Page:Scott Nearing - The Germs of War (1916).djvu/24

 formerly in partnership with one of the great munitions firms, and that one of these firms employs an Ex-Army Official and Ex-Member of Congress to attend to its business in Washington. So, page after page, the sickening recital continues.

The speech, "The Navy League Unmasked," shows that these same war makers, or their representatives, run up and down the land and, in the name of patriotism, cry "Prepare," well knowing that each dollar spent for preparedness is money in their pockets. There is something sinister for the future of the republic in this "pocket-patriotism" or "profits patriotism" because, in the last analysis, it is no patriotism at all.

A group of Mexican bandits recently made a raid on a town in the United States, killed United States citizens and United States soldiers—killed them with rifles and bullets made in the United States. If war is declared tomorrow between Mexico and the United States, these profit-patriots would sell guns and munitions to the Mexicans as readily as they shipped rotten meat to the American soldiers during the Spanish-American War. Their country is capital. Their religion is profit. Their God is gold. Yet they cry patriotism to a pathetically ignorant and patient citizenship which is beginning to wonder whether there is not a need for preparedness after all.

The munition makers are not the only business men who benefit by war. The steel business, the oil business, the coal business, the shoe business, the woolen business, the meat business, the copper business and general business pick up in war times. These businesses are not averse to war. Some of the men engaged in them have been frank enough to wish publicly that the war would last at least three years, because, "It would mean so much to American business!" War for the sake of dividends! Prosperity, built on murder and rapine!

The munition makers are not the source of war.

This is not the end, however. England and Germany did not drop into a war stride because the muni-