No doubt Woodrow Wilson has reason to defend these institutions. But what an ideal to hold out to the young generation! And how is a military-drilled and trained people to defend freedom, peace, and happiness? This is what Major General O’Ryan has to say of an efficiently trained generation: “The soldier must be so trained that he becomes a mere automation; he must be so trained that it will destroy his initiative; he must be so trained that he is turned into a machine. The soldier must be forced into the military noose; he must be jacked up; he must be ruled by his superiors with pistol in hand.” This was not said by a Prussian Junker; not by a German barbarian; not by Treitska or Bernhardi, but by an American major general. And he is right. You cannot conduct war with equals; you cannot have militarism with free born man; you must have slaves, automatons, machines, obedient disciplined creatures, who will move, act, shoot, and kill at the command of their superiors. That is preparedness, and nothing else. It has been reported that among the speakers before the Navy League was Samuel Gompers. I have long ceased to believe what is reported in the press. But if that is true, it signalizes the greatest outrage upon labor at the hands of its own leaders. Preparedness is directed not only against the external enemy; it aims much more at the internal enemy. It is directed against that element of labor which has learned not to hope for anything from our institutions, that awakened part of the working people who have realized that the war of the classes underlies all wars among nations, and that if war is justified at all it is the war against economic dependence and political slavery, the two dominant issues involved in the struggle of the classes. Already militarism has been acting its bloody part in every economic conflict, with the approval and support of the state. Where was the protest from Washington when “our men, women and children” were killed in Ludlow? Where was that high-sounding outraged protest contained in the note to Germany? Or is there any difference in killing “our men, women and children” in Ludlow or on the high seas? Yes, indeed. The men, women, and children at Ludlow were working people, belonging to the disinherited of the earth, foreigners who had to be given a taste of the glories of Americanism, while the passengers of the Lusitania represented wealth and station; therein lies the difference. Preparedness, therefore, will only add to the power of the privileged few and help them to subdue, to enslave, and crush labor. Surely Gompers must know that, and if he joins the howl of the military clique he must stand condemned as a traitor to the cause of labor.