Chapter EIGHT: For Mother and the Boys and Girls (1)

Topics for consideration, especially by the mothers in the working class.[241]

(=1=) “Will there be, indeed, more wars?”

Yes, undoubtedly.[242]

“What shall be done about it?”

There are two things to be done, by the mother, right away: Think about war and talk about war with other mothers and the boys—also with the girls.

Let us see:

In the next war whose sons shall be shot?

The aristocrat’s wife is not worrying about whose children are to be destroyed in the next war. She knows already that her sons will not be destroyed in battle; her sons will not stand before Gatling guns; her sons will not be torn and lie bleeding, groaning, screaming and cursing on the steel-swept battlefield by day or through the long night; her sons will not fester and sicken and die in dismal battlefield hospitals; she knows that her sons will not be pitched into nameless trenches—buried like dogs; her flesh and blood, her slain sons, will not be brought home to mock her aching heart.

That is settled—positively.

She belongs to the _ruling_ class.

The ruling class protect her and the men and boys she loves—loyally.

But the working class mother—the humble mother of wage-slaves—she feels no such security. Herod and Mars invade her home to steal the men and boys she loves. The rude fist of war is ever ready to crush her. This humble woman is wholly unprotected against war by the ruling class. She is also unprotected against war by the voting men of her own class.

This woman must protect herself—for the present.

Let it be remembered that in the gentle heart of a humble mother whose loving sons have been butchered in battle, it is always winter. The cheap rhetoric and hypocritical compliments of the coarse-grained political orator, the honeyed words of any man in any profession—sacred or secular—craftily exempted from the war which slew her loved ones, these can not charm the wintry desolation of her life into rare June weather. Nor can the wound in her mother heart be healed with a stingy quarterly allowance of filthy money called a pension. When her loved ones were slaughtered her joys were slain.

This woman must indeed protect herself; and she can protect herself, somewhat,—if she will.

She can do this: She can teach her child to hate—to hate war.[243]

(=2=) Mother, is your five-year-old son strong, healthy and handsome? Yes? Well, that is fine. But think of him at the age of twenty in slaughtering clothes, being transformed into a swaggering armed bully. Mother, if he should be tricked into the army and butchered and his torn corpse should be brought home to you, you would then know what _other_ mothers feel when their boys, whom your son butchers, are brought home to them. Then, perhaps, war would seem quite different—far less “great” and “glorious” to you. You see, mother, in a war _some_ mothers’ boys must be butchered. Perhaps a false patriotism has been taught to you—just as a false patriotism is taught your sons. Both the mother and her sons are confused. To get the working class boy ready for war the capitalist must first confuse and trick the mother.

Kings, emperors, presidents, tsars, and capitalists of all lands are lovingly interested in the problem of “race suicide,” the problem of small families,—interested in the “food-for-powder” crop, the “bullet-stopper” crop,—EAGER THAT EVERY WORKING CLASS MOTHER SHOULD BECOME A BREEDER. After Napoleon Bonaparte had had multitudes of the men and boys of France butchered, making it difficult to find soldiers, he impatiently exclaimed, “What France needs is mothers!” What he meant was that France needed more human breeders flattered into bearing and rearing more butchers for Napoleon. Of course Napoleon was shrewd enough to confuse the humble mothers with plenty of cheap flattery concerning their “patriotism.”[244] Capitalists today want larger working class families for more soldiers, also for a larger army of unemployed—in order that the capitalists may, in the industrial civil war, more tyrannically dictate the wage terms to the workers and also more easily secure substitutes in case of a war.

And to this end the capitalists are willing to pay the price; that is, willing to pay for the social chloroform, for the false teachings, necessary to beget a slave’s blind enthusiasm for the master that betrays him—called patriotism.

(=3=) Thomas Carlyle called working class soldiers simpletons. A person of good mind, however, _if caught young_, can be confused till he will actually volunteer to butcher his fellowman. This can be done in many ways; for example, take Fitchburg, Massachusetts, May 29–30, 1908. The very small children, also ten-year-olds, and those still older, were assembled, according to age, in halls, churches, the Young Men’s Christian auditorium, and elsewhere, May 29; and for long weary hours gory stories of “bravery” in war were recited to them, horrible pictures were displayed before them, blood-curdling suggestions were urged upon them, cheap lusts for cheap glory were inspired in the helpless youngsters,—just as a savage might teach his little sons to rip the scalp from a screaming victim’s skull. And humble mothers of the working class were tricked into co-operating in this anti-social “patriotism.”

Such abominable performances stunt the children. Their social development is arrested. They become jingoists, ignorant little bigots—utterly incapable of sincere international love. Their political philosophy is a shallow and silly “Hurrah!” Their “patriotism” becomes a belittling conceit and a readiness for cruel deeds.

Everybody, of course, loves a frank, finely social child. International and national murder is a coarse and unsocial thought; and when parents, teachers, preachers, or lecturers, speak enthusiastically of wholesale murder or of famous national and international murderers in the presence of a child, the child’s social development is checked, stunted; when a few suggestions of international jealousy and malice have been ignorantly (or cunningly) thrust into a child’s mind it becomes simply impossible for the child to develop into an “international man,” a finely social person sincerely loving his fellowmen. This would be a charming world if all men and women were social—socialized, unblasted, unstung by shriveling national jealousy and malice; but everywhere the vile business of blasting the social nature of the rising generation is being extended. The school, even, is invaded. The Rev. Dr. Walter Walsh warns parents thus:[245]

“The school has become not only the training ground, but actually a
recruiting ground for the army. The British War Office issues a
circular pressing secondary schools to teach boys over twelve the
use of the rifle; issues Morris tube carbines to schools having
suitable ranges; and supplies ammunition at cost price. The
inevitable next step is the formation of cadet corps in the schools,
with inspection by military chiefs.... The capture of the schools by
the militarists is one of the most ominous signs of the times. The
militarist has long looked with wistful eye at this happy hunting
grounds.... Parliaments have already been strongly urged to make
military drill compulsory in all public schools.... The scholar is
rapidly transformed into the conscript.”

The shameless audacity of using a socializing institution, the school, to cultivate national malice in the helpless children!

(=4=) If only the children could get one good look at the hell behind the curtain it would be more difficult to beguile and betray them.

Let the wonderful Zola tell what the boys in the public schools are _not_ taught and are _not permitted to realize_ till later when they are grown up and are seduced to the battlefield with the crafty cry, “Follow the flag!”

Here following are some paragraphs on the battlefield hospital. A military hospital, it may be said, is an institution in which sick and shell-torn men are hastily repaired in order that they may go again to the battle line—perchance to faint or be ripped to pieces again. Thus Zola:[246]

“... Outside in the shed the preparations were of another nature:
the chests were opened and the contents arranged in order.... On
another table were the surgical cases with their blood-curdling
array of glittering instruments, probes, forceps, bistouries,
scalpels, scissors, saws, an arsenal of implements of every
imaginable shape adapted to pierce, cut, dice, rend, crush.... The
wagons kept driving up to the entrance in an unbroken stream.... The
regular ambulance wagons of the medical department, two-wheeled and
four-wheeled, were too few in number to meet the demand ...
provision vans, everything on wheels that could be picked up on the
battlefield, came rolling up with their ghastly loads; and later in
the day carrioles and market-gardeners’ carts were pressed into the
service and harnessed to horses that were found straying along the
roads.... It was a sight to move the most callous to behold the
unloading of those poor wretches, some with the greenish pallor on
their faces, others suffused with the purple hue that denotes
congestion; many were in a state of coma, others uttered piercing
cries of anguish ... the keen knife flashed in the air, there was
the faint rasping of the saw barely audible, the blood spurted in
short sharp jets.... As soon as the subject had been operated on
another was brought in, and they followed one another in such quick
succession that there was barely time to pass the sponge over the
protecting oil-cloth. At the extremity of the grass plot, screened
from sight by a clump of lilac bushes, they had set up a kind of
morgue whither they carried the bodies of the dead, which were
removed from the beds without a moment’s delay in order to make room
for the living, and this receptacle also served to receive the
amputated legs and arms, whatever débris of flesh and bone remained
upon the table.... Rents in tattered, shell-torn uniforms disclosed
gaping wounds, some of which had received a hasty dressing on the
battlefield, while others were still raw and bleeding. There were
feet, still encased in their coarse shoes, crushed into a mass like
jelly; from knees and elbows, that were as if they had been smashed
by a hammer, depended inert limbs. There were broken hands, and
fingers almost severed, ready to drop, retained only by a strip of
skin. Most numerous among the casualties were the fractures; the
poor arms and legs, red and swollen, throbbed intolerably and were
as heavy as lead. But the most dangerous hurts were those in the
abdomen, chest, and head. There were yawning fissures that laid open
the entire flank, the knotted viscera were drawn into great hard
lumps beneath the tight-drawn skin, while as the effect of certain
wounds the patient frothed at the mouth and writhed like an
epileptic.... And finally the head, more than any other portion of
the frame, gave evidence of hard treatment; a broken jaw, the mouth
a pulp of teeth and bleeding tongue, an eye torn from its socket and
exposed upon the cheek, a cloven skull that showed the palpitating
brain beneath.... Although the sponge was kept constantly at work
the tables were always red.... The buckets ... were emptied over a
bed of daisies a few steps away.... Some seemed to have left the
world with a sneer on their faces, their eyes retroverted till
naught was visible but the whites, the grinning lips parted over the
glistening teeth, while in others with faces unspeakably sorrowful,
big tears still stood on the cheeks. One, a mere boy, short and
slight, half whose face had been shot away by a cannon ball, had his
two hands clasped convulsively above his heart, and in them a
woman’s photograph, one of those pale, blurred pictures that are
made in the quarters of the poor, bedabbled with his blood. And at
the feet of the dead had been thrown in a promiscuous pile the
amputated arms and legs, the refuse of the knife and the saw of the
operating table, just as the butcher sweeps into a corner of his
shop the offal, the worthless odds and ends of flesh and bone....
Bourouche, brandishing the long, keen knife, cried: ‘Raise him!’
seized the deltoid with his left hand and with a swift movement of
the right cut through the flesh of the arm and severed the muscle;
then, with a deft rear-ward cut, he disarticulated the joint at a
single stroke, and, presto! the arm fell on the table, taken off in
three motions.... ‘Let him down!’ ... he had done it in thirty
seconds.... Their strength all gone, reduced to skeletons, with
ashen, clayey faces, the miserable wretches suffered the torments of
the damned.... The patients writhed and shrieked in unceasing
delirium, or sat erect in bed with the look of spectres.... There
were others again who maintained a continuous howling.... Often
gangrene kept mounting higher and higher, and the amputation had to
be repeated until the entire limb was gone.”

And that is hell—for which your children are prepared.

This phase of war is shrewdly kept from the children. No child’s mind could be poisoned, no child’s imagination could be set on fire for war, no child’s heart could be made to lust for the “glory” of the battlefield of carnage—if he were shown _this_ side of war.

But the child is an easy victim. Even some cheap jingo jingle called patriotic poetry renders the working class the easy, fooled tool of despots. The victimizing of the helpless child is rendered especially easy when the mother, blindfold with flattery, gullibly lends assistance in strangling the child’s sociability. (See Chapter Seven, Section 30.)

(=5=) Here is a specimen of the poison craftily used in the public schools under the control of the capitalist class:

“A soldier is the grandest man
That ever yet was made.
He’s valiant on the battlefield
And handsome on parade.
By strict attention to my drill
It should not take me long
For me to be an officer
When I am big and strong.
Then, when my country needs me,
In case of war’s alarms,
I’d run and get my uniform[247]
And call the boys to arms!
With sword in hand I’d lead the charg
My orders I would yell
Above the noise of cannon’s roar
And storms of shot and shell.
We’d dash upon the foreign foe,
As Teddy did of yore,
Who took the hill while covered with
Dust, victory and gore!
With banners gay, while bugles play,
We’d seek our native land.
Upon a horse I’d ride that day,
The General in Command!”[248]

Will the mothers protect their children’s nature against the unsocial small souls who are always ignorantly or maliciously ready to thrust fangs and venom into the generous natures of frank and social children by having them recite stupid praise of distinguished human butchers and “famous victories”?

An American literary man of great eminence, Dr. Edward Everett Hale, thus rebuked the poisoners of school children:

“But even now, think how much more care you give to the study of the
histories of war than to the histories of peace. There are ten times
as many people who know who commanded at the Battle of New Orleans
as there are who could tell me the name of the great apostle who
made freedom the law for Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin,
Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Michigan. This man died
leaving no memorial.”[249]

(=6=) The working class should speedily get control of public libraries and throw out and keep out books written especially to exalt war and puff the brilliant butchers who have guided millions of working men to death on blood-soaked battlefields,—throw out and burn all books designed to praise the Christian or pagan cannibalism, or the civilized savagery called war. LABOR UNIONS AND ALL OTHER WORKING CLASS BODIES SHOULD MAKE FORMAL AND VIGOROUS PROTEST AGAINST HAVING ANYTHING SAID IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN PRAISE OF WAR AND IN PRAISE OF DISTINGUISHED BUTCHERS. Let them reflect too that military drills, given _as such_, with martial songs and war tales, cultivate blood lust in the children, blind them to the true meaning of war, make them an easy prey, later, to the crafty cowards who will seek to use them in future savage contests, and are thus an outrage on the children. For a dozen reasons the working class should get control of local school boards.[250]

(=7=) The following lines from a poem written by an elegant coward, are often used in the primary grades of the public schools:

“Form! Form! Riflemen, form!
Ready! be ready to meet the storm!
Riflemen! Riflemen! Riflemen, form!”

A SCHOOL TEACHER CAN MAKE A FOOL AND A MURDERER OF A BOY OF EIGHT OR TEN YEARS WITH SUCH LINES. REMEMBER THAT POETS AND TEACHERS WHO FURNISH THE WAR-SONG CHLOROFORM FOR SCHOOL CHILDREN USUALLY “SIDE-STEP” WHEN THE STORM BREAKS—NO RIFLE BUSINESS FOR THEM—THEY LET OTHERS “MEET THE STORM” WHICH THEIR POETRY AND TEACHING HELPED STIR UP. THE WAR-SONG POET AND THE WAR-SONG SCHOOL TEACHER, IF YOU PLEASE, ARE TOO “CULTIVATED AND RESPECTABLE” TO BE PATRIOTICALLY BUTCHERED.

Under no circumstances should a working class father and mother keep silent while a public school teacher or a Sunday-school teacher thrills the children’s blood and blasts the glorious sentiments of human brotherhood with recitals of war-tales and fulsome praise of men whose “glory” is red with the blood of tens of thousands of working class men. Such stories and such praise scar and brutalize the social natures of the children as distinctly as a hot branding iron would disfigure their tender faces.

(=8=) The little lovers, the children, who are conceived in love, born in love, and live on love, who hunger for love, long to love, glorify the home with love and make the sad world hope for—almost mad for—love, one generation of these sweet little lovers, these prattling sweethearts of mankind, would, when grown up, fill the world with an international love, _if they were not bitten by the viper of petty, local patriotism_.

The mother who will think about this matter somewhat will promptly realize that there is something disastrously wrong with the education which stings her little lovers with a murderer’s aspiration. There is something wrong when the gracious neighborliness and charming sociability of children give way to swaggering insolence and savage blood-lust.

Let the mother think of it: Even their playthings, their toys, are craftily used to sting, to debauch the imagination of the children, to write the hopes of brutes in the hearts of gentle children. Lately there has been enormous increase in the business of manufacturing toy soldiers, toy cavalry horses, toy cannon and toy Gatling guns, also khaki soldier clothing for children. “120,000 bales of scrap tin from the Puget Sound canneries were sent recently to Hamburg, Germany, to be made into toy soldiers.”[251] There can be no doubt about the results of using such garb and playthings. That the child is thus scarred is revealed when the tiny boy assumes the attitudes and the strut and swagger of the professional man-slaughterer. His very conversation with his military toys shows he is marked—_ready_.[252]

William Lloyd Garrison wrote:

“My country is the world, my countrymen are all mankind.”

But the stung child can not learn the meaning of Garrison’s noble words.

(=9=) Boy, kill one human being, and you will be called a murderer—despised and hanged. But kill a thousand human beings in war—and you become “great”! Deluded women smile upon you, little children gape at you, preachers praise you, politicians pet you, orators glorify you, capitalists grin at you, universities honor you, and the Government medals and pensions you;—but lonely, war-orphaned children and war-robbed widows, _these despise you exactly in proportion as they understand you_.

Remember, boy, the soldier’s sword reaches through the slaughtered father to others—reaches the hearts of helpless women and helpless children.

Which would you rather be, boy, a dead and useless slaughterer of men, or a live and useful man of peace?—a dead butcher or a live brother?

(=10=) Here, of course, the thought of patriotism occurs.

A great American, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote:

“We hesitate to employ a word so much abused as patriotism, whose
true sense is almost the reverse of the popular sense. We have no
sympathy with that boyish egotism, hoarse with cheering for one
side, for one state, for one town; the right patriotism consists in
the delight which springs from contributing our peculiar legitimate
advantages to the benefit of humanity.”

And thus James Russell Lowell:[253]

“There is a patriotism of the soul whose claim absolves us from our
other and terrene fealty.... When, therefore, one would have us
throw up our caps and shout with the multitude, ‘Our country,
however bounded!’ he demands of us that we sacrifice the larger to
the less, the higher to the lower, and that we yield to the
imaginary claims of a few acres of soil our duty and privilege as
liegemen of Truth. Our true country is bounded on the north and the
south, on the east and the west, by justice.... Veiling our faces,
we must take silently the hand of Duty to follow her.”

The fallacy of false patriotism is exploded in the following quotation by James Mackaye:[254]

“There is a school of patriotism more or less popular which teaches
that a man owes to his country a duty which he owes to no other
aggregate of the human race, and that he should render service to
the constituted authorities thereof, whatever policies they may
choose to pursue. The motto of this school is ‘My country, right or
wrong.’ Had this been the motto of Washington and his compatriots
the United States would still be a part of the British Empire. The
particular aggregate of men which constitutes a nation is a matter
of the merest accident.... Indeed the patriotism whose dictum is ‘My
country, right or wrong’ is but one degree of egotism, for if my
country right or wrong, why not my state right or wrong; if my state
right or wrong, why not my town ... my neighborhood ... my
family ... my great uncle ... or why not myself right or wrong?”

George Washington was disloyal to his own government, the greatest national government in the world in his day, simply because that government did not do things to suit _him_. Washington _took up arms against his own government_ because it did not suit him. Washington was _unpatriotic_ toward his great national government because it did not please him. Washington _even trampled upon the flag_ of his own national government because that government’s policy did not suit him.

But Washington was loyal to his own interests. He was patriotic toward the new _revolutionary_ government that did suit him. He _transferred his allegiance_ to a _new_ flag and a _new_ constitution and a _new_ government and thus _protected his economic interests_.

And all these things are true, strictly true, of almost every _great_ American in the times of Washington. Nearly every “leading citizen” in England at that time thought the behavior of the great Americans was “simply awful,” “outlandishly anarchistic.”

The “patriotic” great men in England were protecting their _economic_ interests and _used their government_ to protect those interests.

The “unpatriotic” Americans were protecting their economic interests, and they despised the government that would not protect their interests, and they straightway constructed a government which they _could_ use in protecting their interests. Then they became patriotic toward the new government which they were using to protect their interests.

Always those in possession of the powers of government use the Government to protect themselves—that is, to protect their interests; and they never fail to shrewdly shout, “Patriotism!” and teach “patriotism”; nor do they ever fail to shout, “Unpatriotic!” at any group or class who seek to reorganize government in self-defense.

“Patriotism!” “Love of our country!” Yes, indeed! But, doesn’t the average American working class man look ridiculous shouting, “Hurrah for our country—our land of the free”? He has no voice in the control of the factory where he works; has no voice as to the use of the militia and the soldiers; has _no right to demand a job and thus defend his life_; he could not have the service of one petty village marshal, to open up a “shut-down” factory, even though the opening of the factory would save him and five thousand other men and their twenty-five thousand women and children from starvation; in the mill and mine and factory he has no voice as to who shall be his foreman or superintendent any more than black chattel slaves in Georgia cotton fields in 1850.

Our country! Land of the free! Where the president of the American Federation of Labor could be clapped into jail if he should use the “freedom of the press” to publish even a short list of boycotted industrial tyrants; where the officers of the Western Federation of Miners were kidnapped and the kidnapping was declared to be constitutional by the highest court in the land, and the untried prisoners (constitutionally entitled to all the presumptions of innocence) were declared guilty by the cheap President of the political mockery called a “free republic.”

(=11=) Mothers and fathers are not permitted to learn of many of the foul things happening at barracks or far away whither their sons have been “flimflammed” for bullet-stoppers.

For President William H. Taft’s official testimony on the sexual degradation of the soldier sons of loving mothers, see Chapter Four, Section One, of the present volume.

“On the 17th of July, 1899, the staff correspondents of American
newspapers stationed in Manila stated unitedly in public protest:

“‘The [Press] censorship has compelled us to participate in this
misrepresentation by excising or altering uncontroverted statements
of fact, on the plea, as General Otis said, that “they would alarm
the people at home,” or “have the people of the United States by the
ears.”’”[255]

Some things, you know, must be concealed. President D. S. Jordan (Leland Stanford University) writes:[256]

“Does the _Outlook_ [editor] know what Manila is becoming under
military rule? We hear of four hundred saloons on the Escolta, where
two were before; that twenty-one per cent. of our soldiers are
attacked with venereal disease, that according to the belief of the
soldiers, ‘even the pigs and dogs have the syphilis.’”

Following the Spanish war, venereal diseases as cause of ineffectiveness and cause for discharge from the army increased two and a half fold; that is, _two hundred and fifty per cent_.[257] The statement by the Secretary of War, Mr. Dickinson (Report for 1909, p. 17) is sufficient to disgust and anger every woman in the land with the entire filthy business of militarism. For the startling statement see Chapter Four, Section One, of present volume.

In this connection read the words of an officer in the Department of War, Col. John Van Rensselaer:[258]

“I have but one word to say. I am an officer of the Medical Corps of
the Army, and will speak on this important subject from that
standpoint.

“Every soldier excused from duty on account of sickness of any kind
has a record made of his case. By reason of this fact, I believe I
may safely say that military vital statistics, including venereal
diseases, are the most complete extant.

“The authorities observing that there has been in recent years a
progressive increase of these diseases in the Army, until the
non-efficiency from them with us now exceeds that of any other army,
and despairing of help from the civil control of prostitution, have
instituted a plan within the service by which they hope to reduce
the excessive non-efficiency from venereal. Medical officers are
required to instruct the men in the nature and dangers of these
diseases, the non-necessity of exposure to them....

“Such instruction is valuable to a certain extent, but only to a
certain extent.... We cannot, therefore, expect all of our men, so
many of whom are at the age of highest virility, to avoid exposure
by reason of any moral suasion we may bring to bear. Some certainly
will not, so we say to them, ‘Be continent, but if you cannot, then
protect yourself!’ _And we tell them how to do it._”

PREPARING BOY-SCOUT HIRED HANDS.

(See sample of “finished product” of a Boy Scout, pages 51, 53 and,
especially, opposite page 207.)
]

How splendid, how grandly noble, it must have been to see a regular army physician, wearing the official professional uniform marked “U. S.,” going, officially, at stated intervals, to the officially “segregated” houses of prostitution in Manila to officially examine the condition of professional prostitutes, and, having examined them, officially report them “unfit” (for whom?)—or “fit” (for whom?). How sublime! How patriotic! How lovingly Christian! Great flag-waving, constitutional government, performing a noble function nobly and, of course, constitutionally! All in the name of Christ, of course—for “This is a Christian nation”—officially.

Life on board a war vessel is unnatural. So far as social and sex relations are concerned the men are virtually kept in solitary confinement for weeks, even months, at a time. _Under such profoundly unnatural conditions human beings behave unnaturally._ Many strong characters and all the weak ones collapse, utterly collapse; and the wild, ugly, worse than brute monster, _Perverted_ Sex Appetite, has a vile festival weeks at a time, enticing, embracing, befouling, devouring many of the finest youths in the land.

It is said to be common knowledge with many who know and with many it is a source of horrible jest—that under such unnatural conditions on board a battleship men _sexually_ associate _with men_ in ways worse (if possible) than the most degrading ways mentioned (and cursed) in the Old Testament. And when, after weeks or months at sea, the warship touches at a port for a few days or weeks, there is a wild rush of unfortunate boys for unfortunate women whose diseased condition is an unspeakable abomination. And this should be known too: Certain Christian and un-Christian governments’ officials _provide the boys with certain preventive chemicals_ (_as they leave the ship for a “lark” on shore_), knowing that the boys, many of them, are _sure to be the victims of victims reeking with disease_.

And then if the reader could witness the “round-up” the night before the ship sets out to sea again,—could see scores of fine young marines, pride of loving mothers,—if the reader could see them taken on board dead drunk and horribly befouled, taken on board in wheel barrows and dumped like big lumps of diseased, drunken, snoring and slobbering flesh, to be sobered up and “treated” when the ship gets out to sea,—if the reader could see all this and very much more, for example in New York harbor, he would then better understand why very few of “our very _best_ people” of the “upper class” are not easily wheedled into giving up their own sons to defend our great and glorious country on board a big steel fighting machine called a battleship—to cruise and carouse around the world. Just in proportion as the working class mother thinks about this matter her sons will be safer from the wheedling seductions of the recruiting officer.

Mothers, what is the blind sentiment that makes you clap your hands in admiration of the “great statesmen” or the “great government” that has prostitutes examined for the sons you bore and carefully reared and tenderly love?

“LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION,” SAID JESUS CHRIST. YET A “CIVILIZED” CHRISTIAN GOVERNMENT RECENTLY NOT ONLY EXAMINED, BUT PROVIDED PROSTITUTES FOR THE SOLDIER BOYS. THE GREAT BRITISH GOVERNMENT WITHIN RECENT YEARS PROVIDED PROSTITUTES FOR HER SOLDIERS IN INDIA. Circular memoranda were sent to all the cantonments of India by Quarter-Master General Chapman, in the name of the commander-in-chief of the army of India (Lord Roberts). Here are three excerpts from those documents and from official reports:[259]

“In regimental bazaars it is _necessary_ to have a _sufficient
number_ of women; to take care that they are SUFFICIENTLY
ATTRACTIVE; to _provide_ them with proper houses, and above all to
insist upon means of ablution being always available [to prevent
venereal diseases].... If _young_ soldiers are _carefully advised_
in regard to the _advantages_ of ablution, and recognize that
_convenient arrangements exist in the regimental bazaar_ (that is,
in the chacla, or brothel), they may be expected to avoid the risks
involved in association with women who are not recognized [that is,
not examined and licensed] by the regimental authorities.”

Another commanding officer writes in his report:

“PLEASE SEND YOUNG AND ATTRACTIVE WOMEN AS LAID DOWN IN THE
QUARTER-MASTER GENERAL’S CIRCULAR, NO. 21A.... THERE ARE NOT WOMEN
ENOUGH; THEY ARE NOT ATTRACTIVE ENOUGH. MORE AND YOUNGER WOMEN ARE
REQUIRED.... I HAVE ORDERED THE NUMBER OF PROSTITUTES TO BE
INCREASED ... AND HAVE GIVEN SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS AS TO ADDITIONAL
WOMEN BEING YOUNG AND OF ATTRACTIVE APPEARANCE.”

And this: “The total number of admissions to hospital of cases of venereal diseases amongst troops in India rose in 1895 to 522 per 1,000.”

And this from another authority:[260]

“In 1902, in India, the enormous number of 12,686 men were admitted
into hospitals suffering from sexual diseases alone; more than 1,000
military victims were always in the hospital—and the report from
which these figures are taken deals with the healthiest year for 20
years past. In the Home Army ... in a single period of twelve
months, of 154,000 troops, there were 24,176 sexual complaint
cases—or one in every six. In the author’s judgment, 80 per cent. of
the entire British Army in India, and a proportion slightly smaller
for the Home Army, have been at some time affected.”

“The worst of war and war service is that the soldier is a ruined man.”[261]

General Sherman has spoken on the refining influences of war:

“Long after the Civil War, General Sherman, defending the conduct of
his troops in South Carolina, said to Carl Schurz: ‘Before we got
out of that state the men had so accustomed themselves to destroying
everything along the line of march that sometimes, when I had my
headquarters in a house, that house began to burn before I was
fairly out of it. The truth is—human nature is human nature. You
take the best lot of young men—all church members if you please—and
put them into an army and let them invade an enemy’s country and let
them live upon it for any length, and they will gradually lose all
principle[262] and self-restraint to a degree beyond the control of
discipline. It has always been so and always will be so.’”[263]

(=12=) An anonymous author writes thus:[264]

“Real war is a very different thing from the painted image that you
see at a parade or review. But it is the painted image that makes it
popular. The waving plumes, the gay uniforms, the flashing swords,
the disciplined march of innumerable feet, the clear-voiced trumpet,
the intoxicating strains of martial music, the pomp, the sound, and
the spectacle—these are the incitements to war and to the profession
of the soldier. They are not what they are. But they still form a
popular prelude to a woeful pandemonium. And when war bursts out it
is at first, as a rule, but a small minority even of the peoples
engaged that really sees and feels its horrors. The populace is fed
by excitements; the defeats are covered up; in most countries the
lists of killed and wounded are suppressed or postponed; victories
are magnified; successful generals are acclaimed, and the military
hero becomes the idol of the people. The over-fed, seedy malingerers
of a small society join with the starving loiterers about the gin
palace in applauding the execution of ruin. If their heroes are
successful, what are their trophies?—prisons crowded with captives,
hospitals filled with sick and wounded, towns sacked, farms burnt,
fields laid waste, taxes raised, plenty converted to scarcity or
famine, and vast debts accumulated for posterity. Then when these
[military] heroes have done their work, the heroes of peace ...
appear, and by long and patient labor amid scenes of universal
lamentation seek to mitigate the suffering of their repentant
fellow-countrymen.”

The poet Byron was in a war and described war thus:

“All the mind would shrink from of excesses;
All the body perpetrates of bad;
All that we read, hear, dream, of man’s distresses;
All that the devil would do if run stark mad;
All that defies the worst which pen expresses;
All that by which hell is peopled, or is sad
As hell—mere mortals who their power abuse—
Was here (as heretofore and since) let loose....
War’s a brain-spattering art.”[265]

(=13=) In connection with the foregoing section 12 examine Chapter Seven, Section 18.

“War! War! War!... God send the women sleep in the long, long night,
when the breasts on whose strength they leaned heave no more.”[266]

Wives and mothers of the working class, as soon as the government has had your choicest sons slaughtered, the government is _through with you_—except to send you a miserable, blood-stained, silver sop, a sort of cash bribe, once a quarter. Then as you receive the vile cash, you can, in imagination, hear the shrieks of your dead loved ones. The government seeks to win your approval and to silence your hearts’ protests against human butchery with the cheap jingle of some filthy dollars—as if you had sold your sons and husbands for a price. Such a pension is a form of hush money.

“If the stroke of war fell certain on the guilty heads, none
else ... but alas!

That undistinguishing and deathful storm
Beats heaviest on the exposed and innocent;
And they that stir its fury, while it raves
Safe at a distance send their mandates forth.”—Crowe.

Robert G. Ingersoll wrote:[267]

“Nations sustain the relations of savages to each other....

“No man has imagination enough to paint the agonies, the horrors, the cruelties, of war. Think of sending shot and shell crashing through the bodies of men! Think of the widows and orphans! Think of the maimed, the mutilated, the mangled!...”

Let the working class mothers beware of crafty and cowardly politicians and business men seeking to excite them with the shallow cry: “The flag! Our country! Our homes!” For the mothers’ sake it is worth the space to restate the fact here: _That more than half of all the mothers in the United States have no homes of their own and must live in rented homes, and more than one-eighth of them live in mortgaged homes_.[268] And vast numbers of the mothers in the United States live in mean, small houses with scarcely a single modern convenience.

Mothers, keep your eyes on the bankers and the manufacturers and the other “leading citizens”: they and their sons and sons-in-law are not shedding a large quantity of their “blue” blood for “our” country and “our” homes and “our” flag; _and they can not be wheedled into doing so_. Watch them closely, mothers, both before a war and during a war. Don’t get excited. Remember Christ’s “Put up thy sword.”

St. Paul said, “Follow peace with all men.”

You have heard of this doctrine: “Thou shalt not kill.”

“War has no pity,” said Schiller.

“God is forgotten in war, and every principle of Christianity is trampled under foot,” said Sidney Smith.

“To be tender-minded
Does not become a sword.”—Shakespeare.

“War is one of the greatest plagues that can afflict humanity; it destroys religion ... it destroys families. Any scourge, in fact, is preferable to it.... Cannon and fire-arms are cruel and damnable machines.”—Martin Luther.

The gentle and charming lover of little children, Eugene Field, wrote: “I hate wars, armies, soldiers, guns, and fireworks.”[269]

“And he shall judge among the nations, and he shall rebuke many
people. And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their
spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift sword against
nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”[270]

James Russell Lowell:[271]

“The laborin’ man and laborin’ woman
Have one glory and one shame;
Ev’y thin’ thet’s done inhuman
Ingers all on ’em the same.”

And Tolstoi thus:[272]

“Every war—even the briefest—with its accompaniment of ruinous
expenses, destruction of harvests, thefts, plunder, murders, and
unchecked debauchery, with the false justifications of its necessity
and justice, the glorification and praise of military exploits, of
patriotism and devotion to the flag, with the pretense of care for
the wounded, etc.,—will, in one year, demoralize men incomparably
more than thousands of thefts, arsons and murders committed in the
course of centuries by individual men under the influence of
passion.”

Let the women’s literary clubs and circles, many of them devotees of John Ruskin, consider the following lines from his pen:[273]

“But Occult Theft—Theft which hides itself even from itself, and is
legal, respectable, and cowardly,—corrupts the body and soul of man,
and to the last fibre of them. _And the guilty thieves of Europe,
the real sources of all deadly war in it, are the Capitalists_,—that
is to say, those who live by percentages on the labor of others.—The
_Real_ war in Europe—is between these thieves and the workman, _such
as these thieves have made him_. They have kept him poor, ignorant,
and sinful, that they might without his knowledge gather for
themselves the produce of his toil. At last a dim insight into the
fact of this begins to dawn upon him.”

As to thieves: Think of stealing several years of a man’s life when he is in the prime of young manhood, by tearing him from his own friends and loved ones, forcing a rifle into his hands, and compelling him for years to learn the vile science and art of human butchery. Thus are the best years of millions of the choicest young men in Europe stolen—stolen by a class,—a class of prominent kidnappers, industrial and political thieves, “leading citizens” hypocritically wearing a mask called “Patriotism.” Think of many millions thus stolen—stolen from their parents, stolen from their brothers and sisters, stolen from their wives and children.

When the working class think about war and see the vast theft of their lives they will astound the world with their protest.

And the mothers will take part in this protest.

(=14=) Didn’t Christ say in substance: “I came not to send peace, but a sword?”

Yes. At least that is what some of the gentle Christ’s followers are said to have reported that they heard he had been reported to have been heard to say. And it is true, too, that tyrants, hypocritically mumbling _interpolated_ malignance _ascribed_ to Christ, draw the sword to combat the brotherhood of man—as, doubtless, Christ expected they would do. But it is worse than blasphemous nonsense to teach children—young or old—that Christ, the Great Lover of Mankind, was a cheap jingoist, recommended the sword and counseled wholesale butchery of brothers by brothers. The distinguished intellectual prostitutes who argue Christ into the same butchers’ list with Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon and the Tough Rider, are pridelessly down on their faces in the dust cringing before their industrial masters; they are simply betraying Christ again for “thirty pieces” of blood-stained silver called salaries.[274]

Christ, according to the reports, also said: “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” Also: “Ye have heard it hath been said: ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth’; but I say unto you: ‘That ye resist not evil.’” And this: “They that take up the sword, shall by the sword perish.”

And this on authority: “Thou shalt not steal.”

One of the most eminent bishops in the United States went, in the winter of 1907–8, before a Congressional Committee and argued eloquently for a large cash donation from Congress for a certain “boys’ academy” managed by his church. His chief argument was that the little fellows “are carefully trained _in the use of arms_ and would be _ready for use in case of trouble_.”

Many schools thus prepare boys to murder hungry working men who are out on strike for a few pennies a day to feed their families—which is a “case of trouble.” Now imagine Christ training tender boys for human butchery and teasing the brutal government of his time for cash with which to buy spears and swords for the children!

“There is a powerful section of the Christian church which teaches its entire membership that the Church has a right to exempt them—the clergy—from the usual duties of citizenship, and especially from military duty.”[275]

Now, it does not matter what church we may or may not be members of, all the men and all the women of the _working_ class—_in all the churches and out of the churches_—should band together in a _world-wide fellowship and effort_ of the _working_ class to drive war from the world and thus protect the helpless women and children. Remember, mothers, it is not fair that your husbands and sons should be torn from your homes, have cruel rifles thrust into their hands, and be forced into a war where they may be destroyed,—and you be thus widowed and your younger children be left fatherless; and, at the same time, the minister who by prayer and public speech exerted powerful influence to bring about the war,—that _he_ should be exempted from the horrors of the battlefield, the horrors _up close_, where human blood and brains are pounded into the mud by cannon balls and the hoofs of horses. Remember, too, that tens of thousands of ministers have no wives and no children to be desolated. Does it not seem rather that these wifeless, childless men who want war should themselves go to the war instead of having your lovers go?

It should be repeated:

NO MATTER WHAT DENOMINATION THEY BELONG TO, THOSE MEN WHO PRAY FOR WAR OR PRAY FOR VICTORIES IN WAR, OR HELP TRAIN BOYS FOR WAR—THOSE MEN SHOULD GO AND FIGHT THE WAR.

IF A WAR IS GOOD ENOUGH TO PRAY FOR IT IS GOOD ENOUGH TO GO TO. THOSE WHO WANT “GREAT VICTORIES” SHOULD BE FORCED TO GO AFTER THEM, RIGHT UP TO THE FRONT TOO, WHERE CANNON SHELLS BURST STRIKING HUNDREDS WITH DEATH—UP TO THE FRONT, INTO “HELL’S HURRICANES.”

How does this matter seem to you, mother? Won’t you think it over and bring up the subject for friendly and earnest _discussion in your community_? Why not urge all women everywhere to take up this subject—and thus _chain the attention of society to this subject of the degradation and slaughter of the men you love_?

(=15=) In _The Westminster Review_ of July, 1907, is the following suggestion of a topic suitable for discussion in women’s societies and newspapers:

“There is another insidious form of Militarism that is very
widespread and popular. I refer to the Lads’ Brigades [in England]
which are attached to so many churches of different denominations.
Under pretext of giving them physical training, boys are taught the
spirit of submission to another’s will, and to love the trappings of
Militarism.... This coupling together of military training with
religion has been well described by the Rev. Dr. Aked of Liverpool
[now of New York], as ‘preaching heaven and practicing hell.’”

The American mother can not solace herself with the thought that what Dr. Aked referred to was a practice in far-away England and does not much concern her. For this new crucifixion of Jesus and the degradation of the little boys, a strong society exists in the United States. The United Boys’ Brigade is an organization for training the trigger-fingers and the blood-lusts of boys nine years and upward in the basement rooms of Christian churches. “The object of the organization,” as announced in the monthly magazine of the organization, _The American Brigadier_, is “to ... promote reverence and discipline ... to create in them a love for their country ... and while the boys are _thoroughly drilled in military discipline and tactics_, it only serves to make them true Christian _soldiers_.”[276] _The American Brigadier_ announces officially that “there is nothing equal to it in drawing them into the Sabbath School.” Thus the church is to be made like a prize-fighting ring in order to make it look good to the little boys. _The American Brigadier_, of December, 1907, gives away its secret in a lengthy account, headed, “Securing a New Recruit,” as follows:

(One boy says to another): “We go to Bible drill every Saturday
night and have setting-up exercises and Bible drill, and sometimes
we visit other companies. Gee! but our company can show them how to
drill. And we go camping in summer, and we have a bully time....
Bible drill?... Gee! but there are some bully stories in the
Bible.... We read about Samson, the strong man that beat Sandow all
hollow, and King David, the siege of Jericho, and last week we read
about a shepherd boy killing a giant with a sling-shot....”

In _The Brigadier_ of November, 1907, is an article, “What it Means to be a Soldier,” in which is the following:

“There is but one word that covers all, and that is obedience:
obedience to orders and strict discipline. The foundation of all
military organizations rests upon this one basis.”

Precisely: _obedience_.

That is to say, an innocent little fellow who has been drilled thus for several years to forget that _he_ has a brain and a will of _his own_, drilled to obey _all_ orders _instantly_—such a boy at the age of twenty will, of course, _automatically_ and stupidly obey _any_ order—_no matter how vile_—even the order: “Fire! Charge!”—though “the enemy,” the target, be little silk-mill wage-slave girls ten or twelve years old who must toil a whole week for $1.60, and are out on strike for a dime more per week, and while out on strike are _starved_ into being “riotous.”

Armed rowdies—with riot guns—for starving, “rioting” children!

_The American Brigadier_ is primarily a religious magazine, so they say; but it offers a breech-loading Springfield rifle as a premium to the boy who will send in the most subscribers. Imagine Christ making his cause popular with little boys by offering them a weapon with which to murder! _The Brigadier_ wins the boys to Jesus by seductively baiting the savage that still lurks in the “civilized” breast; the magazine gives pictures of armories, battle monuments, gun drills, military parades, camp life, gay military uniforms, little boys with guns, swords, tents, banners, cannon, pictures also of pompous-looking, gilt-braided “big men,” famous professional human butchers. The magazine prints alluring stories of army-and-navy life; and makes a specialty of advertising military arms, military clothing, West Point story books, and so forth.

This organization works in and through the church. It is strong and is gaining ground. It boasts of having branches in many states. In the “City of Churches,” Brooklyn, N. Y., the society is specially strong. Much of the military drill work is done openly in the streets, when the weather permits. Many pastors, “in the name of Jesus,” of course, are energetically—and patriotically—hustling for the movement, some of them proudly (and craftily) having their pictures taken with the training companies. The pastors’ poses in these pictures make the pastors look like valuable assets to the capitalists of their churches, but the poses somehow do not suggest the quiet and gentle Jesus. “Put up thy sword” is out of date with these kerosened procurers political.[277]

There are many thousands of innocent little church boys thus in training. October 5, 1907, twenty-five hundred of these little fellows marched on Fifth Avenue, New York City, carrying guns and swords, four of the betrayed children dragging a light cannon.

The Federal Government at Washington, by a “judicious mingling” of winks and smiles, is heartily encouraging this “Christian soldier” enterprise. Says the Commander-in-Chief, H. B. Pope, in his Report:[278]

“In general ... it can be said that in the quarters where we have
desired to obtain recognition, our influence is greater, and the
respect tendered to us is much more cordial than ever before. Our
own Government has paid special attention in several directions to
the work of this organization ... and our development [is] carefully
followed by those highest in authority, who appreciate the
possibilities of the splendid soldiery which the organization is
making, should the necessity ever arise when this body might be
needed [in a strike for example].... Drill should never be allowed
to take the place of religious exercises. At the same time a
judicious mingling of both constitutes means through which we can
obtain highest results.”

And the following is from a report on a meeting of the organization held in Calvary Methodist Episcopal Church, New York City, May 13, 1907:

“There were also present a number of Army Officers, National Guard
officers and veterans of the Civil War.... The Church was
beautifully decorated with flags.... General Campbell presided and
presented messages of good will and good wishes from the President
of the United States, from Colonel Fred Grant ... and from many
other influential men.”

How interestingly consistent—“Good will and good wishes” from the presidential chairman of the executive committee of the capitalist class in America; that is, the National Government,—“good will and good wishes” to the seducers of small boys to serve as fist and tusk for the ruling class.

The “Boy Scout” movement is the latest manifestation of this christened and kerosened cunning to seduce the innocent small boys for the blood-and-iron embrace of Mars and Mammon. Mothers, take notice. Be warned. _Defend yourselves._

President Roosevelt (international mentor) also furnished bewildering flattery to the boys themselves who show skill in the use of the deadly rifle. The Philadelphia _Public Ledger_, and many other newspapers about the same date, July 16, 1907, printed the following cunning letter written by President Roosevelt to a Brooklyn school boy. The news item with the letter runs thus: