Snapshots from "War-What For?"

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 41, 15 December 1911, Page 4

Snapshots from "WarWhat For?"

BE CLASS LOYAL. The workers are meek and modest and humble and docile, and are always gullibly ready to obediently do whatever their crafty political and industrial masters order them to do. Whenever the capitalists want war and the politicians declare war, the flimflammed, bamboozled working man straps on a knapsack, shoulders a rifle (or takes a policeman's club), kisses his wife and children good-bye, and marches away to fight a war he didn't want, a war he didn't declare, a war that belittles and wrongs him by injuring his class—and marches away to butcher other working men whom he doesn't know and against whom he has no quarrel. He yells, kills, and slaughters—because—simply because— because* some crafty crooks; called "prominent people" tell him to do so. lie screams and gets slain, ho yells and gets slaughtered—simply because he does not understand the sly, devilish trick that is thus being played upon him and his class. Young working men are shrewdly flattered into joining the militia and the army in order to help the- capitalist class force the working-class to keep still and starve; or accept cheap food, cheap, clothing, cheap shelter and cheap furniture as all their share for all their work for all their lives.

, Suppose the working man lias a son in.-the local militia .company,'"and suppose Mr. Workingman goes out on strike for two or' three more nickels per day with which to buy better food .for the young militiaman's own mother uid his little brothers and sisters. This young man in the militia company can be ordered to shoot or bayonet hs own father who, on strike, ia struggling for a few cents \ more with. Wihich to. buy. better food for the humtie mother and.•hungry":.little, brothers and sisters—if tlie father on strike doesn't keep quiet and remain dociie, while the local industrial 'Rasters* starve him back to his old job at hie old wages. The capitalist holds the whip of hunger over the working-class father's back, and the working-class =soai holds a rifle at his own father's breast. The father must surrender. Thus the 3 r ouii|g militiaman wrongs hia nvii class j outrages his own .father, helps humble his own little brothers and sisters, and gpits in Ilia own mother's face. " ,„. The war is the class war. The militiaman and policeman are local soldiers ready for orders to shobb their neighbours, friends and relatives in the struggle for existence. In the industrial civil war the capitalist class starve, seduce and bribe the workingto fight both sides of the battles. T3ie rulers rule. They think — and win by thinking. Think it over, young man. Be loyal to your own father and mother, and your own brothers and sisters/, and your own class.- Be class loyal.