Do Not Join the Army!

Maoriland Worker, Volume 3, Issue 60, 3 May 1912, Page 5

Do Not Join the Army!

Do you want to surrender your personal liberties, to forego tho pleasures of civilian life, to have your freedom arbitrarily restricted? Nol Then do not join tho army. Do you want to lose your self-respect, to throw your manhood into tho gutter, to become a mr-china responsive to another's will, to belong to a murderous institution that insists upon unquestioiZ.v.g obedience? Nol' Then do not join the army. Do you want to cringe before men who may be no better than yourself, to submit without protest to snobbery and graft, to be subjected to the insults and extortions of a clique of petty officers,, to bo denied tho rights of citizenship, to expose yourself to all the moral rottenness of barrack life, to run tho risk of contracting loathsome diseases? Nol Tncn do not join the army. Do you want to become a professional murderer, to kill men with whom you have no quarrel, to make cripples and widows and orphans of those who 'ha-vo done you no harm, to turn yourself irito a fioiid whose chief businoßS it is to spread misery and death at tho behest of a master-class ? No I Then do not join the army. Do you want to dio of fevor in dia-

By WILLIAM R. SHIER.

tant lands, to sacrifice your lifo upon the altar of trade, to become tho dupe of self-seeking capitalists, to help club foreign peoples into buying tho surplus products of American manufacturers, to engage in bloody wars that financiers may lloat huge government loans, to endure indescribable hardships for tho enrichment of nioney-londcrs, army contractors and unscrupulous politicians? No! Then do not join the army. Do you want to snoot hogest working people who are striking for better conditions, to help reactionary governments keep the oppressed and disinherited masses in subjection, to stand in the way of social progress and human uplift? Nol Then do not join the army. Do you want to see men's brains spattered upon tho ground, their heads shot off by cannon balls, their arms and legs crushed to pulp, their bellies ripped open by vicious bayonets, their bodies writhing in terrible agony, their lives blighted by the brutalities of war? No I Then do not join th© army. Armies are made up of working-peo-ple. If working-people should refuse to enlist there would bo no armies. If there were no armies thore would be no wars. So stay away from the recruiting of R "eß and wgo others to do the same.