What is it about? Be careful, now. Don’t answer too quickly. Don’t say “the flag” has been insulted. Don’t say “the national honor” has been impugned. These are old reasons, but they may not be true reasons. We Socialists are willing to stake everything on the statement that they are not true reasons. If we are right, we are worth listening to. War is hell. During the 132 years that we have been a nation, we have had war hell at average intervals of 22 years. We are already preparing for our next war. We are arming to the teeth. It may not last so long as the Civil War, but it will be bloodier. We have all of the most improved machinery for making it bloodier. On the sea we are armed as Farragut never was armed. Any of our dreadnoughts could sink all of the ships, for which and against which, Farragut ever fought. And, on land, we are armed as Grant never was armed. Grant drummed out his victories with muzzle-loading rifles. No rifle could be fired rapidly. No bullet could kill more than one man, nor any man unless that man were near. But the modern rifle can be fired 25 times a minute, and it will kill at four miles. More than that, a single bullet from a modern rifle will kill every man in its path. It will shoot through 60 inches of pine. It will string men like a needle stringing beads. It will literally make a sieve of a soldier. Seventy bullet holes and more were found in the body of many a man who fell on the plains of Manchuria. Toward such a war—or worse—we are speeding. Indeed, it will be hell. But it will not be hell for the men who make it. It will be hell for the men who fight it. The men who make it will stay at home. Their blood will drench no battlefield. Their bones will lie in the mire with no sunken ship. But the blood of the workers will drench every battlefield, and their skeletons will march with the tides on the floor of the sea. Good Christian gentlemen who abhor war hold out no hope that war will soon cease. Good Christian gentlemen who abhor war pretend not to know why, in a world that is weary of war, war still persists. Or, if they do pretend to know, they account for the persistence of war by slandering the human race. They say the race is bad. Its brain is full of greed. Its heart is full of murder. The mind of the race is not, nor ever has been filled with the greed that kills. The heart of the race is not, nor ever has been, filled with the black blood of murder. It is only a few whose minds and hearts have been thus poisoned by greed for gain or lust for power. Probably we should all have been thus poisoned if we had been similarly circumstanced—if we had been great capitalists. But most of us, lacking the capitalist’s instinct for profits, never chanced to see the easy loot and the waiting dagger lying side by side. The gentlemen who have seen them have made our wars. And the gentlemen who do see them are making our wars to-day and preparing others for the future.