BY GEORGE R. KIRKPATRICK "The cannon's prey has begun to think, and, thinking twice, loses "A nod from a lord is a breakfast-for a fool."-Proverb. "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all First Edition, August, 1910. Eleventh Edition, One Hundred and Fiftieth Thousand, August, 1914. PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR, WEST LA FAYETTE, OHIO BY GEORGE R. KIRKPATRICK. All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages. Please read extraordinary proposition WAR-WHAT FOR? has been translated into the Finnish language. War-What For? Cloth-bound, Library Edition, $1.00; Paper-bound, Popular Edi- By the same author (for distribution in public schools, The Socialists and the Sword. A 4-page leaflet for inexpensive propaganda against war and militarism. Hot-Stuff. A large-size, 4-page, illustrated leaflet for red-hot work against JX1953 STRIKE OR BLEED! K5 This book is dedicated to the victims of the civil war in industry; that is, to my brothers and sisters of the working class, the class who furnish the blood and tears and cripples and corpses in all wars-yet win no victories for their own class. Oh, that they might know their own power against war. Rouse, ye sons and daughters of toil. O, you who are awake, rouse those who are asleep surrounded by Greed, devouring Greed-ever ready to betray Labor and turn loose the dogs of war. In the red glare of the war flames now leaping up from hell and lapping the sky learn and learn well that the heart of Greed is flint. Learn this: After fattening for ten thousand years on the body of Labor the Ruling Class are willing to set civilization on fire if necessary to hold their place on the back of Labor. The awful war now raging in the world, the Hate that now slays Kindness, the blood now spurting from millions of wounds, the tears now scalding the cheeks of the Mother of Europe, the vast insane waste and ruin and agony, the wide-gaping hell now devouring Human Happiness, the imbecile "statesmanship" that now, August, 1914, through crazed greed and insane pride and power-lust, resorts to war and orders the working class to hold aloft their own heads on their own bayonets-all this, yes, all this could have been prevented, quietly, quickly, peacefully and surely prevented by means of national and international General Strike. Federated federations of labor, by general strike, can silence every cannon in the world and melt every battleship that now proudly swims the sea, and recast them all into perfect instruments of Peace, Progress and Prosperity. Federated federations of labor, by general strike, can uncrown every strutting imperial pirate in Europe and push every royal family of parasites on earth from the back of Labor and force them to produce or go naked, force them to produce or starve. Federated federations of labor, by general strike, can drive the gunmen of capitalism out of business and make another Ludlow impossible. Federated federations of labor, by general strike, can still every telegraph instrument, every capitalist printing press and silence every chattering hireling, every scribbling jingo, every morally ulcerated human thing cringing with flattery to the lust of the god of war and the capitalist class. Federated federations of labor, by general strike, at the ballot-box. can unhorse every cunning capitalist lickspittle on the bench and in the legislative halls whose business is to betray labor and whose fees from capitalism, stained with blood and tears, are paid for annual legislative and judicial crucifixions of the sons and daughters of labor. Educated-mark you-educated federated federations of labor, coordinated, coworking educated labor-with its vision clear, knowing the cause and the cure of the supreme wrong in the world-can silence the god of war, can hush the boasting voices of kings, and of the brutal barons of industry-can inaugurate industrial Justice against the stern will of the combined blood-sucking tyrants of the whole world. When war's declared, strike! strike! strike! YE MILLIONS, FOLD YOUR ARMS! Down with war! And down with the capitalist system in whose festering soul the present awful war was conceived and from whose polluted body the class war is steadily spawned. International cheers for International Labor! Organize now, or agonize later. When the war drums boom we must strike or bleed. M591546 CONTENTS PAGE 10 Chapter Three: The Situation-Also the Explanation. Chapter Twelve: Suggestions-and What to Read. 338 |