Chapter XVII: Section 9: ,—“The militia, when called into actual service of the United (1)

States, shall be subject to the same rules and articles of war as the regular troops.” That is to say, for the time they are “on call,” they are virtually federal soldiers.

The law as amended by Congress in May, 1908, provides “that every officer and enlisted man of the militia who shall be called forth in the manner hereinbefore prescribed shall be mustered for service _without further enlistment_.” [Italics in Report.]

“The call of the President will, therefore, of itself accomplish the transfer of the organized militia which is called forth by him from its state relations to its federal relations. It becomes part of the Army of the United States and the President becomes its commander-in-chief.

“The _President_ is the _exclusive judge_ of the existence of an emergency which would justify the calling forth of the Organized Militia.”[191]

This law contains twenty-six sections, every one of which should be studied carefully by the working class of the United States. The Union labor bodies should urge local newspapers to publish parts of the law selected by the unions. The more the law is examined the more food for reflection will be found in it.[192]

The English capitalist government has also recently enacted a new military law, a species of “Dick” law, called the Territorial Force Act. This law transforms a “voluntary citizen soldier” into a “regular” soldier. Says _Justice_:[193]

“Under the new act the Volunteer must ‘enlist’ and serve under
‘military law.’ He will be as much a regular soldier as a Life Guard
or a Lancer, and can be called out to shoot down strikers in labor
disputes as was actually done at Featherstone ... and at Belfast
only a few months ago.”

“The Volunteer,” says the _Morning Post_, “will no longer be a
citizen soldier, he will be a soldier without the blur of
citizenship.... He may be mechanic; many of the best Volunteers are
mechanics. If there is a strike in his works, ordered by the trade
union to which he subscribes, and if the Mayor is afraid of the
Strikers, and wants soldiers to shoot them, in case of need, the
Volunteer, renamed ‘man of the Territorial Force,’ is just the man
he wants; and the bill empowers the Mayor to call him out for the
purpose.”

The “Dick” law was passed by capitalist “friends of labor,” of course, both Republicans and Democrats; and the “Territorial Force Act” was similarly passed by capitalist “friends of labor,” both Liberals and Conservatives. As the unarmed army of the unemployed grows threateningly larger and the armed army of bribed butchers grows larger—ready to murder those who starve—it is in order, in “Old England,” in “New America,” everywhere in order, for the working class to give more careful attention to the “good men” who are so tearfully and fearfully “friendly to labor.”

(=12=) Why should the working class give the capitalist governments a free hand in the murder of the workers? Why not rigorously restrict the power to call millions of men to arms?

What would happen if the working class should refuse to fight?

“That ‘the government can not put the whole population in prison,
and if it could, it would still be without material for an army, and
without money for its support,’ is an almost irrefutable argument.
We see here [‘in passive resistance, not simply in theory, but in
practice’] at least the beginnings of a sentiment that shall, if
sufficiently developed, make war impossible to an entire
people....”[194]

Five points to be emphasized here:

(1) Require all the school teachers to teach all the children to despise and hate war.

(2) Arm everybody or nobody.

(3) Train everybody or nobody.

(4) “The right of the people to bear arms shall not be infringed.”—_Constitution of the United States: Third Amendment._

(5) The working class should diligently study the folly of requiring one regiment of the working class to fight the united and class-loyal capitalist class in strikes.

These five propositions suggest a plan that would, even under capitalism, render the working class far less helpless and hopeless than they are at present in their class struggle against the capitalist class of masters who may legally order the working class soldiers to fire on the working class.

However, the triumphantly effective work can be accomplished in this matter when—and not until—the working class have seized the powers of government. (See Chapter Ten, which is wholly devoted to the fundamentals of “What to do.”)

It is significant that the first Secretary of War, Henry Knox, appointed by President Washington, made a Report January 18, 1790, on the proper basis for the military defense of the United States. His plan was “to reject a standing army, as possessing too fierce an aspect and being hostile to the principles of liberty.”

A scholar of world-renown, Francis Lieber, German-American soldier, historian, economist and publicist, has this to say of standing armies:[195]

“Standing armies are not only dangerous to civil liberty because
depending upon the executive. They have the additional evil effect
that they infuse into the whole nation ... a spirit directly opposed
to that which ought to be the general spirit of a free people
devoted to self-government. Habits of disobedience and contempt for
the citizens are produced, and a view of government is induced which
is contrary to liberty, self-reliance, self-government.... Where the
people worship the army, an opinion is engendered as if courage in
battle were really the highest phase of humanity; and the army, in
turn, more than aught else, leads to the worship of one man—so
detrimental.”

(=13=) “For the French and Italians and especially the German and Russian adolescent of the lower classes ... the army is called ... the poor man’s university.”[196]

“The poor man’s university!”—in which he is drilled and kicked into spineless subserviency and is taught the noble art of killing himself, his class, scientifically. The degraded, docile, and despised millions of the working class men of the standing armies of the world are indeed educated when they are willing to wade in their own blood in defense of the parasitic capitalist class who rule, ride and ruin the toilers of all the world.

A standing army is a joke and a yoke on the working class. A standing army is a compound human machine educated to spank the working class when it cries for milk—and bread and meat. A soldier, a militiaman, is an educated boot with which the employers kick the working class.

(=14=) Do not rich men’s sons sometimes voluntarily join the militia?

Yes, sometimes—but very, very rarely. One of the bluest-blooded Vanderbilts of New York was recently a captain in a specially handsome Regiment. But, mark you—in ninety-nine cases in a hundred, well-armed, well-trained militiamen fight unarmed, untrained workingmen (and women), which is not so very, very dangerous—for the militiamen. To an intelligent rich man an unarmed wage-earner on strike for an extra nickel to buy bread, as “the enemy,” and an armed trained soldier whose business is murder, as “the enemy,”—these look different, you know.

For years New York millionaires and all the other “best people” “pointed with pride” to the famous Seventh Regiment of the National Guard, the “rich men’s regiment,” the “gilt-edged regiment” of lovely young millionaires, many of whom rode to the armory for drill in their automobiles. This regiment of the American nobility of lard-and-tallow-steel-coal-and-railway millionaires, ready at any moment to defend and save the dear country from “the enemy,”—this regiment was, indeed, the pride of the village called New York. These glistening patricians taught the common people patriotism. “So they did.”

Until the Spanish War broke out.

Then these fakir patriots—what did they do—then?

Resigned.

Or they did what amounted to the same thing—_voted_ not to go to the war.

Certainly they did. Promptly, too—and intelligently.

Why not?

Surely you do not expect a lot of _intelligent_ men to leave their happy homes, go to hell and make themselves ridiculous, do you? Why, the cost of a rubber tire for one wheel of an automobile would pay the war wages of a cheap man of the “lower classes” for six months.

(=15=) “Didn’t one millionaire go to the war in Cuba?”

Yes. Out of our six thousand patriotic, flag-waving millionaires, one, just one, a young green one, went to the war in Cuba—“for a little excitement and a lark,” he said. He found large quantities of excitement “all right,” and some cold lead. He was killed. As a millionaire “patriotically” going to war his case is an exception, clearly an exception, a conspicuously lonely, vain and stupid exception; and that exception will never be imitated. Too much intelligence—among the millionaires. Even his millionaire friends laughed at him for going to war. But he wanted a “hot time.” He got the “hot time”—and the cold lead.

There were several thousand other millionaire flag-wavers instructively conspicuous in that war—by their intelligent patriotic absence.

IT IS INSTRUCTIVELY SIGNIFICANT THAT THE CAPITALIST NEWSPAPERS GAVE MORE THAN A HUNDRED TIMES AS MUCH SPACE TO THE DEATH OF THE ONE MILLIONAIRE SOLDIER IN THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR AS THEY GAVE TO THE DEATH OF ANY HUNDRED HUMBLE WORKING CLASS SOLDIERS WHO WERE SLAUGHTERED IN THE SAME WAR.

(=16=) Were not some of the rich men of today soldiers at one time—“years ago”?

Yes. Some of the rich men of today were soldiers at one time—years ago; but they are not soldiers now when they are rich, and they were not rich when, years ago, they were soldiers.

(=17=) If politicians do not go to war, what about Mr. Bryan’s case? Didn’t Mr. Bryan patriotically go to the war in Cuba?

No. Mr. Bryan did not go _to_ the war in Cuba. He simply went _toward_ the war.

Mr. Bryan was, of course, patriotic, fervently, noisily so; but, like the intelligent people of his class, he always had his enthusiasm under perfect control. Mr. Bryan at no time showed an unmanageable desire to get _up close in front, on the firing line_. And his class was true to him, respected his strong preference for war five hundred miles from the flaming, snarling Gatling gun; and, accordingly, his class—in power at Washington—kept him well out of danger. At one time he got the impression he was in danger of being sent to the front. At once he cried out, “It’s politics!” and promptly resigned his noble command, double quick, patriotically. Mr. Bryan, mounted on a splendid horse, with uplifted sword in hand, grandly vowing to “defend the flag against the enemy” as he headed his noble braves, assembled for review, and admiration, before the _Omaha Bee_ building, ready to start _toward_ the front—at that sublime moment Colonel William Jennings Bryan was, well, simply beautiful, not to say pretty. As the golden tones of this Nebraskan Achilles, this Alexander from the Platte Valley, rolled forth in his heroic vow to bleed (if necessary) for his flag, the nation was comforted—felt saved already.

Patriotism _is_, after all, _worth all it costs_—that is, worth all it costs Mr. Bryan. Mr. Bryan, like Mr. Hearst and many others, is patriotic, even intemperately so—with his mouth.

But the reader may ask, “Was not Mr. Roosevelt in the Cuban War a case of a politician actually on the firing line?”

Clearly an exception. Name a few other “great statesmen” or international noises who went to the Cuban War—to the actual firing line.

Mr. Roosevelt loves excitement and danger. And what indescribable dangers there were for the Americans in the Cuban War! The mightiest “republic” on earth was pitted against the most toothless, decadent old political grandma in Europe. The dangers?—equal to those that threaten an armed, athletic hunter alone and face to face with a sucking fawn. Mr. Roosevelt himself has heroically—and carefully—recounted and printed his own brave deeds in that war. With Christian love and humility, with charming modesty and delicacy, with the diffident ingenuousness of a blushing schoolgirl, characteristic of him, Mr. Roosevelt tenderly recites one of his noble deeds as follows:[197]

“Lieutenant Davis’s First Sergeant, Clarence Gould, killed a
Spaniard with his revolver.... At about the same time I also shot
one.... Two Spaniards leaped from the trenches ... not ten yards
away. As they turned to run I closed in and fired twice, missing the
first and killing the second [Oh, joy!].... At the same time I did
not know of Gould’s exploit, and I supposed my feat to be unique.”

Surely it requires courage, rare and noble courage, for a wealthy graduate of Harvard University to boast in print that he shot a poor, ignorant fleeing Spanish soldier—very probably a humble working man drafted to war, torn from his weeping wife and children—that he shot such a man, _in the back_. Oh, bliss—elation—ecstasy divine! “I _got_ him! with my _revolver_ too! in the _back_!” Manly pastime of an American gentleman, a mongrel mixture of patrician and brute. Yes, reader, Mr. Roosevelt, politician, was in the Cuban War—with a purpose; and secured a military title and a “war record” worth at least 75,000 votes in his campaign for the governorship of New York which immediately followed the war. For details consult _The Rough Rider_. With shrewd patriotism, political foresight, rare courage—and girlish bashfulness—Mr. Roosevelt’s picture is repeatedly presented in the book, the poses expressing his usual audible modesty and ferocious gentleness.

Emerson finely says: “Every hero becomes a bore at last.”

(=18=) The noble Professor Paulsen (Berlin University) wrote:[198]

“Hate impels men to seek quarrels, and pride turns their heads....
Nay, arrogance and hatred are really always the signs of an
irritable, diseased self-consciousness.... [That] selfish, arrogant,
vain and narrow-minded self-conceit, which the flatterers of the
popular passion call patriotism.”

The distinguished Italian historian, G. Ferrero, has written:[199]

“Thus in destroying or creating, man can procure for himself strong
emotions, and persuade himself of his own superiority.... Two
passions have divided the human heart throughout the annals of human
history: the divine passion for creation, and the diabolical passion
for destruction.... Nineteenth-century man may seek after violent
and inebriating emotions that permit him to assert his superiority
over his fellows....”

Robert G. Ingersoll understood the hero-brute mongrel:

“Courage without conscience is a wild beast. Patriotism without
principle is the prejudice of birth, the animal attachment to
place.”

Thus Victor Hugo:[200]

“To be, materially, a great man, to be pompously violent, to reign
by virtue of the sword-knot and cockade ... to possess a genius for
brutality—this is to be great, if you will, but it is a coarse way
of being great.”

The cannon’s roar, the bayonet’s thrust, the crush of flesh, the splash of blood,—such things in battle make men gentle, tender, gallant, even heroic, fit subjects for the adoration of women.[201] For example: When the Christian heroes captured Magdeburg:

“Now began a scene of massacre and outrage which history has no
language, and poetry no pencil, to portray. Neither the innocence of
childhood nor the helplessness of old age, neither youth nor sex,
neither rank nor beauty, could disarm the fury of the conquerors.
Wives were dishonored in the very arms of their husbands, daughters
at the feet of their parents, and the defenseless sex exposed to the
double loss of virtue and life.... Fifty-three women were found in
one church with their heads cut off. The Croats amused themselves by
throwing children into the flames, and Pappenheim’s Walloons with
stabbing infants at their mothers’ breasts.”[202]

But it may be said that those things were done far back in the seventeenth century. Consider, then, the fact that in the French civil war of 1871 the government’s noble heroes, having conquered the revolutionists, took thousands of unarmed prisoners—men, women, and children—to an open space at the city limits of Paris and shot them, children and all; in many cases the brave, armed ruffians stood up rows of helpless prisoners one behind the other and amused themselves by testing their rifles on living human flesh, noting how many men, women and children could be butchered with one bullet. Many of the “better class,” “refined ladies and gentlemen,” “leading citizens,” conspicuous by their elegance of manners and dress, were present _watching the fun_, smiling encouragement and making helpful suggestions to the “civilized” butchers.

And still more recently:

A British hero thus describes a “funny” incident in the South African war: “Really, sir, I never saw anything quite so funny in all my life. Just fancy, I saw a Kaffir woman pick up the headless body of her baby and strap it on her back. Funny, oh, Lord! It makes me laugh when I think of it now.” The same authority (the _Westminster Review_, quoted by Walter Walsh) also gives the following case of Christian military heroism: “A contingent of German scouts [in South Africa] took five native women prisoners ... an officer ordered ten men to fix bayonets. Five stood in front and five behind the women, and stabbed the women to death.” _Ten armed, Christian heroes_ with bayonets ripping the breasts of _five unarmed women_. Great! Isn’t it? At least it is war. One scarcely knows which to despise the more—the soldiers or the lazy parasites for whom they committed a thousand crimes of basest cruelty and cowardice. Dr. Walter Walsh[203] lets the soldiers tell in their own heroic language of their manly deeds—thus:

“‘Our progress was like the old-time forays in Scotland two
centuries ago.... We moved on from valley to valley ... burning,
looting and turning out the women and children to sit and cry beside
the ruins of their once beautiful farmsteads ... my men fetched
bundles of straw. The women cried, and the children stood holding to
them and looking with large frightened eyes at the burning house....
The people had thought we had come for refreshments, and one of them
went to get milk.... We then set the whole place on fire. They
dropped on their knees and prayed and sang, weeping bitterly the
while. One of the poor women went raving mad. When the flames burst
from the doomed place the poor woman threw herself on her knees,
tore open her bodice, and bared her breasts, screaming, “Shoot me,
shoot me, I’ve nothing to live for, now that my husband is gone, and
our farm is burnt, and our cattle taken!”’”

These foul deeds are samples of thousands.

“War, is it?” says Dr. Walsh. “Be it war: then an army is a manufactory for cowards and a school for cowards.”

“A war hero,” says the distinguished Roman Catholic Bishop John
Spaulding,[204] “supposes a barbarous condition of the race; and
when all shall be civilized, they who know and love the most shall
be held to be the greatest and the best.”

And Robert Ingersoll thus:

“Every good man, every good woman, should try to do away with war,
to stop the appeal to savage force. Man in a savage state relies
upon his strength, and decides for himself what is right and what is
wrong.”[205]

“Nothing is plainer,” says Emerson, “than that sympathy with war is a juvenile and temporary state.”[206]

Dr. John Fiske, historian and philosopher, makes the following observations on the slow grand march from brutality to brotherhood.[207]

“For thousands of generations, and until very recent times, one of
the chief occupations of men has been to plunder, bruise and kill
one another. The ... ugly passions ... have had but little
opportunity to grow weak from disuse. The tender and unselfish
feelings, which are a later product of evolution, have too seldom
been allowed to grow strong from exercise ... the whims and
prejudices of militant barbarism are slow in dying out.... The
coarser forms of cruelty are disappearing and the butchery of men
has greatly diminished ... in the more barbarous times the hero was
he who had slain his thousands.... And thus we see what human
progress means. It means throwing off the brute inheritance,
gradually throwing it off through ages of struggle that are by and
by to make struggles needless. Man is slowly passing from a
primitive social state ... toward an ultimate social state in which
his character shall have become so transformed that nothing of the
brute can be detected in it. The ape and the tiger in human nature
will be extinct.”

How encouraging! We can confidently look forward to a time when not even a pervert candidate for the presidency of a great Christian “republic” will be either tiger enough to butcher a human being or peacock and monkey enough to brag of doing so.

“Who loves war for war’s own sake
Is fool, or crazed, or worse.”—Tennyson.

“One of the commonest popular mistakes is to confound aggressiveness
and belligerency with genius. These qualities are almost in inverse
proportion.... But usually great energy and determination, and
especially combative qualities are associated with rather meagre
abilities.”[208]

There is really too much bull-dog greatness.

“No blood-stained victory, in story bright,
Can give the philosophical mind delight;
No triumph please, while rage and death destroy:
Reflection sickens at the monstrous joy.”[209]

“Cursed is the man, and void of law and right;
Unworthy property, unworthy light,
Unfit for public rule, or private care,—
That wretch, that monster, who delights in war.”[210]

Imagine a Sioux Indian chief, pagan Alexander, pagan Caesar, Christian Napoleon, also the Christian bullies Emperor William and Theodore Roosevelt, also the quiet Christ—imagine these seven “not only willing, but anxious to fight,” mounted on foam-stained horses galloping across a bloody battlefield strewn with wounded and slaughtered men and boys, imagine these seven galloping, bravely and boisterously galloping, waving red-stained swords, yelling, squawking, yawping, hurrahing for war, “glorious” war—the iron-shod hoofs of their rushing horses crushing into the breasts and faces of dead and dying young men and boys.

The savage Sioux, the immortal pagan brutes Alexander and Caesar, the renowned Christian bullies Napoleon, William and Theodore—these six “geniuses,” these coarse-grained, blood-stained egotists fit that picture perfectly, as a shark fits the ocean, as a wolf fits the forest, as a tiger fits the jungle, as a savage fits a cannibal feast,—as the Devil fits Hell.

But Christ, Christ in whose breast lurked no tiger and no savage,—Christ with a long sword, a hero’s butcher-knife in hand, plunging it into the breast of his brothers, screaming like the “dee-lighted” brute, calling it “great,” “splendid,” “bully!”—

Impossible!

But why impossible for Christ and “dee-lightful” for the other six?

Because, simply because, these six blood-lusting heroes are savage or at best only civilized; but Christ was socialized.

Socialization opposes assassination—both wholesale and retail.

Christ is immortal—by his wide love and brotherhood.

The “great general” is promoted and immortalized for his narrow hates and brilliant brutalities.

(=19=) Has not war been natural and necessary in the life of the human race, and has not war been a potent factor in the intellectual development of mankind?

Professor Ferrero has this to say:[211]

“Thus the duty of every well-meaning man today is to diffuse
knowledge of the fact that war no longer serves the purpose it once
served in the struggle for civilization.

“War necessary to civilization?”

Well, for a long time in the life of the human race nature was so ill understood, man had such insufficient knowledge and control of nature, that it was extremely difficult to get a living for all. Our ancestors naturally quarreled; perhaps it was necessary for some of them to kill others in order that some of them might live—ignorant as the people were in those times of how to make nature yield bountifully and easily for all. And no doubt the struggle developed the race—the part that did not get killed. In those struggles were developed, at first, strong muscles, skin-ripping claws or knife-like finger-nails, tusks in the mouth, and thick skins; and, later, clubs, spears, cross-bows, bows-and-arrows; and still later, rifles, cannon, battleships and lignite shells, and also the methods and tactics of struggle;—all these were developed. Always, too, cunning, deception, malignance, egoism, egotism, coarse-grained dispositions, cheap ambitions, swaggering manners, fierce eyes, and the soft, bull-like military voices and hero worship—all these were developed.

The muscles and the mentality thus developed are still extremely useful. Indeed, the mentality, developed in war (but neither wholly nor chiefly in war), is worth all it cost, whatever it did cost, because with this godlike mentality, and only with this mentality, we can now have the higher and finer forms and phases of life, the pleasures that distinguish man from the brutes; that is, with this mentality we can have these more glorious forms of life: _Provided_, that the low cunning, deception, malignance, egoism, egotism and the coarse-grained strain of the ancient brute are not even yet too strong in our veins and characters. In spite of one’s intelligence he may be “not only willing, but anxious to fight.” Such a person may no longer have the skin-ripping finger-claws, but he has the skin-ripping disposition that was developed when the skin-ripping finger-claws were developed, and developed in the same way.

Now, of course, we still need the muscle and the intelligence, every one of us. But we do not any longer need the skin-rippers, or the tusks, or the club, the “big stick,” the spear, the bow and arrow, the rifle and the battleship; nor do we any longer need the arrogant egotism, the cheap cunning, the prize-fighter ambitions or the tiger’s readiness to take blood. Nor should we any longer need the ancient method of struggle, every-fellow-for-himself, in the industrial process of life—in a _rationally_ organized society, with our _present_ control of nature. And we should no longer enjoy any of these brute means and methods if we were civilized in the noblest sense, that is, if we were decently socialized.

“Are you ready for the question?” This is the question:

Can you use, do you prefer to use—your developed mentality like a brute, like a savage, or like a truth-seeking, socialized man? Are you “not only willing, but anxious to fight,” or are the business and the methods of the brute disgusting to you? What o’clock is it in your personal evolution? Do you prefer a library to an armory, books rather than bayonets? Is a fight natural, or necessary, or helpful in your personal development? If a fight, actual part in a fight rifle-in-hand, is not necessary to the preacher, the senator, the professor, the banker or the manufacturer, why should it seem necessary in your case—and why should you permit these “better class” citizens to have you ordered and led around like a prize-winning bull-dog to fight in the international prize-ring called the struggle for the world market? War as a developer and a civilizer is a flat failure _in your case_ if the capitalist class can seduce you for fifty cents a day to fight for a foreign market for American porter-house steak while you and your father and mother are fed on third-rate meat, beans, cheap syrup and mock-coffee without cream. Brother, you may indeed be a “brave boy,” and a “good shot,” and you may have heroically stained your hands in other men’s blood; but, really, the “upper class” have marked you as an easy victim, a useable cheap “guy” of the “lower class.”

(=20=) John Ruskin keenly appreciated the capitalist’s craftiness and the workingman’s buffoonery in “a war for civilization.” He wrote:[212]

“Capitalists, when they do not know what to do with their money,
persuade the peasants that the said peasants want guns to shoot each
other with. The peasants accordingly borrow guns, out of the
manufacture of which the capitalists get a percentage, and men of
science much amusement and credit. Then the peasants shoot a certain
number of each other until they get tired, and burn each other’s
houses down in various places. Then they put the guns back into
towns, arsenals, etc., in ornamental patterns, and the victorious
party put also some ragged flags in churches. And then the
capitalists tax both annually, ever afterwards, to pay interest on
the loan of the guns and powder.”

The Italian historian Ferrero sees the swinish snout of the ruling class greed in the wars of three thousand years of “civilization.” He writes:[213]

“During those thirty centuries from which dates our historical
knowledge, war has been more a social system than a cruel pastime
for kings—the first most violent and brutal means adopted by ruling
minorities to acquire wealth.”

(=21=) Is it said that wars always have been and always will be?

That wars always have been is an unproved proposition.[214]

That “wars always will be” depends upon the working class. The clouds of confusion are clearing from the mind of the working class. A revolution is ripening in the toilers’ thought on war.[215]

(=22=) Is it said by the leading citizens that wars are necessary in order to kill off the surplus population?

If wars are necessary for such purpose, why not have Mr. Leading Citizen and his friends classified as a part of the surplus population on the ground that they are criminally unsocial, and have them taken out to the battlefield and forced to shoot one another? The theory of having the surplus population killed off would thus quickly lose its popularity with the “upper classes.”

(=23=) It may be said that the Napoleonic wars removed more than 7,500,000 men from competition in the labor market;[216] and it might be argued by the working man that since war reduces the competition among the workers, the working class should on this account welcome war.

Let us see: If four men are competing for two jobs, should two of them be satisfied, and even glad, to have the competition for the jobs reduced by having the other two climb upon their backs and cease to bid for the jobs? It should be kept distinctly in mind that the workers who do not go to war support those who do go to war—always, everywhere, absolutely no exceptions.

(=24=) There is a somewhat popular, and simian, assumption that in war—even in beautiful Christian war—the results are “the survival of the fittest,” meaning, in the case of modern wars, the survival of “the more highly civilized,” also the biologically “best.”

Of course a “bullet carefully selects its victim.”

And do not statesmen tell us on the Fourth of July all about the “splendid intelligence” and the “noble spirit” and the “superiority” of the “brave boys who _died_ in battle”?

Does not the recruiting officer try to get the _soundest_ men for slaughter?

Let the orthodox worshippers answer: Is pagan Japan more fit for survival than Christian Russia?

What show for survival would Belgium have in a contest with Turkey, Spain or Russia?[217]

(=25=) A kindred and stupid assumption in all wars is this: _Might makes right._

But if might makes right between two warring nations, then why does not might make right when a strong man by force compels a weaker man to hand over his pocket-book?

(=26=) A Scotch philosopher on the “brave boys”:[218]

“Omitting much, let us impart what follows: Horrible enough! A whole
march-field strewed with shell-splinters, cannon-shots, ruined
tumbrils and dead men and horses; stragglers remaining not so much
as buried. And those red mound-heaps: aye, there lie the Shells of
Men, out of which the life and virtue have been blown; and now they
are swept together and crammed down out of sight, like blown
Eggshells!... How has thy breast, fair plain, been defaced and
defiled! The green sward is torn up, hedge-rows and pleasant
dwellings blown away with gunpowder, and the kind seed-field lies a
desolate Place of Skulls. Nevertheless, Nature is at work ... all
that gore and carnage will be shrouded in, absorbed into manure....

“What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net purport and
upshot of the war? To my own knowledge, for example, there dwell and
toil, in the British village of Dumrudge, usually some five hundred
souls. From these, by certain ‘natural enemies’ of the French, there
are successively selected, during the French war, say thirty
able-bodied men: Dumrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and
nursed them; she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up
to manhood, and even trained them up to crafts, so that one can
weave, another build, another hammer, and the weakest can stand
under thirty stone avoirdupois. Nevertheless, amid much weeping and
swearing, they are selected; all dressed in red and shipped away, at
the public charges, some two thousand miles, or say only to the
south of Spain, and fed there till wanted. And now to that same spot
in the south of Spain, are thirty similar French artisans—in like
manner wending their ways; till at length, after infinite effort,
the two parties come into actual juxtaposition, and thirty stand
facing thirty, each with his gun in hand. Straightway the word
‘Fire!’ is given, and they blow the souls out of one another; and in
the place of sixty brisk, useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead
carcasses, which it must bury, and anew shed tears for.

“Had these men any quarrel? Busy as the Devil is, not the smallest!
They lived far enough apart; were the entirest strangers; nay, in so
wide a universe, there was even, unconsciously, by commerce, some
mutual helpfulness between them.

“How then?

“Simpleton! Their governors had fallen out; and instead of shooting
one another, had these poor blockheads shoot.”

(=27=) In that part of biology treating of parasitic life the technical terms “host” and “guest” are used. The host is the living thing that furnishes a living not only for itself, but also for the life-filching intruder which fastens itself upon the body of the “host.” The intruder, the robber residing upon the body of the “host,” is the “guest,” that is, the parasite.

Now one of the strangest things in the entire live world is this: When in some life-forms a certain stage of parasitism is reached, when the guest has permanently fastened itself upon the body of the host and the host has become thoroughly accustomed to and adjusted to the parasitic arrangement, the host stupidly inclines to _defend the parasitic guest_. It is remarkable (and discouraging) that this law of nature, this tendency, is found in operation in the social life of man. For thousands of years multitudes of men, women and children have been held in the grip of this law, mentally strangled in their effort to think Justice and Freedom; the vast majority of the working class are always quickly and easily rendered “peaceful,” “law-abiding,” and “satisfied,” and “patriotic.” Millions of chattel slaves have “loyally” defended their parasitic masters. Millions of serfs have “loyally” defended their landlords-and-masters. And today tens of millions of wage-earners strongly incline to “loyally” defend their parasitic employer masters. Moreover, the employer, by craftily praising the wage-earner, can induce the wage-earner to ignorantly, blindly, stupidly praise and defend not only the employer, but also the whole wage-system of robbery and social parasitism. Not only that, the employers, by controlling certain institutions such as the school, the library, the press, and the lecture platform, can have the wage-earning hosts taught to teach their own children to defend and praise the parasitic employer guests and the parasitic social system under which their lives are belittled by being sucked up as rent, interest and profits and fed to the parasitic capitalist class.

What the employer calls a contented and loyal working man is simply a stupidly acquiescent “host,” biologically considered. And a working class man with a rifle in his hand defending the class that, as social parasites, rob the working class—such a workingman is the best possible illustration of the fact that the great laws of nature are careless of the so-called “dignity of man,” totally careless of the ridiculous spectacle of a human being reverting to the behavior of creatures far, far down below even the simian cousins of the human race. Nature does not care whether a man behaves like a crab or a sucker, a tiger or a monkey, a sycophantic slave or a defiantly self-respecting man.[219]

(=28=) Toward the prideless working class as a social “host” defending the ruling class, the defended ruling class take nature’s contemptuous attitude. And the working-class soldier as professional defender of the parasitic capitalist class, tho’ much flattered, is cordially despised.

What the United States government thinks of the soldier may be seen, for example, in the fact that a Civil Service employee, in the Weather Department, travelling about on duty on long trips, is allowed one dollar, and even more than a dollar per meal in his expense account; while the “brave boys” in khaki who agree to stand ready to butcher their brothers for a living are lucky if they get a thirty-cent meal at any time. In this connection the following from Mr. Taft’s Report as Secretary of War for 1907 (p. 92–93) is of interest. Under the head of “Rations” we find:

“The present ration, while _liberal and suitable_, falls
considerably short of the Navy ration in variety. Butter, milk and
molasses, or _syrup, at least_, should be _added_ to the garrison
ration. These are articles _almost_ necessary in the preparation of
desserts.... They are part of the ration in Alaska and they should
be everywhere.”[220]

The present ration “liberal and suitable,” yet lacking butter, milk and molasses and even syrup. Such things are “_almost_ necessary!”

The reckless epicureanism thus proposed by “the great secretary” in offering some _cheap syrup_ as an _addition_ to the _dessert_ gives us an illuminating suggestion as to the War Department’s estimate of the cheapness of the hungry greenhorn who can be lured into the rulers’ “service” with cheap syrup. An _ordinary_ house fly can be coaxed into a trap with syrup—good syrup.

The United States soldier’s meals are estimated by the War Department to be worth six and two-thirds cents apiece, as will appear from the following passage taken from the Report of the War Department for 1907, page 85: “The pay of the private, at present, is 43 and one-third cents a day. Adding the [daily] cost of his ration as 20 cents, clothing allowance and right to quarters each at 15 cents, and his remaining privileges at, say, six and two-thirds cents, his present pay still falls 25 cents short of the average laborer throughout the United States.” This is the War Department’s estimate of the soldier’s average total daily income in cash and allowances, made by the Department in order to compare the soldier’s incentive with that of the _farm hand and general day laborer_. On page 84 of the same Report is the Government’s estimate of the average daily income of the “farm and the general laborer”: For 1902 the average for these two classes was (according to the Report) $1.20 a day; and “allowing for the increase in wages since 1902” _the government’s estimate for the “farm and general laborer” in 1907 was $1.25 per day_. This, the Report says, is $7.50 per month better than the soldier’s incentive in 1907.

It is matter of common knowledge that the United States soldiers and marines are forced to spend a considerable portion of their cash incomes for food that the Government is too stingy to furnish. That is, the ruling class have such contempt for their human “watch dogs” that they furnish them a meaner living than is received by the most meanly paid group of the working class over whom they stand guard and stand ready to murder if they strike and struggle for more.

In the same Report, under the heading “Quarters,” is this:

“The fact that he is living in a $40,000 building impresses the
soldier less if he finds in it only iron bunks, cheap chairs, and
unpainted tables—the absolute necessities for his use and nothing
for his comfort. The barrack is the home of the soldier while he
remains in the service. It is possible that he might think oftener
of continuing there if it presented more the appearance of a home.
So far as the squad rooms are concerned, mere room adornment is
neither necessary nor advisable [!] ... The squad rooms are sleeping
rooms only. There is space only for bunks, lockers and a few chairs;
but these last might in part be something more than the present
cheap and uncomfortable article. But it is the reading and amusement
rooms that are meant particularly. There is no reason why they
should not be made habitable. [Indeed! Really, Mr. Taft! How daring
of you!] A few barrack chairs and rough tables, with possibly a
billiard table, ordinarily constitute their furniture now. There is
little to tempt a man to stay there. [“Tempt” is good.] ... These
rooms might be made comfortable and pleasant. A rug on the floor, a
few prints on the walls, substantial chairs, a few writing tables
and writing materials could all be supplied at no serious expense to
the United States.... There is nothing degenerating in such
furnishings; there is much that is homelike.” [Like _whose_ home?]

“A few prints”—not many of course, and cheap ones, let us say about ten cents each; and “a rug”—a dull, unexciting mat of rags—simply these and nothing more, lest the degenerating influences of fine art should soften the syrup-baited lads’ blood-lusting temper too much for the more glorious art of butchering. As Mr. Taft profoundly remarks, “There is little to tempt a man to _stay_ there” at present; but, as he sagaciously suggests, about 98 cents expended in baiting the bunk-room trap with a few original Italian, or, say, Dutch, masterpieces, and a few imported Persian fascinations of emotional red—this 98 cents for the seductions of fine art added to a nickel’s worth of skimmed milk and molasses _would_ be an effective allurement for the khaki heroes to re-enlist and “stay there.”

Recently Congressmen and Senators advanced their own salaries from $5,000 up to $7,500 per year. This is one sign of self-respect. This advance of $2,500 per year will of course be sufficient to provide a fair quality of syrup and skimmed milk for the statesmen’s dessert.

Does it seem probable that cheap molasses added to the dessert of the soldier’s ration and a few ten-cent prints hung on the walls of the soldiers’ living rooms will attract Taft’s sons or Roosevelt’s sons or the sons of Senators and Congressmen and the sons of the “better class leading citizens” to the dreary, barren barracks provided for men who stand ready to slaughter for less than 50 cents a day and cheap “keep”?

Says Major-General J. F. Bell, Chief of Staff:[221]

“That men enlist believing they will love the life is likely, but
their mental picture is oftentimes so different from the reality
that disappointment is the almost inevitable consequence.”

Fifty-eight per cent. of all the desertions from the military service in the year 1906 were desertions of men in their first year of service, and considerably more than half of these desertions were during the first six months of service.[222]

_Twenty-six times as many_ enlisted men in our army committed suicide in 1908 as in 1907, and _thirty-nine times_ as many of the “tempted” and trapped young men in our army committed suicide in 1909 as in 1907. No suicides are reported for the years 1901 to 1906 inclusive. The record for the three years 1907, ’08, ’09 is 1, 26, 39, respectively.[223]

It would seem likely that a young fellow whose loathing for the army life had become unendurable would desert rather than commit suicide to escape the hideous business. But no doubt the following line from the Report of the Secretary of War, Mr. Wright, in 1908, will help explain somewhat the increase of suicide in the army. Mr. Wright says (page 19): “An elaborate system ... now almost perfected is well calculated to secure _swift and certain apprehension and punishment of deserters_ and will ... have a marked effect in reducing the crime to a minimum.”[224] An illustrative feature of this “highly perfected system” is to furnish the run-away soldiers’ pictures to the police of a city to which the lads can be traced, and offer the police $50 a head cash for the arrest of the soldiers. The $50 results in a human “bloodhound” search. This “highly perfected system” makes a young man’s enlistment a good deal like swallowing a barbed fish-hook. A great number of the boys go insane. In 1908 _insanity ranked third_ in the long list of causes of discharge from the army for disability.[225]

Army service, even in time of peace, is not exactly a picnic dream. On this point General Frederick Funston offers some helpful information, thus:[226]

“There is too much of the everlasting grind of drill and practice
marches, and at some of the posts too much ‘fatigue’ in the way of
keeping the reservations in apple-pie order. It is pretty much of a
shock to many of the men who have entered the army service to taste
the delights of military life to find that, from the standpoint of
the post-commanders, the most important part of their training
consists in cutting brush and weeds.”

In his Report of 1907, page 14, Mr. Taft said:

“A noteworthy feature in the recruitment of the Army under present
conditions is the increasing number of men who fail to re-enlist and
of those who leave the Army before the expiration of their term of
service by purchasing their discharge.... The fact cannot be
disregarded nor explained away that for some reason or other the
life of the soldier as at present constituted is not one to attract
the best and most desirable class of men.”

In the excerpt just quoted Mr. Taft makes it pretty clear that in his judgment the present enlisted men in the “regular” army are “undesirable citizens.” Hence the “great secretary’s” recommendation of milk-and-syrup additions to the soldier’s dessert, a few cheap prints on the walls, and a coat of paint on the tables used by the soldiers—in order to catch a better and more desirable class of men; that is, a better and more desirable class of workingmen; for be it remembered the Government does not expect to get any well-fed capitalist class men into the army by means of cheap syrup and cheap milk and cheap ‘print’ pictures and the like. “The soldier in peace,” says the Report just quoted, “is better fed and better clothed than the average man of _his class_ in civil life.”[227] How interesting and instructive!

In 1905 almost 73 per cent., and in 1906 almost 74 per cent. of the applicants for examination for enlistment in our army “were rejected as lacking either mental, moral or physical qualifications.”[228]

President Roosevelt, in his Message of December, 1907, virtually ridiculed the patriotism of the men in the army and those who may contemplate entering the army. He wrote:

“The prime need of our present Army and Navy is to secure and retain
competent non-commissioned officers. The difficulty rests
fundamentally on the question of pay.”

“_Fundamentally on the question of pay._” How suggestively patriotic! Did Colonel Roosevelt join the army for the cash there was in it? “Oh, certainly not.” But why should he insultingly say that, for other men, joining the army is fundamentally a question of cold cash?

The War Department, with Mr. Taft at the head, in 1907, joined Mr. Roosevelt in his sneering contempt for the soldier’s motive in joining the army. The Report runs:[229]

“Under a voluntary system men enlist either to aid their country or
to promote their own ends; that is, through self-sacrifice or
self-interest.... Self-sacrifice of this sort is patriotism, an
emotion necessary to arouse.... To keep it through long periods of
peace at a pitch high enough to maintain an army would be
impossible.... _Self-interest_ is, therefore, the _only_ cause of
enlistment necessary to consider; ...”[227]

It thus appears that, in the judgment of the “great secretary,” now President, patriotism is not at all a matter of brains, of reason steadily sustained by logic, but is, on the contrary, a matter of emotion, passion, “brain-storm,” induced with fife and drum and sustained with godlike sky-climbing aspiration to have one’s stomach filled with “butter, milk and molasses, or syrup, at least”—as “dessert.” The two Presidents, the anti-labor injunction judge and the lion-hunting monkey murderer,[230] agree that what _looks_ like patriotism in the long-service “regular” is after all simply a matter of getting less than fifty cents a day and “keep.” Of course, such things as this are not mentioned on the Fourth of July nor in campaign speeches when the “great secretary” or his chattering predecessor is courting the ‘brave boys’ for their votes.

(=29=) When a young man joins the army or the navy he virtually agrees to pocket his pride and submit to a series of insults from his “superior” officers for a term of years. The recruiting officer is to some degree, at least temporarily, a man of pleasant manners, and the callow patriot taking the bait in the recruiting office is treated alluringly. But when the youth signs his name in the books and becomes a soldier patriot, matters take a change. It is a case of being “stuck” or “stung.” For following the hour of his enlistment, humble, prideless submission to strutting, swaggering bosses is the soldier’s portion. From “superior” officers he must meekly accept insults for which, in private life, he would promptly knock a man down. In the service he must bend his neck and take the yoke for years. Here is a sample of the spirit of the haughty airs assumed by the “superiors.”

Mr. Taft, speaking as Secretary of War, February 14, 1908, to the young men at West Point Military School, said:

“The plainest of your duties is to keep your mouths shut and obey
orders. As a soldier you must forego the privilege of free
speech.... You will meet with injustices, others will get all to
which they seem entitled. Your wives will have heart-burnings. Your
children will have heart-burnings. In spite of all that you must do
your duty, honestly and devotedly.”

Here is a soldier’s letter:[231]

“... We are supposed to work eight hours a day, but we get dismissed
when the officers see fit to let us go—all for fifty-two cents a
day. The negroes working at Panama get more money and are better
treated than the enlisted men out here. Our ‘little brown brothers’
are treated better over here. And to cap the climax, over comes a
high statesman [Mr. Taft?] and makes a speech to a mob of our
‘little brown brothers’ and tells them not to judge the Americans by
the enlisted men, as the enlisted men are composed of the roughest
elements in the States....”

President David Starr Jordan (Leland Stanford University) writes of the contemptuous treatment of the men in the ranks by the “superior” officers:[232]

“One soldier [in the Philippines] says, ‘If the United States were
on fire from end to end, I would never raise my hand to put it out.’
Another would ‘toss in a blanket the officials at Washington, as we
toss a cheating corporal.’ Another says in print, referring to the
abuse of the soldiers by their superiors in pay: ‘Yes, I knew that
war would be hell before I got into it. But I did not know that war
would be hell deliberately and fanatically inflicted. I expected to
sleep in mud puddles with my head on a stone for a pillow, and go
hungry for days on forced marches and away from a base of supplies.
But I never dreamed that I would have to sleep in a leaky and
exposed shed when there was plenty of good shelter elsewhere, and
when thirty officers had fine apartments in which there was room for
five hundred men; neither did I expect to be fed on coffee-grounds
and foul canned meat for weeks when we were right next to a base of
supplies, and when our officers lived on the choice of the
commissary’s department.’”

But the question naturally occurs to one: Why shouldn’t the working class soldiers be treated thus? Surely it is to be expected that the great majority class will _get what they permit_ from their “superiors.”

Note how the soldier boys are snubbed and bull-dozed in the German army. Says Dr. Walsh:[233]

“In a trial reported Dec. 17, 1903, a lieutenant of the infantry has
been convicted of 618 cases of maltreatment and 57 cases of improper
treatment of soldiers under him, and a sergeant in another regiment
has been convicted of 1,520 cases of maltreatment and 100 cases of
improper treatment.... The men deposed were so afraid, that nobody
ventured to complain.”

There is a yearly average of 7,000 desertions from the English regular army. Quite naturally. Frozen, starved and despised, the thirty-cent patriots make a break for bread and freedom from the “noble” snobbery of the aristocratic pets in control.

The record of desertions from the American Army is, for the years 1907, 1908, and 1909, respectively, 4,534, 4,525, 5,023.

(=30=) How is it possible to interest young men in the brutal business of war?

There are some paragraphs on this matter in the chapter following, “For Mother and the Boys.” Here the matter of military parades is suggested for consideration by “father and the boys.”

Sometimes the boys’ interest in war begins in so simple a thing as a parade. A military parade is a trap—for the working class. A writer in the New York _Tribune_, April 22, 1908, makes several artful suggestions as to the value of military parades in snaring young toilers into the army. He suggests: