Table of Contents:
- Why War? and other articles from from The Blast, Vol.1, No.2, 1916
- Don’t Become a Murderer!, from The Blast, Vol. 1, No. 7, 1916
- An Inspiring Example [on Karl Liebknecht], from The Blast, Vol. 1, No.16, 1916
Unsigned articles from ‘The Blast’, Vol. I, No. 2, San Francisco, Saturday, January 22, 1916, edited and published by Alexander Berkman
The Cat in the Bag
“We are not going to war just because we make an increase in our military equipment of from twenty-five to fifty per cent. We need an army for its moral influence, if for nothing else. In a nation of 100,000,000 there are liable to be riots, mobs and insurrections, which cannot be regulated except by the presence of an army.”
—Ex-President Taft in World’s Chronicle.
Right you are, Bill. But awful careless to let the cat out of the bag so soon.
It would not be safe if the workers of the country should see through the scheme.
From ancient autocracy to modern plutocracy the ruling families were strong for the trained cut-throat, the soldier.
The soldier protects the ruler from the righteous indignation of the mob.
The multimillionaire families (you will find their names in the World Almanac), ruling America by the grace of the Almighty Dollar, as much as any royal scamp that ever disgraced a throne by divine right, are a unit for a large army.
And who, may we ask, is the mob?
Who are the insurrectionists?
Why, it is the natural crowd, grown restless. Tired of being fleeced, tired of politician’s empty promises, tired of taking in the slack in the belt when hunger gnaws.
It is Labor straightening its back, stretching its mighty grip for the wealth it created.
It is “the starving and dangerous myriads, coming from mines and mills, pale-faced girls and women with hard-eyed children pouring from dens of filth and toil, out to the air of heaven, crying to Labor to rise, to be high as the highest that rules them, to own the Earth in their life-time and hand it down to their children.”
Therefore must our business men, preferably, be trained in the gentle art of killing and absolute obedience; for without obedience there would be neither hangman, nor soldier, neither master nor slave.
“Our Kings are the same as the Kings of old,
But a Man stands up where there crouched a clown;
The Evil shall die when his hand grows bold
And the fist of the People shall strike at the crown.”
Bill Taft, a bum president, but a first-class announcer through the plutocratic megaphone, has shown the real reason for preparedness.
It is a challenge and a warning to Labor.
Comments
British Conscription
The power inherent in Labor has never been demonstrated more forcibly than by the stand of the Railway and Mine men of Great Britain against Conscription.
The mere threat of a general strike in the two industries was sufficient to force the powerful Government of His Majesty, King of Great Britain and Emperor of India, to back down in quick time. The Government lost no time in assuring these organizations that they would be exempt from the provisions of the Conscription Act.
The great governmental secret is that the authorities knew that the threat of the workers was backed by courage and determination to make good.
Question: If Labor in only two industries can thus force a strong government to its knees, is there anything that the solidaric attitude of the unified Labor of a given country could not accomplish?
Or the solidarity of the whole of International Labor?
What a lesson, especially to the timid Labor of our own land!
* * *
The A. F. of L. Convention
The delegates to the recent A. F. of L. Convention, held at San Francisco, seem to have entirely failed to get the spirit of the speeches made by the fraternal delegates from Great Britain—C. G. Ammon and E. Bevan.
“The British workman,” said Ammon in addressing the Convention, “is ready to give his life to the nation as soon as the capitalist and landlord are ready to give up their property to the nation.”
The significance of these words fell, apparently, upon deaf ears. The Convention of the greatest organization of Labor in America failed to take a definite stand toward the most burning questions agitating the country today—questions upon the solution of which will vitally depend the fortunes of Labor in the coming years.
* * *
The Liberty and Peace of the Republic
On the question of Preparedness, President Gompers had this to say to the Convention:
“I am against militarism. We are living in a republic, but a republic does not assure protection and peace. The people who would not defend our institutions of liberty and peace, are not worth having a republic.”
Labor enslaved, brutalized and humiliated. Unemployed tramping the streets, hungry and cold, in the vain search of a job. Workers by the thousand killed, maimed and crippled in mine, mill and factory. Strikers shot down in cold blood, the wives and children of dispossessed miners burned alive in their tents. Labor men filling the prisons and penitentiaries of the country.
Is this the “liberty and peace of the republic” you want to defend, good Mr. Gompers?
* * *
Preparedness
No one has more direct and vital interest in the question of Preparedness than the workers.
They will have to do the preparing.
They will build the factories and munition plants.
They will manufacture the guns, shells, powder and other death-dealing instruments of warfare.
They will do the transporting.
They will produce and supply the food for themselves while they are doing all this preparing.
They will be commanded to go to the front.
They will be the fodder for the cannon.
In this country.
And in all the other countries.
They—some of them—will remain corpses on the field of battle.
They will leave widows and orphans, in sorrow, misery and poverty.
They—some of them—will return home armless and legless, crippled and maimed for life, pitiful objects of charity.
They—most of them—will have to look for a job. Some will find it, many won’t.
They will work in the shops and factories. The unemployed will wait outside to take their places at lower wages.
They will struggle and suffer and fight for a bare living and go out on strike.
They will be shot down by the guns and munitions they themselves had made.
And the Generals will be decorated, and the Masters will celebrate jubilantly, “Our country is saved!”
* * *
Why War?
There are many factors:
Commercial rivalry among the Big Business interests of the different countries;
The spirit of racial and national antagonisms cultivated by Christian “brotherhood” and capitalistic cannibalism;
The murderous superstition that civilization can be advanced by wholesale slaughter;
The village notion that you are better than the other fellow because you happen to be born here;
The fool idea that because people live across an imaginary border line they are essentially different from you, or worse;
The persecution mania of small minds that your village is always in danger from your neighbors;
The savage relic in our hearts that some one must be punished if something goes wrong;
The murderous insanity that national honor can be anything different than your own honor as a man;
The fiction that you have any cause to kill men whom you have never seen or heard of and against whom you have no grievance whatever;
The patriotic aberration that, though it is murder to kill when you are dressed in citizen’s clothes, it is heroic and glorious to slaughter wholesale when you put on a soldier’s uniform.
The idea that you are a free-born man, subject to no one’s orders, and a Christian whom the Lord commanded, “Thou shalt not kill,” but—that it is your sacred, patriotic and Christian duty to kill every one in sight when a man with more gold braid on his uniform than on yours orders you to shoot.
But the most gigantic idiocy of them all: that we, the workers, have anything to gain by slaughtering other workers.
* * *
Quite A Difference
There is much talk about the benefit and profit this country is deriving from the war in Europe.
It’s a confusion in terms.
No benefit can accrue to anyone from the murder of millions of men, the devastation of whole countries, and the multiplication of cripples, widows and orphans.
War benefits no one, but there are profits in it, great profits—for the American munition manufacturers.
Don’t Become a Murderer!
The editorial from ‘The Blast’, Vol. 1, No. 7, San Francisco, Saturday, February 26, 1916, edited and published by Alexander Berkman
YOUNG MAN! You whom the government is trying to entice into the army and navy, beware! Bethink yourself before taking the step. Consider what you are about to do, and the purpose you are to serve. Ask yourself the meaning of military service and of war. Do you want to prepare for murder? Do you want to be trained for wholesale slaughter and, when ordered, to kill your fellow-men, men like yourself, whom you have never even seen and who never did you any harm? Think of it, and if there is a spark of manhood in your heart, you will be filled with horror and disgust at the very thought of military service.
You may be one of the unemployed, without money or friends. But better a hundred times to suffer need and hunger than to don the uniform that stands for cowardly obedience and the murder of your brothers. Consider that it is this military power which you are asked to join, that is upholding the conditions which are keeping you and thousands of others in starvation and misery. If you put on the uniform, you help to strengthen and perpetuate this power and you become the blind tool of the class that robs and kills under the guise of patriotism. It pays them well. They even instill the little school-children with the spirit of boastful jingoism and murderous hatred, because patriotism enlarges profits and increases dividends. Do you want to help them?
It is unworthy of a thinking man to be a blind, obedient tool. But still more unworthy it is to train oneself for the purpose and to subject oneself to humiliation and inhuman treatment in order to learn how to kill and murder.
Young Man! You are a poor man, a child of the poor. It is a terrible and shameful spectacle that in every land the sons of the workingmen constitute the army whose purpose it is to perpetuate the slavery of labor. Can you complain of oppression and exploitation if yon lend yourself to uphold the system of economic robbery, if you take up arms to defend it? As long as there are enough young men who permit themselves to be driven to slaughter like a herd of sheep and who are willing to participate in expeditions of robbery and murder (for that’s what war really is), just so long the possessing classes will continue to rob and to murder, to slaughter by the wholesale and exterminate whole countries. You, the sons of the people, you young workingmen of the land, you alone can put an end to these terrible things and their frightful consequences, by refusing to join the army and navy, by refusing to be used as hangmen, manhunters and watchdogs.
Already ‘‘great’’ generals and other well-paid patriots speak of conscription. They want to introduce forced military service in this country, as has been done by the tyrannies of Europe. It is time to show them that the people see through their infamous schemes. Let the young generation remain away from the recruiting offices and refuse to be used as food for cannon.
The mission of the soldier is no different from that of the professional cutthroat who kills a man to order, except that the soldier receives less pay for his services, though he must be prepared not only for one murder but for wholesale killing. In bitter irony of his position, he is even commanded to sing the praises of the Lord who is supposed to be love and justice personified, and who is said to have commanded, ‘‘Thou shalt not kill.”
The military uniform that seems so gay holds nothing but subjection and humiliation for the common soldier, and only a very meagre existence. He gets the mere crumbs when the glory and the profits of the bloody game of war are distributed. For the glory is all for the generals, the diplomats and statesmen, and the dollars are pocketed by the swindling suppliers of provisions, the cannon makers and manufacturers of arms, the ship builders and steel trust magnates. Young man, can you not understand why all these people with their hired slave drivers and paid newspaper writers are so patriotic? They are at all times ready to sacrifice the lives of poor devils for ‘‘the honor of the country.”‘ It means profit for them, and for that they cheerfully send to slaughter thousands who have been careless enough to fall into the net spread by the gaily decked agents of hell.
Beware of their traps! Too late will be regret when you are already caught. According to statistics about five per cent of the men desert from the United States Army. It is a striking proof that the fine promises of the merry and happy life of military service are nothing but a lie and a snare. Don’t be duped, young man. Your true interest lies with the great body of the toilers, in solidaric effort with the producers to possess themselves of the land and tools of production for the use and benefit of all.
Down with the slaughter of mankind! Long live humanity!
An Inspiring Example
An unsigned article from ‘The Blast’, Vol. 1, No. 16, San Francisco, July 15, 1916, edited and published by Alexander Berkman
THE stand of Carl Liebknecht, of Germany, against the continuance of the war, is highly significant. An act of physical bravery is ennobling. A deed of moral courage is an inspiration. Liebknecht, daring to be true to his ideals in the face of a powerful government and the still more powerful public war-madness, is a great inspiration.
Moreover, back of Liebknecht is an intelligent minority in Germany of which he is merely the emphatic spokesman. In every warring country of Europe there are these intelligent minorities, opposed to the slaughter of their fellow men and courageous enough to act up to their beliefs. If all the revolutionary elements of Europe had the sincerity and courage of Liebknecht, there would have been no war. As it is, in every country there are numerous rebels killed and imprisoned because of their opposition to human slaughter. At this very moment our Comrade Guy A. Aldred, editor of the London Spur, his co-workers Henry Sara, Allan McDougall, and numerous others, are tortured in the “black houses” of English prisons because of their loyalty to their ideals. The new English Military Service Act excuses from service men having conscientious objections to murder. In spite of it, our anti-militarist comrades are forced into the army or navy and, if objecting, subjected to imprisonment, degradation and torture.
But the example of these valiant protestants is compelling the respect of thinking men and women, and rousing the people to the true character of militarism and government.
May the workers of this country not fail to learn the lesson. Militarism and conscription are about to be foisted on the people of the United States. This country is to be turned into an armed camp, like England, Russia and Germany. Only the immediate active opposition of the workers can save us from the fate of Europe. On this most fundamental issue all revolutionists, rebels, radicals of every shade can and must immediately get together, and in co-operation with the more intelligent element of Labor, help to crystallize and organize the scattered anti-militarist sentiment of this country and rear an effective barrier against the powers of tyranny and greed.
See also:
If We Must Fight, Let It Be For The Social Revolution, from Mother Earth (1914)
In Reply to Kropotkin, by Alexander Berkman (1914)
War?, by Alexander Berkman (1929)
The Deadly Parallel, by the Industrial Workers of the World (1917)
The Main Enemy Is At Home!, by Karl Liebknecht (1915)