WHERE IN THE MIRE AND MUSH OF BLOOD AND SAND, NOWHERE AMONG THE BULGING AND BEFOULING CARCASSES OF DEAD HORSES AND THE SWELLING CORPSES OF DEAD MEN AND BOYS-NOWHERE COULD BE FOUND THE TORN, BLOATED AND FLY-BLOWN CARCASSES OF BANKERS, BISHOPS, POLITICIANS, "BRAINY CAPITALISTS" AND OTHER ELEGANT AND EMINENT "VERY BEST PEOPLE.”

Well, hardly.

Naturally these proud, cunning and intelligent people were not there, on the firing line.

Listen, oh, listen-you betrayed multitude of toil-damned, war-blasted workers of all nations:

If the masters want blood, let them cut their own throats.

We don't want other people's blood and we refuse to waste our own.

Let those who want "great victories" go to the firing line and get them.

If war is good enough to vote for or pray for, it is good enough to go to-up close where bayonets gleam, swords flash, cannon roar, rifles crash, flesh rips, blood spurts, bones snap, brains are dashed,-up close where men toil, sweat, freeze, starve, kill, groan, scream, pray, laugh, howl, curse, go mad and die,-up close where the flesh and blood of betrayed men and boys are ground and pounded into a red mush of mud by shrieking cannon balls, by the iron-shod hoofs of galloping horses and the steel-bound wheels of rushing gun-trucks. "What is war?"

They say "war is heLL.”

Well, then, let those who want hell, go to hell.

The printing-press is the proper Gatling-gun for use by the working class in self-defense in the war against war and against the outrages thrust into the lives of the working class.

Reader, if you would like to open fire somewhere along the battle line of human progress against war and militarism-and thus help do what must be done, send a postcard request-to-day-for 2 free copies of HotStuff, with which, by lending them a few times, you can bombard the heart and brain of a dozen people with fifty stinging, rousing facts and two powerful pictures. Frankly, I am doing all I can to make it easy for you to do something in the great work to be done. See page 2; also pages 350 and 351.

CHAPTER THREE.

The Situation-Also the Explanation.

The situation, the "lay of the land," must be clearly seen by every member of the working class who wishes to help himself and his fellow workers avoid the vicious sacrifice of the working class by the capitalist class.

In Chapter Ten of this book the unsocial nature of the present form and structure of society is explained more fundamentally; but just here notice the clash of class interests in a war. War is a "good thing" for one class and war is simply hell for the other class.

Who want war?-What for?

Who declare war?-What for?

Who fight the wars?-What for?

Get these questions straight in your mind. First study the Situation; then the Explanation. Now for the Situation. Here it is:

CAPITALISTS "CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY"-"LEADING CITIZENS" :

"We want war.

"Mr. Wage-Earner, it is none of your business why we business men want war. You are impudent even to inquire about such things. Little boys and working men should be seen and not heard. You poor deluded wage-earner, you just keep right on working and sweating till we have you ordered to the front.

"Ha, ha, when we business men want a war we have a war-whether the working people like it or don't like it. We just show them some bright-colored calico and urge them to follow the flag. Then they promptly get 'behind the gun' (also in front of the gun). They like it all right—we have 'em taught to like it.

"They are so easy."

STATESMEN-POLITICIANS "LEADING CITIZENS":

"We declare war.

ness.

"Mr. Wage-Earner, don't you ask any impertinent questions about why we statesmen declare war. That's our busiAttend to your own business-working-just working and sweating-till we statesmen order you to the front and 'sic' you on some other working people somewhere. When we conclude to declare war, we don't consult the working men's wishes. We simply don't have to.

"They are so easy."

WORKING CLASS BROTHERS—OFF FOR THE FRONT—To KILL "THE ENEMY," THEIR WORKING CLASS BROTHERS: "We fight the wars.

"Friend, please don't ask us to explain why we fight the wars. We really do not know why we fight the wars. We modern wage-earners do just as the ancient chattel slaves and serfs did. We meekly do as we are told to do by the 'best people.' The sleek, glossy folks tell us to 'rush to the front' so we meekly march right to the front and blaze away. We furnish the tears, blood, cripples and corpses. We are dead easy-and we don't understand it at all. Of course, we don't like to shoot and bayonet one another. It seems so strange to us that the working men should always be ordered to shoot working men;-but our betters,' our 'social superiors,' the 'men with the brains,' tell us to 'show the stuff that is in us' -so it must be all right. Great business men tell us frequently, 'What this country needs is confidence.' Well, we working people have the confidence-also the blisters and the lemons and the cold lead.

"We are so easy."

THE EXPLANATION.*

(A)-CAPITALISTS WANT WAR—BECAUSE— War sends up prices-of most things.

* On the historical origin of war and of the working class, see Chapter Eleven.

War stimulates business-makes business brisk;-the more blood the more business.

War means more investments and more profits;-the more blood the more bonds, more interest; more land and more rent-more unearned income.

War helps solve the problem of the unemployed. Simply have the surplus workers go into a big field and kill themselves off-butcher one another. It is so simple and easy.

War makes the working people clap their hands and yell so loudly they can't think, and as long as the working people don't think, it is easy to keep the bridles and saddles on them. It is surely a thoughtful scheme;-really, it is successful.

War-to advocate war, sometimes makes newspapers vastly more popular and therefore more profitable; for recent example, the Hearst papers for the Cuban war and the English jingo papers in the Boer war.*

War makes a larger home market for toys; that is, for fifes and drums with which the working people excite one another and get themselves into a butchering mood,-"ready to die for their homes and country," the United States, for example, in which far more than half of all the people have

* "The modern newspaper is a Roman arena, a Spanish bull-fight and an English prize fight rolled into one. The popularization of the power to read has made the press the chief instrument of brutality. For a half penny every man, woman and child can stimulate and feed those lusts of blood and physical cruelty which it is the chief aim of civilization to repress and which in their literal modes of realization have been assigned . . . to soldiers, butchers, sportsmen, and a few other trained professions. The most momentous

...

lesson of the [Boer] war is its revelation of the methods by which a knot of men, financiers and politicians can capture the mind of the nation, arouse its passion and impose a policy."John A. Hobson: The Psychology of Jingoism, pp. 29 and 107.

"The Bourses [the European Wall Streets] of the West have made Cairo and Alexandria hunting-grounds for their speculation. Their class owns or influences half the Press of Europe. It influences, and sometimes makes, half the Governments of Europe."Frederic Harrison: National and Social Problems, p. 208. See also John Bascom: Social Theories, pp. 100-116; and W. J. Ghent: Our Benevolent Feudalism, Chapter 7.