Page:The General Strike (Haywood, ca 1911).pdf/32

30 The Conquest of England. Let us leave it to the bomb-throwers and war lords to boast of their love of peace. We will leave it to the Christians of the churches who have pronounced their blessing on the war, to boast of their humility and their habit of turning the other cheek to the smiter. We will be bold enough to proclaim that we know no peace while men and women of every land are ill-clothed, badly housed and starving in the midst of plenty. What! would they plunge Europe into war because of some broken treaty! Then, my brothers, what will we do when we think of the broken lives around us? Is it war or peace while the babies die in the slums and the rich grow richer on the cheap labor of their mothers.

It is war we proclaim, the last war, the international war in which the workers of all lands shall be united against the invaders—the rich who have seized the land and lived on the labor of the poor.

This is the war that remains yet to be fought. Is it possible? Nay, it is inevitable. It may be delayed but it cannot be prevented. Already and everywhere dimly the worker sees the injustice of his lot and recognizes his folly in laboring so hard, while he enjoys so little of the fruit of his work. Many a man in each army engaged today knows in his heart that the enemy soldiers are men just as he is, no better and no worse. These dim thoughts only lack boldness, and they would make of each such soldier a revolutionist, who would refuse to fire in such a cause.

It is by this growing courage that the industrial workers will presently form their army—not indeed an army like that which their masters possess, where the soldiers blindly obey their officers and care not if their cause is right or wrong. The workers' army organized for a different purpose must be a very different affair.

To understand this we only have to contrast the position in which the bosses and big people find themselves today with that which we, the workers, occupy. When