Page:The General Strike (Haywood, ca 1911).pdf/24

22 might we not organize our own wars for our own purpose, instead of merely fighting in their wars for their purposes—much better still—might we not finally organize an universal peace?

It is because some among the workers have a clear idea of what we need and for what we ought to work that this pamphlet is written with the hope that in the near future the workers of all nations will see their way to fight their own fight against the common enemy, and will no longer kill each other because they are told to do so by their masters.

Patriots and Invasion.

Let us begin with the man in the trench, for though the war does not start with him, it depends on him. If there were no man willing to go into the trench there would be no war—a fact worthy of remembrance for future reference.

Today he is a romantic figure, his life is so unlike the monotony of our existence here at home, and, moreover, does he not wake and sleep in the presence of death?

Instinctively we feel reverence for him who stands in the shadow of death, for strangely enough we have more respect for the barren and useless end of things than for the active, fruitful course of life itself—but more of this hereafter. Let us for a minute consider the life he has lived rather than concern ourselves with the death he is possibly about to die.

Perhaps our man is a volunteer, or a reservist, and till the start of the war was engaged as a miner or railwayman, or it may be working in some factory. Possibly he has recently taken part in some strike, and side by side with his comrades of the workshop he has begun to mildly fight for a little more of the wealth of his native land than has been granted to him by those who own it. Perhaps he has begun to realize that the wealth he and his friends are day by day producing, in the factories