.

Mysterious. Very.

But it is _not_ mysterious why pro-war preachers, priests, and bishops are not slaughtered on the battleline and then eaten by buzzards when the cannon’s feast is finished. These men are too intelligent—too cunning—for the buzzards’ banquet.

Every distinguished professional butcher in modern times has been a “member in good standing” in his denomination and his blood-stenched fame is recited with pride.

That mysterious?

All soldiers are blessed as they march away to “Death’s feast.”

The preacher consecrates the cut-throat.

The bayonet is prepared—with prayer—to be thrust into the bowels of the toilers.

All wars are somehow pronounced “mysteriously the will of God”; and the cannoneers who hurl shot and shell into a city or village and cannonade helpless women and children—these are “the servants of the Lord”—mysteriously.

And thus to the appalling music of the cannon’s roar the Cross is dragged down into the bloody mire where men die cursing the preachers safe at home who helped trick them to the hell called war. And thus, too, the spirit of the great fraternal Christ is banished from the lives of the betrayers and the betrayed—and Christ is crucified anew.

Because it is profitable.

Thus in all Christian nations the Cross dips obsequiously to the red-throated cannon—and to the cash-register.

Business is business; the rulers rule; and gold is God.

That is, under capitalism.

Reader, name one “civil” war or one international war of modern times powerfully, effectively hindered by the Church of the Man of Peace.[292]

Just one.

But no matter! Since long before the slaughter of the Carpenter our brothers of the working class have furnished the blood and tears—cheap blood, cheap tears,—about forty cents a day for American “regulars” in the “year of our Lord” 1910.

Learn this, you toilers: The capitalists have the preacher cornered and shackled. The working class must be their own saviors from the horrors of war. In Chapter Ten I shall explain how this can be done and even now begins to be done by the working class.

But the workers should learn from history and keep distinctly in mind this great lesson: With noble individual exceptions the ministry, the religious leaders, have in times past _defended chattel slavery_ with its unspeakable horrors for the _working_ class; and have _defended serfdom_ with its hell for the _working_ class; and have ignobly defended all Christian national and international wars of modern capitalism praying on both sides to the “God of battles” for “glorious victory” regardless of the blood spurting from a million wounds in the torn breast of the _working_ class.

The path of human progress in modern times is steep and slippery with the carcasses and blood of the socially despised working men—and the Church has not _defied_ the cash-register idolater and _demanded_ peace.

Unrebuked, right proudly the cash-register devotee, the business man, blurts out: “_There is no sentiment in business_.”

That proposition, “No sentiment,” is enough to make a cannibal blush. Yet that doctrine is at the heart of capitalism.

_If there is no sentiment in business, then there is no brotherhood in business, for brotherhood is a sublime and beautiful sentiment._

_And if there is no brotherhood in business there can not be Christian fellowship in business._

Thus business banishes Christ and the Cross retreats before the onslaughts of the cash-register.

But it is actually and sadly _true_ that business, competitive business, is too little and belittling, too wolfishly fierce, for deep and loyal brotherhood. This is also true of the great _class_ competition, the _class struggle_, the embittering clash of _industrial class interests_.

And where there is no deep and loyal brotherhood, no great _socializing unity of interest_ stretching from the centre to the rim of society, including all, _peace is impossible_.

Thus it is that in the great competitive business world, like quarrelsome dogs, every business man’s hand is against every other business man’s hand competing in the “same line,” to “put him out of business” and thus “get more business.”

Thus local neighbors are at war in a Christless scramble for business.

Thus nations also, fiercely struggling for markets and territory, are at war—commercial war—sometimes needing sword and cannon. (See pp. 40–41.)

Now, notice: Christian business men in this brotherless, Christless scramble called business _must have the scramble made “respectable.”_ For this purpose the minister is most serviceable. The business men need the minister—“need him in their business”—to consecrate and sanctify the ways and means, even the sword, the cannon and the vast human slaughterings called war.

“Put up thy sword,” said Christ.

“Business is business! Bless the butcher! Grind sharp the sword,” commands the business man.

But “no man can serve two masters.”

Here the minister, just like the “common working man,” is face to face with the MOST DOMINEERING FACT AND FORCE IN HUMAN LIFE; namely, ECONOMIC NECESSITY. The preacher and the plumber, the rabbi and the sweat-shop tailor, the priest and the hod-carrier—these must _live_; they must “_get a living_.” But the capitalist controls the opportunities to “get a living.” The “common working man” is embarrassed. The minister is also embarrassed—_tho’ he may be—and very often is—one of the noblest men in the world, he is embarrassed_. This ECONOMIC force grips them both like a vise. They must live. To live they must kneel before the king—the kings in industry.

OBEY OR STARVE.

The inevitable follows:

The plain common working man and the haughty and cultivated minister—both of them—bow their heads and submit their necks to the cruel yoke, the yoke of capitalism.

The rulers rule.

Capitalism, internationally, is—for capitalists—a struggle for a strangle hold among jealously competing, unneighborly neighbors, a struggle for business.

Capitalism thus becomes a stupid snarl of “foreigners”—to each nation all other nations are “foreigners.”

And thus the world is petty, unsocial, “foreign,”—a war always possible and threatening between “foreigners,”—the unfortunate ministers, most of them, not to the contrary.

BUT, READER, THERE ARE NO “FOREIGNERS”—FOR ME AND MY INTERNATIONAL FRIEND CHRIST AND MY INTERNATIONAL COMRADES.

Then why should a group of Christless, plutocratic political crooks and flunky-champagne-guzzlers in Paris or Tokio, in Berlin or London, in Madrid or Washington—why should any such group of political bunco-steerers by a pompous declaration of assassination officially decide for you and me and our brothers of some so-called “foreign nation”—that we working class brothers are “enemies” and that we must lay down the instruments of production and take up the weapons of destruction and butcher ourselves by the tens of thousands?

Why should we permit a band of cheap “statesmen” to order us to tear one another’s throats like dogs?

Why should _we_ fight?

_We_ have no quarrels.

The thing is ridiculous—utterly ridiculous, is it not?

And an equally important question is:—Why should we working class brothers of all the world ever permit any ecclesiastical savages to fan the flames of international hatred in our souls by means of pious prayers and sermons in favor of war?

Even more ridiculous, isn’t it?

Let us refuse to murder. The blood-spilling business is too small for brothers, too savage for socialized men, no matter what their religious faith may be.

Perhaps, brother, you and I do not agree on Christ. But we can be good friends any way, can’t we?

Now, I will tell you frankly, the Peaceful Christ seems to me to be so much grander than a war-preaching preacher, so much nobler than a flunky “fighting parson,” that he gains my sincere admiration. Such a great brave brother he was.

Christ was the most defiant preacher that ever walked the earth or flashed as a character conception in the human brain.

Christ, the historical revolutionary Christ, or Christ, splendid creation of imagination, or Christ divine—whichever or whatever he was—he wins and compels my gratitude:

Because he was neither an automaton nor a tool;

Because official ruffians even before his mockery of a trial viciously pronounced him an “undesirable citizen”;

Because “leading citizens” could not use him, could not rent his influence;

Because he scorned the opportunity to become “successful in life” in the contemptible rôle of intellectual prostitute;

Because he despised the lusting devotees of Mammon;

Because he forgave the “duly convicted” crucified thieves and whipped the unconvicted bankers from the temple;

Because with stinging words he lashed the whited sepulchres called “the very _best_ people”;

Because he was so fine and great he promptly became extremely unpopular with coarse and savage little “prominent people”;

Because he was so gentle and terrible that the noisy and cruel “law-abiding leading citizens” in their swaggering ignorance and malignance decided he was an anarchist and proceeded to shut off his free speech;

Because he was neither narrow enough to be national nor ignorant enough to be orthodox;

Because on the last morning of his life be so proudly despised the official political bull-pups who teased him and insulted him—and could not understand him;

Because, on the same morning, he so finely scorned the bigoted little orthodox holy bullies who hindered him and wolfishly screamed for the Carpenter’s blood;

Because children charmed him;

Because the humble “common people” swarmed around him and loved him—in spite of their pious and orthodox “spiritual advisers”;

Because he scorned the “dignity” of some men and saw the Dignity of Man;

Because he came from the bottom up and never forgot—_never hesitated to defend_—“even the least of these,” including his sad, shamed, outlawed sister;

Because he did not whimper and cringe when certain religiously eminent small souls spat in the face of the World Soul;

Because the great wholesome brother was a true Social Soul, loving all mankind;

Because, especially because, he so finely forgave the thoughtless working class soldiers who mocked him, forced a thorn crown upon his head, drove nails through his flesh, sneered at his agonies, and thrust a spear into their working class Brother Carpenter;

Because he said, “Put up thy sword,” regarded no man as “foreigner,” and died for International Fraternalism.

A Social Man.

A Sample.

I love him.

Let us, too, brother, be social and international.

Let us bury the hatchet, break the rifle, spike the cannon, despise the sword, accept the Sermon on the Mount for its spirit of peace, and scorn any sermon that urges us to war against our own class brothers. Let us detest any sermon that stirs and fosters the tiger within us and arrests our social development.

Social development.

“Social development,” did I say? Yes, reader, that is what we need, social development.

Man on his long march upward—up from the jungle—has been impeded by a heavy burden—in his blood. He has carried the menagerie—in his veins.

Here permit me to use a very homely metaphor, a figure of speech neither to your taste nor to mine, yet needed and defensible:

In its social development the world is hindered by too much bull-pup.

A bull-pup is at a disadvantage—socially. His social development is stunted. The malignant wrinkles of his prize-fighter face obstruct his vision. His outlook is restricted. Thus his notion of the world is small. Hence the bull-pup is narrow, local and unsocial. Being socially local and mean—and therefore petty and pugnacious—he enjoys a fight. In the world of dogs he is a tough, a “rough-rider” and a “war-lord.” All other dogs are “foreigners,” “guilty,” and “undesirable citizens.”

Peace is too large and fine for the bull-pup. War is “dee-lightful,” “just bully”—for the bull-pup.

Thus even the humble dog world is worried and hindered by the socially narrow and pugnaciously strenuous bull-pups—“great” and “successful,” in their estimation.

Thus littleness and localism hinder even brutes in their social development.

And it is thus in the human world also.

Confucius was a great man.

But Confucius is hindered—hindered by littleness—little Confucians.

Christ? Christ is great, fascinatingly, commandingly great.

But Christ is hindered—hindered by the pettiness of pugnacity, hindered by littleness, little Christians.

Let us be brothers? Let us have peace?

Not yet. We can’t. We must wait. Strange, but true, we must wait for the most reasonable thing in the world—peace.

Peace is on the program—next number.

From the warring tribes of the long, long ago, up, up, upward to the federated races of the world,—that is the first number on the program—a long steep climb for the human mind, up, up through the hundreds of centuries, a half million years consumed in expanding the human heart, in refining the human affections, in strengthening the social vision to see all the way ’round the world, in widening the diameter of Society, in creating, revising, and re-creating a definition of “Brother,”—the race generating the Social Man, the World Patriot, the International Citizen.

The arithmetic of history—Given: Life. To find, or produce, or deduce, the god, the god of aspiring intelligence, the god of a socialized race. A puzzling problem—how to subtract the brute, add the brother and multiply the brains; how to proceed to the next number on the program—Peace; how to move our bruised lips to say: “Put up thy sword. We are of one blood.”

We are hindered.

Brotherhood and peace—divinely high thought!

But, alas! the thought is too high for low-browed strenuosity of the tough-rider type; the thought is too large and fine for the poor brain of a bull-dog or a human bully or a socially blunted holy man or any other breed of stunted runts.

The strutting, thin-brained rooster in the farmyard crows, “Hurrah for this our very own dunghill, the finest filth pile on earth.” Thus this spurred and feathered patriot virtuously cultivates his vanity by boisterously challenging “the enemy” in the neighboring farmyards.

“Hurrah for our tribe,” screams the savage—patriotically.

“Hurrah for our village of Squeedunk,” yells the local human shrimp. More patriotism.

“Hurrah for our great city!” squeals the boastfully “metropolitan” small man sweltering in unspeakable corruptions.

“Hurrah for the nation—right or wrong!” yelps the patriotic national mongrel.

And thus these socially puny creatures, these social runts, stand ready, as it were, to “patriotically” throw carbolic acid at their national and international neighbors.

“Hurrah for Mankind, hurrah for Life!” finely calls the socially developed man, the Increasing International Man.

Really, reader, the narrow-visioned provincial, the local sniveling, the social shrimp, the pugnacious nationalist, the racial bigot, and the stunted, sacerdotal manlet—really, these unsocial people are, as yet, too local and little and narrow for a federated world, for an internationally social Christ. Really, these unsocial human runts can not sincerely and effectively carry “to all the world” any magnificent social gospel of “peace on earth, good will toward all men,” and “make of one blood all nations”—even tho’ they be baptized.

Now please do not misunderstand me. I do not belittle the rite of baptism.

But baptism has no effect on a declaration of war by an extremely narrow local bull-dog, whether he be a humble canine wearing a brass collar, or a strutting puny human being wearing a “Prince Albert,” or a lard-and-tallow millionaire worshipping a cash-register. None of these is emotionally and socially fine. As usual, the world is embarrassed when trying to make a silk purse of a sow’s ear.

A Christian assassin mounted on the throne of Russia remains an assassin—in spite of his baptism.

A Christian bully elevated to the throne of the German Empire or to American presidential distinctions, remains a pugnacious ruffian, spoiling for trouble, always “not only willing but anxious to fight.”

Sacerdotal ceremonies have no effect on a leopard’s spots, a tiger’s stripes, a bull-pup disposition, or a cash-register ambition.

War among brothers is civil war.

All men are brothers.

Therefore all war is civil war.

But peace is hindered by local littleness—especially by the belittling, localizing effects of the sacred cash-register and its smaller unsocial time-servers.

The Confucian capitalist, the Christian capitalist, and all other kinds of capitalists of the whole world stand behind their blessed and belittling cash-registers, plot in their Wall Street dens, cheating, cheating, cheating—and snarling at one another. And this unsocial snarling is called business, and this Christless business is morally legitimated, “made respectable,” by too many unsocialized “spiritual advisers.” Some of the holy men are finely social, nobly large, splendidly fearless; and these great social souls refuse, proudly refuse, to “sic” or urge the “dogs of war.” But unfortunately these truly greater holy men are too few and they are threatened and bullied by the over-fed, fat-pursed industrial Caesars in the best pews of the house of God; and, moreover, these greater holy men are abused and outvoted in the church conventions by their less developed brethren, if they oppose a war—especially if there is a “national crisis.”

And there is always a “national crisis” imminent when greater markets must be had and new territory is to be scrambled for by the capitalists of the world.

Whenever there is a “crisis on,” whenever the cash-register captains, the politicians and unsocial “spiritual leaders” believe, or announce, that there is a “crisis upon us,”—at such times Christ, the peaceful, nobly social Christ, is thrust to the rear of the stage and forced to be silent, while the “fighting parsons” and the politicians and the money-mongers and some glory-hunting buccaneers rush to the front of the stage and scream for war—a “patriotic war.”

_And more and more the actual necessity for a larger foreign market produces a “crisis.”_

It is coming—another war.[293]

Then for brotherhood—a sneer.

Then for the man of peace—a scornful “Mollycoddle!”

Then for Christ—coarse jeers.

Then for markets, for profits—blood and tears.

Then will the malignant manikins patriotically and profitably shout for “national honor.”

Then Christ must wait.

Peace must wait.

Brotherhood must wait.

International federation, social grandeur, the human race, must wait.

All these must wait for the poor little fellows to get the emotions of the prize-fighter and the savage heat and hate of the bull-pup out of their veins; all these must wait, too, while the cash-register devotee and his man Friday get the money—and “divide up.”

Possibly, reader, some of these paragraphs seem unfair.

Very well; perhaps it will seem fair to let a _clergyman_ speak with frankness on this matter. Here following are some paragraphs from a powerful book, _The Moral Damage of War_, by the fearless Dr. Walter Walsh, a distinguished and eloquent clergyman of Dundee, Scotland.[294] In the chapter, “The Moral Damage of War to the Preacher,” Dr. Walsh speaks to his clerical brethren with the courage and directness of the ancient Jewish prophets. Here are some illustrative paragraphs (reprinted with kind permission of publishers):

“The belief that Christianity is incompatible with war, was designed to abolish war ... was held by all the Christians of the first three centuries.... Christianity is the religion of peace. How then is Christendom still at war? We naturally turn to the professional teachers of religion for an answer.

“The paid teachers of Christendom are numbered by hundreds of thousands: Priests, bishops, ministers, catechists and so on,—while their lay helpers—deacons, church-wardens, elders, Sunday-school teachers, missioners, lay preachers—may be counted by the million and _it is incomprehensible that war should continue to exist in Christendom unless by first demoralizing these formers of religious opinion_. The fact also that all Christian countries alike compete in the equipment and spoils of war can be understood only as a proof of a corrupt or undeveloped conscience. The reason why Christendom is today in such straits and that so many countries wallow in debt, waste, ignorance, covetousness, poverty and misery unspeakable, is chiefly that the paid teachers of Christianity with their hosts of unpaid assistants have capitulated to the war god.... War is never pure, but is hell; and it can never be permissible to inaugurate heaven by the help of hell.... Here and there a smaller Elijah refuses to bow the knee to the military Baal, a faithful Micaiah, tho’ smitten on the mouth, continues to bear his testimony to the true significance of the gospel.... ‘For centuries the church met the hostility of a pagan and unscrupulous world and never flinched.... No revenge or bitterness marred the security of her soul.’... The appalling nature of the preacher’s defection is seen by the contrast with the magnificent opportunity war time affords him, than which prophet or apostle never had a greater.... _A trial of strength between conflicting nations is also a trial of the preacher’s moral character_; the height of noble opportunity to which it lifts him has its counterpart in the base opportunism to which he may descend. He may temporize like a politician.... He may accept the carnal policies of the parliament as limitations of his gospel and hang his head like a dumb dog when statesmen fling Christianity incontinently out of the house of legislation. He may soothe his conscience with the lie that war is a matter of politics, having nothing to do with the preaching of the gospel, and slide gently down into the dastard, blind equally to _the humor and the atheism of his position_. Between the churches which cry, “No politics in the gospel!” and parliaments which cry, “No gospel in politics!” the Son of Man is hard put to it to maintain a footing in modern affairs.... Few invocations to the Prince of Peace are heard [in time of war], but many to the God of battles.... The conscience [of ecclesiasticism] lies limp and voiceless before the uplifted sword, bribed by gold, paralyzed by fear ... shielding itself.... The federated tribes of Israel slink to their tents, murmuring some safe platitudes about peace and prayer meetings whilst the world triumphs, the flesh riots and the devil grins with infinite content.... It were hard to say which is worse,—the silence of the pulpit or the timidity or wickedness of its speech when it does find tongue.... A dumb dog is bad, but a bloodhound baying upon the trail is worse.... What is to be said of a preacher, who, when the war spirit and the peace spirit are trembling in the balance, either can not speak or speaks only to blaspheme his own gospel?... _It can not be doubted that the church, exerting herself in accordance with her principles, could make all bloodshed impossible, and could have averted every war of recent times_; yet on many such occasions the multitude of ministers stir no finger, preach no sermon, sign no petition, sound no note that the government, willing enough to know the temper of a nation, can interpret as hostile to their project.... The appalling truth has to be faced: that the church, contrary to every expectation that might be formed from her principles and the character of the Being she worships, is always, as a whole, for the war of the day. It is true that when peace is the popular cry, the preachers are also for peace. If there is a peace crusade on hand which excites the shallow enthusiasms of the fashionables, the preachers will also catch the excitements of the hour; but when the white banner yields to the red, the pastors beat the drums for the fighters as furiously as they had previously denounced the savagery of armed conflict.... Organized Christianity divests herself of her robe of righteousness and her garments of meek humility to clothe herself in khaki.... A thousand pulpits are manned by Bible bullies who cite every obsolete and bloody precedent of the wars of the Jews and show themselves destitute of the elementary humanities and of the faculties necessary to discriminate between Judaism two thousand years before Christ and Christianity two thousand years after him.... What can mankind do with a church that peels itself like a pugilist and reveals the murdering pagan instead of the martyred Christian; which for carnal reasons cancels the Sermon [on the Mount], contradicts the Beatitudes, flatly denies the gospel, repudiates every specific Christly ideal, and unseats Jesus in order to elevate Mars to the throne of conscience?... At frequent intervals the cross with its suffering victim recedes and out of the blood-red mist emerges the foul idol of war erect on his crimson chariot.... The sanctification of revenge is, indeed, the vilest function performed by a war-poisoned, blood-stained church.... It is thus that the masses are kept from seeing the degenerate nature of the thing.... Their pastors lead them into the blood-red fields of Jahveh when the politicians give the word, and into the green pastures of the Nazarene only when there is no national scheme of murder and robbery afoot.... The churches as they are today can not prevent war. Their palsied lips can not echo, however feebly, the words of the master, ‘Put up again thy sword into its place!’ There is not spiritual power left in organized Christianity to insure the substitution of reason for brute force.... Alas! it has hitherto been impossible to get Christianity to obey Christ.”[295]

That is the language of a brave Christian preacher. In connection with the reverend Doctor Walsh’s chastisement of the church in the morning of the twentieth century it is interesting to read on the same subject the words of a philosopher of the eighteenth century, Voltaire.[296]

“This universal rage which devours the world.... The most wonderful part of this infernal enterprise [war] is, that each chief of murderers causes his colors to be blest, and solemnly invokes God before he goes to exterminate his neighbors.... A certain number of orators are everywhere paid to celebrate these murderous days.... All of them speak for a long time, and quote that which was done of old in Palestine.... The rest of the year these people declaim against vices.... All the united vices of all ages and places will never equal the evils produced by a single campaign. Miserable physicians of souls! you exclaim for five quarters of an hour on some pricks of a pin, and say nothing on the malady which tears us into a thousand pieces.... Can there be anything more horrible throughout nature?”

And now let us get at this matter from the point of view of a political economist, a really great economist, John A. Hobson—who puts the case thus:[297]

“When has a Christian nation ever entered on a war which has not been regarded by the official priesthood as a sacred war? In England the State Church has never permitted the spirit of the Prince of Peace to interfere when statesmen and soldiers appealed to the passions of race-lust, conquest and revenge. Wars, the most insane in origin, the most barbarous in execution, the most fruitless in results have never failed to get the sanction of the Christian Churches.... _There is no record of the clergy of any Church having failed to bless a popular war, to find reasons for representing it as a crusade._”

The following lines from a British philosopher, Frederic Harrison,[298] are to the point for the workingman’s instruction:

“The official priests of the old faiths accept without questioning the authorized judgment of the political government. They are engaged ... in calling upon their God of Battles (can it be, their God of Mercy?) to keep the British soldiers—the invaders, the burners of villages, the hangmen of [native] priests—in his good and holy keeping.... A system of slavery prepares the slave-holding caste for any inhumanity that may seem to defend it.... If it hardens our politicians, it degrades our churches. The thirst for rule, the greed of the market, and the saving of souls, all work together in accord. The Churches approve and bless whilst the warriors and the merchants are adding new provinces to empire; they have delivered the heathen to the secular arm.... Christianity in practice, as we know it now, for all the Sermon on the Mount, is the religion of aggression, domination, combat. It waits upon the pushing trader and the lawless conqueror; and with obsequious thanksgiving it blesses his enterprise.”

Who, indeed, shall deliver us from war?

Our pastors?

Hardly.

The pastors’ economic masters will not permit them to do so.

Tho’ the machine guns mow down a million of the world’s choicest working men, pile up windrows of human carcasses and desolate the huts, flats, hovels and “homes” of the poor; tho’ ten million pairs of calloused hands of agonizing working class women be stretched toward well-fed, comfortable pastors, begging for a _united, effective declaration_ against war; tho’ these ten million humble working class mothers, their eyes streaming with tears, on their knees beseech the “holy men of God” to unitedly cry aloud against the accursed “Death’s feast” where their dear ones are devoured; tho’ multitudes of little working class children in mute despair dread the roar of the belching cannon that slay their fathers and brothers; still the pastors (most of them) will “stand by the administration” in any and all wars, as usual.

“The administration,” “the government,” under capitalism, is simply the _executive committee of the capitalist class_.

The capitalist class are internationally struggling for the world market.

In these international struggles the capitalists need the support of public opinion.

Public opinion can be created and controlled by the pastor.

The pastor must therefore be controlled by the capitalist.

The campaign begins—to capture the market and the minister.

The soldier goes to war and the capitalist goes to church.

The soldier takes a gun, the capitalist takes gold.

The soldier slays.

The capitalist prays—by proxy.

Being “the will of God” it is, of course, “mysterious.”

The capitalist occupies the very best pew in the house of God—and lays beautiful bank-bills in the collection plate.

The minister is embarrassed—and impressed.

The pastor and his master divide up.

The war? Isn’t _war hell_?

It beats hell.

But it is “all for the best”—mysteriously.

With conscience “seared as with a hot iron” the preacher joins the politician; and the precious pair unite their rented voices in patriotic melody in support of the capitalist class.

Brother,—you of the working class,—Jew, Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, Protestant, peaceful Buddhist or peaceful Confucian, or what else,—wherever you are, whatever you are in religion, worshipping, searching, groping through the universe for God, worship as you prefer, worship whom you prefer: I do not seek to break your church allegiance. But, sir, to save your life, to save your own wife’s tears, to defend your own children, to protect your own working class, I do wish to have you realize _distinctly_ that:—

_The working class must draw the bayonet from its own breast._ So far as _war_ is concerned the working class must band together and stand together against war. The working class must themselves protect the working class against the industrial system through which they are _robbed and betrayed_.

The workers of the world need a political party of their own class—and as wide as the world, International, and committed to _justice and therefore to peace._

Listen to the confession of the editor of a very powerful capitalist newspaper:

“It is significant that the Socialists of different races, and speaking different tongues, strangers in blood and customs, in Germany, France, Great Britain, Austria, and Italy, constitute the _one great peace party of the world_.”[299]

Listen again—to the best-known and the best loved Christian woman in the United States, Miss Jane Addams, of Hull House, Chicago:[300]

“The Socialists are making almost the sole attempt to preach a morality _sufficiently all-embracing and international_ to keep pace with even the material internationalism which has standardized [even] the threads of screws and the size of bolts, so that machines become interchangeable from one country to another.... Existing commerce has long ago reached its international stage, but it has been the result of business aggression and constantly appeals for military defense and for the forcing of new markets.”

You, you who are to be tricked and shot at the factory door and on the battlefield, go to your public library and get _Christianity and the Social Order_, and read there the words of a preacher great enough for the City Temple of London, great enough to be the worthy successor of the world-known Joseph Parker, read the Reverend Dr. R. J. Campbell’s splendid tribute to the Socialist Party as the only political party in the world today scorning the belittling jealousies of capitalist statesmen and working effectively for international brotherhood.

Reader, you working class reader, a special word here:

Perhaps your working class neighbor’s son is at this moment falling into a patriotic trance, gullibly planning to join the local militia or the standing army or the navy, meditating on butcheries. Go to him. With a firm grasp on his mind (if he has one) wake him, rouse him, from that race-cursing dream, rouse him from the spell that for thousands of years has damned his class. Be kind. Be patient. But—wake him. Wake him for the _world_ movement for the _working_ class. _Wake him for the war_—the war without a sword, the war without a cannon; the war with a printing press, the war with a book. _Teach him that salvation is through information._ Teach him that the “truth will make him free.” In his brain kindle a fire, a divine unrest, a desire that can not die, the desire for peace born of justice.

Otherwise, beware lest your neighbor’s son be wheedled at any moment into the militia or the standing army or the navy—_ready_ to be consecrated, sanctified, blessed,—for wholesale assassination, _ready_ as a militiaman, as a Cossack, as a soldier, to stain his consecrated sword with the blood of his neighbors and brutally—patriotically—laugh at the tears of women and children.

Read to your neighbor the next Chapter: “Now, What Shall We Do About It?”

Footnote 285:

See Chapter Four, Section Two, “The Cost of War in Cash.”

Footnote 286:

“Documents of the American Association for International Conciliation,” 1907–08.

Footnote 287:

See Chapter Eight, Section 13 and 14.

Footnote 288:

It is mildly encouraging to reflect that very heavy and very general international investments in national and industrial bonds would have at least some tendency to dampen the bond-buying capitalists’ enthusiasm for war; because, in some cases, a disastrous war might result in the repudiation of bonds and, in most cases, might easily result in a great temporary reduction of dividends from industrial investments. Another thing to be noted here is that sometimes the investors in the bonds of an unstable nation about to go to war, may regret the threatening war and urge against it and even decline to buy war bonds, _before the war is declared_, in order to protect their investments already made. But after the war is once entered upon these same regretful investors feel almost compelled to purchase the new issue of war-bonds in order to make victory more certain for the nation whose bonds they already hold, and thus protect the market value of their original investments. French investors in Russian bonds and enterprises to the extent of more than a billion dollars found themselves in this predicament in the case of the recent Russian-Japanese war. See Index: “Bankruptcy, Danger of.”

Footnote 289:

See Chapter Seven, Section 17.

Footnote 290:

Swinburne: “A Word for the Country.”

Footnote 291:

See Index: “The Hague Peace Conference.”

Footnote 292:

See Chapter Four, Section One.

Footnote 293:

See Index: “Another War.”

Footnote 294:

Published by Ginn and Company, New York.

Footnote 295:

Italics mine. G. R. K.

Footnote 296:

_Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary._

Footnote 297:

_The Psychology of Jingoism_, pp. 41, 133.

Footnote 298:

_National and Social Problems_, pp. 252–53.

Footnote 299:

The New York _World_, editorial, August 15, 1907. Italics mine. G. R. K.

Footnote 300:

_Newer Ideals of Peace_, pp. 114–15. Italics mine. G. R. K.