From ‘Mother Earth: Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature’, May 1914, New York City, published by Emma Goldman, edited by Alexander Berkman
There are a hundred reasons why American workingmen and all men and women of liberal thought should oppose the war that the government of the United States has started against Mexico. The first and chief of these reasons is that the quarrel which led to the war was an outgrowth of “patriotic” sentiment. We are asked to throw away our lives and the lives of countless numbers of our fellow human beings, Americans and Mexicans, because of a silly punctilio, because “a person calling himself the provisional President of Mexico” refused to salute the American flag in just the way demanded by an American Rear-Admiral.
We have no real quarrel with Mexico. We are in sympathy equally with the rebellious elements in Mexico and in the United States. It is clear that a war at this time, incited by jingoes and yellow journalists and capitalists, will do incalculable harm because it will tend to stem the force of the revolution now going on in Mexico, and because it will distract public attention from conditions in Colorado and from all the social injustices that cry out for redress.
When Porfirio Diaz, one of the most brutal despots that ever lived, was master of Mexico and succeeded in imprisoning not only the more intelligent of his own subjects, but even Americans (like Carlo de Fornaro), who protested against his tyrannies, the United States government worked hand in hand with him.
When appeals in behalf of Mexican liberalism were made to ex- President Roosevelt, he turned a deaf ear. When Mother Jones visited ex-President Taft to plead for the lives of Mexican leaders held in American jails, he did nothing.
When the case of Magon, Villareal and Figueroa (all imprisoned in Los Angeles for the “crime” of trying to free their country) was brought to the attention of President Wilson, he was equally inactive.
But when striking workingmen were shot down in cold blood in Camanea [correction: Cananea] a few years ago, and the corpses of strike leaders were left hanging on trees as object lessons, the brotherhood of capitalists on both sides of the border was unmistakably manifested.
Everyone knows that the war with Mexico into which this country has been plunged is directly the result of contending capitalistic interests in Mexican oil. Every one knows that Diaz practically sold his country into the bondage of rapacious capitalists. The counter-movement of the exploited peons and laborers against their oppressors is the one redeeming element in the situation.
For fifty years a struggle has been going forward to win Mexico for the workers. Mexico has existed for the church, the army, the aristocracy; for Spain, the United States; for dictators and big business — for every one except for the workers.
Gutierrez de Lara, in his new book, “The Mexican People: Their Struggle for Freedom,” throws light on the situation. As a result of Diaz’s vast land despoliations, he tells us, the valley of Papantla, which once supported a population of 20,000 independent farmers, to day belongs to one rich family. The entire State of Chihuahua, it seems, belongs to three families, headed by a man who is reputed to be the largest single cattle owner in the world. In the State of Morelos, from which have sprung Zapata and his followers, four men, one of them the son-in-law of Diaz, own every inch of agricultural land, and 200,000 evicted farmers, now landless peons, till the soil for them at an average wage of 12 & 1/2 cents a day. De Lara sums up the program of the revolutionists in four words — the democratization of land.
In the struggle of the Mexican peons to recover their stolen lands is a cause that is worthy of any man’s loyal support. But the war to sustain Huerta and the war to sustain the American invasion of Mexico are equally fruitless and reactionary.
When Haywood at a recent meeting in New York propounded the general strike as labor’s most effective protest against a war inspired by capitalistic interests, he was scoffed at not only by the conservative press, but by a great number of workingmen’s organizations. It may be that the moment for the successful realization of such a proposal is not yet. Yet Haywood’s suggestion had the ring of true leadership, and aroused nation-wide discussion and reflection. The plan that is “visionary” today becomes practical tomorrow. We have not heard the last of the general strike as an anti-militarist weapon.
But a workingman or a liberal does not need to wait for a general strike to make effective his protest against war. His duty is quite clear. As yet, fortunately, we are not plagued in this country by the systems of conscription and of enforced military service that have been established in many European countries. We do not need, like Herve and his comrades, to go to prison, nor, as in the case of Masetti, to shoot our officers. All we need to do is to refuse to join the army.
Whether violently or peacefully, whether collectively or individually, let us fight militarism and armies supported by capitalist government to do capitalist work. Let us realize more and more clearly that the war worth fighting is not between countries, but between ideals of life. Let us understand that the only war really worth our energies and our life’s blood is the war against war — the war, that is to say, against the armed coercion which has kept the workers down and has drenched the world with the blood of innocent victims.
Also
War and the Workers, by the Industrial Workers of the World (1911)
Anti-War Manifesto, by the Anarchist International (1915)
Concerning Atrocities, by James Peter Warbasse (1915)
The Revolutionist and War, by Anna Strunsky (1915)
War and the Worker, by W. S. Van Valkenburgh (1915)
The War Hysteria and Our Protest, by Leonard D. Abbott (1917)