George R. Kirkpatrick

“ The future holds agony for the mother, especially for the humble mother in the working class. Her husband and her older sons will go to war. They will even thoughtlessly sink to the level of joining the local militia for local war—for strike service. The men she loves have been poisoned—poisoned with the base teaching that brutality is bravery, that the drawn sword marks the patriot. They are ready, ready now, at the word of command from a cheap commander to murder the men of their own class, and break the hearts and mock the tears of the wage-slave mothers of the world. ”

“ This sum—all this cash cost—is, in its last analysis, slyly subtracted from the lives of the producing class, the working class—sucked from the veins of the humble multitude of toilers, and the workers are so meek and weak and bloodless and stunned and stunted—so constantly in a dull, prideless stupor—that they are unable to stand erect in holy indignation, seize the powers of government and sweep this hell’s nightmare from the world.
War devours the welfare of the workers.
The capitalist class dare not place all the facts frankly before the working class. ”

“ The workers, having no part in the ownership of the means of production and being thus divorced from a commanding relation to the economic foundations of society, craftily fooled with false teaching of “capital-and-labor-harmony-of-interests,” sore and humble with disappointment, whipped with the lash of hunger, stung to desperation, confused and traduced by bribed pets, spies and traitors,—the workers angrily, blindly, split up into jealous groups, shamefully turn against one another, fight one another, under-bid one another, “scab” on one another, desert one another,—defeat one another. ”

“ From the capitalist’s point of view another war will, indeed, presently be necessary; another war becomes more and more imperatively necessary—and for a new and increasing reason.
The much plundered working people are beginning to think. Thought is revolutionary. A thought is a file, a keen saw, with which a soul may escape from the gloomy dungeon of prejudice. Thought is intellectual nitroglycerine for blasting the flinty mountains of prejudice. Thought utterly destroys mental rubbish. Thought kills what ought to die. Thinking slaves promptly become defiant and dare to do for freedom. ”

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

“ Stand by your own class. Refuse. Bankers refuse. Manufacturers refuse. All the shrewd “prominent people” refuse. You also should refuse to let your flesh rot and your bones bleach at the bottom of the ocean in the interest of these international leeches.
Lift up your meek faces, you tricked toilers of the world. The war trenches are yawning for your lives—a gulf in which the hopes, the happiness, the blood and the tears of your class will be swallowed. ”

“ By electing to political power any political party standing for any form of the capitalist class-labor system the working class give the capitalist class complete control not only of all the political institutions, but also of all other institutions useable by a class in self-defense; because the control of political institutions carries with it the legal right to control all other institutions. In this political confusion, division and eclipse, the working class are as helpless as sheep, and, like sheep, are shorn by their political and industrial shepherds. ”

“ Are the working class proud and keen enough to use the freedom they have, to secure the freedom they need most—namely, freedom in industry, freedom in getting a living in a socialized society, a society with equality of opportunity for all, all of us with our feet firmly planted on the collectively owned industrial foundations of society, a society of rational Mutualism, with Justice, Plenty and Peace? ”

“ So, whenever the capitalists want war and the politicians declare war, the flimflammed, bamboozled working man straps on a knapsack, shoulders a rifle (or takes a policeman’s club) , kisses his wife and children good-bye, and marches away to fight a war he didn’t want, a war he didn’t declare, a war that belittles and wrongs him by injuring his class,—and marches away to butcher other working men whom he doesn’t know and against whom he has no quarrel. He yells, kills, and slaughters—because—simply because—because—some crafty crooks, called “prominent people,” tell him to do so. ”

“ I must fight like a tiger, be as cruel as a shark, bear burdens like a mule and eat stale food like a half-starved wolf; for fifteen or twenty dollars a month I must turn against my own working class and thus make an ass and a cat’s-paw of myself; and after the war I should be socially despised and snubbed as a sucker and a cur by the same distinguished “leading citizens” who wheedled me to war and afterward gave me the horse-laugh;—and thus I should feel like a monkey and look like a plucked goose in January. ”

“ This is the pagan text of literary and oratorical hirelings before a nation of Christians and peaceful Jews; this is the loveless refrain bellowed before blushing school girls; this is the Alexandrian slogan before excitable, impressible boys; this is the gore-stained banner to be gallantly flaunted on holidays before the tear-wet eyes of the sad old widows and the hobbling cripples of the Civil War; this is the race-cursing call to ninety millions of people sick of stupidly disputing with sword and cannon, longing to embrace one another in caressing fraternalism. ”

“ 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. ”