From ‘Freedom: Anarchist Fortnightly’, May 3, 1947, London, UK
A conscripted, servile state is a potential danger, for it makes for war and the totalitarian state. Mass inertia follows until war is declared — a war that might have been prevented if efforts for nylons and football pools had been diverted to vigorous protests against preparations for war and the wasteful treadmill of industrial and military conscription. The last war, and all wars, were paid for by labour. Why should labour continue paying what it does not owe? It is the future war we are paying for now, mortgaging future labour. The seemingly motionless avalanche does fall, and the unexpected avalanche of unheeded wrongs is heading for the final plunge that no government can withstand.
Military preparatory education of the young is sapping initiative, and newspapers have greater power than members of parliament or workers when the stampede of war is ready to supersede industrial unrest. Then, money speaks.
In syndicalism, plans will be made public, and not as now obtains, where each party strives to oppose the other party and ignores the benefits or otherwise of a bill. Have you realized that a strike — of any worker — when the next war comes, may be called mutiny, and treated as such? Here is a specimen of preparatory military training: “Train them to think what are the correctives.” . . . “Throughout the course the instructors impress upon the pupils the need to build up so healthy a mental attitude that the army can stand firm against any disintegration of civilian beliefs”! (News Chronicle, 18/8/43).
So long as we have men and women who seek adventure through war, so long shall we have misadventure; all they seek, and seldom find, could be obtained — and much more — without war.
War Thrives On Lies
The powers that say they are out to prevent war, and at the same time advertise and give the plums of the best paid jobs to the admiralty and the army, lie. War thrives on lies. A man said on the wireless that he had never killed a man before he went into the army. No, it took a government to force him to commit murder. We die by strife; we can only live by uniting, giving and receiving mutual help, organized from the workshops of the world.
Bombs, like curses, come back to roost. Let the sinless man cast the first bomb and none will be thrown. Beware the spurious cry “Don’t let the army down”; it really means, send more men out to be killed, and thus keep the war going. Now is the time to protest against war and conscription — before the international hell starts.
Conscription is the negation of defence, for armed peace presupposes war and is offensive. Hear Combined Ops: “This war taught this country two fundamental lessons though neither of them was new. The first is that in any future conflict we cannot afford to rely on our island fortress in the old sense of the word; the second is that attack is the best form of defence.” Who is the enemy? Combined Ops are their own and our enemies.
Of America one of the most powerful members, according to the News Chronicle (25/5/46), says: “Germ spray may be secret weapon”. This follows the headline, “a method of spreading disease may be the new weapon”.
“Far more deadly than the atomic bomb which is in U.S., possession of scientific factors which place us in an enviable position . . . The navy has developed to a point where it can now be used a weapon that can wipe out all forms of, life in a large city . . . the germs are highly contagious.” (Italics mine.) Surely what has been done in Germany and Japan is enough to satiate the most rapacious greed for trade, world domination and revenge.
We must act now by repudiating and refusing military entanglements. Submission is moral death, neutrality nonexistent. You will not be alone, and you will have a divine flame within you that will warn you and atone for all else. You have shown bravery in abundance; transfer it — or beware of a world stampeding, made mad by military training.
Be Fearless Now
Fear will not be the best guide to better things. Be fearless now while it is possible to wage war against war and conscription. Think why they want more babies, yet are unable to feed the present generation. Why they brought those Germans over, here — “Nine German rocket experts, men who formerly worked on research on German rockets which hit London, arrived in England yesterday. They are to work on guided projectiles. More German scientists and technicians will go to Westcott later and it is expected that others will join the 26 already at R.A.F. [Royal Air Force] experimental establishment at Farnborough. At present 40 Top Projectile scientists are working in this country.” (News Chronicle, 8/11/46.)
The above is what they plan openly, so what must be the horrors planned behind closed doors! Germans are to work in England at war work for which they would suffer the death penalty in Germany.
News Chronicle for 17/7/45 reported “Press banned from area of conference . . . where the Big Three are to meet to decide the destinies of Europe for years to come.” And 6/2/47: “UNO’s [United Nations Organization] Military, Staff Committee . . . which operates in the highest secrecy.” Force, not justice has placed us in these self-elected (?) men’s hands. The post of Secretary General has a salary of £9,000.
If at this moment all the gold and notes of exchange were destroyed we should be no worse off; but if commodities were destroyed it would spell death. Money alone makes profits possible, money is a means of exploitation and makes nothing but trouble. “My banker will only lend me a loan if I can prove I don’t need it! ” says Hector in the News Chronicle . . . But if you need a loan, be sure you won’t get it.
War Cannot Be Waged Without Workers
“French to train for Atomic Warfare.” But wake up and cheer up, tired workers! You are the millions and war cannot be waged without you even if more and more power is being relegated to fewer and fewer men. Men and women who callously say they have had the time of their lives in wartime could have had it and much more without war’s ghastly tragedies.
One Sunday morning the B.B.C. perpetrated the biggest piece of sarcasm ever (intended or otherwise); when reporting that Truman said peace was practically certain, the item following described at length America’s wonderful new bomb for war!
In the War Crime Trial, the B.B.C. on the 1st October, 1946, declared: “A disgrace to the honourable profession of arms.” If sticking a bayonet into a man’s stomach and twisting it is honourable, it is indeed “Honour in dishonour deeply rooted”. If this world state of dope and gory ends in Adam and Eve’s conditions, be sure to begin without stock exchanges and governments; and have a brotherly co-op founded on a free exchange of mutual interests. There are many books that will explain how it may be done — Alexander Berkman’s A.B.C. of Anarchism and others — and men and women anxious and waiting to make these commonsense plans into realities.
So long as we keep standing armies we shall be poor — especially now, since, in order to keep the army docile, it is promised expensive amenities. But the conscript has nothing to give us in return, his business is to destroy. When U.N.O. [United Nations Organization] gets military power organized, instead of one boss for each surviving country, there will be a world combine against any aspirations of the workers.
Also
The Conscripts Strike, by Louise Michel (1881)
Which Makes the Greater Savage, the Blanket or the Uniform?, by Emily G. Taylor (1902)
To the Conscripts, from l’anarchie (1906)
As to Militarism, by Emma Goldman (1908)
The Workers and War, by Lucy Parsons (1912)
Patriotism A Bloody Monster, by Caroline Nelson (1912)
Down with Wars!, by Isolina Bórquez (1914)
The Revolutionist and War, by Anna Strunsky (1915)
Echoes of War, by Estella Arteaga (1916)
Armed / The Conscious Workers, by Juanita Arteaga (1916)
Skirmishes, by Juanita Arteaga (1916)
Prison Impressions, by Clara Gilbert Cole (1918)
Armed Peace, from Revista Liberal (1921)
What is Communist Anarchism (A.B.C. of Anarchism), by Alexander Berkman (1929)
Manifesto of the Anarchist Federation of Britain (1939)
The Yankee Peril, by Marie Louise Berneri (1943)
Manifesto of the Anarchist Federation on War (1943)
So I Started Fighting For My People, by John Waubanascum Jr. (1976)
How We See It, by the Vancouver Five (1983)
Louise Olivereau and the Seattle Radical Community (1917-1923), by Sarah Ellen Sharbach (1986)
Decolonising Feminism, by Susanna Ounei-Small (1995)
Louise Olivereau – Celebrate People’s History Poster, by Aprille (2005)
Cole, Clara Gilbert, 1868-1956, by Nick Heath (2012)
US Navy nurse, jailed for protest, revisits Việt Nam, from Việt Nam News (2018)
If We Must Fight, Let’s Fight for the Most Glorious Nation, Insubordination