Page:The General Strike (Haywood, ca 1911).pdf/36

34 in ignorance as to the friendships and enmities of the various governments. By this plan our government may be secretly pledged by our politicians to fight, say, with France against Germany without our knowing anything about it, and without parliament itself knowing.

When we are called upon to fight wars so arranged, are we going to reply by saying: "Well, since you have already picked the quarrel we will fight?" Is not such an answer absolutely asking the ministers to continue their secret diplomacy?

What does it really imply? It means: if you were to ask us before things were settled we might disagree with you, but since you settle the matter first we will not dispute it, and will fight for you. And so, taught by the crowd, the politicians continue to settle matters first, and to manufacture the causes of war in private, knowing that the people will be willing to fight when the enemy is on the march. What is the alternative it may still be asked. How can we do other than defeat the Germans by helping our government, even though we may know that the latter is composed of the politicians who, tomorrow will send the army to shoot us?

Indeed the only other course that we can take is that which I have tried to indicate, and that is to join the army of workers, who would oppose in every possible way all invaders as much those who now possess our country as those who are quarreling for it. Each government wants it in order that the rich men of its country may get richer by the labor of the worker.

It is, as I have insisted throughout, the business of the workers to resist the invader, but it is no concern of his to help one invader against the other.

Indeed there is an old saying that when thieves fall out honest men come by their own. A few workers seemed to understand this when the war started, including those who were responsible for supplying coal to our battleships. They refused to undertake the extra work entailed by the war. But alas! Where small signs of