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[2]—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 Ohio we often “brain-stormed” our swarming bees by just such simple means—in order to hold them in slavery and thus have them near and tame. We wished to rob them when they worked—later on.

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 swords—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.[3]

Governments—today 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 fish-hook

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 Fakir’s 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 flimflammed 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.

O, 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 hell, 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.”[4]

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.

Footnote 2:

The present wholly unpretentious book has a distinct purpose (announced in the Preface and also on this page), and has, too, it is hoped, an effective plan and method for the realization of that purpose. Readers in search of conventionally elaborated theses on war are referred, for suggestions, to Chapter Twelve, Sections 8 and 9.

Footnote 3:

“An’ you’ll die like a fool of a soldier.

Fool, fool, fool of a soldier.”—Rudyard Kipling: “The Young British Soldier,” in _Ballads_.

Footnote 4:

Andreief: _The Red Laugh_, passim. (Russian-Japanese War literature. Published by J. Fisher Unwin, London.)