And when on strike for bread and for the betterment of the women and the little children, blindly on horseback we ride down and club one another, blindly we bayonet one another at the factory, blindly we crush one another at the mines, blindly with Gatling guns we sweep the streets and hills with storms of lead and steel, and in a thousand ways blindly our class destroy our class in the bitter and stupid civil war in capitalist industry—cheaply we lend and rent ourselves for our own ruin. Ah, my friend, there is a political earthquake coming which will swallow up the political prostitutes and the industrial parasites and Caesars of society—when our class open wide their eyes and see the great red crime—not only on the battlefield, but around the factory and before the miner’s cabin door. Not blindly but proudly and defiantly the workers will then—but not till then-defend THEMSELVES. This book is not a parasite’s platitudes, nor a hypocrite’s pretenses in a Fakir’s Parliament; this book is not a tearful lament about war nor a long-winded essay on militarism, nor a coward’s whine for peace. This book is not intended to be harsh; it is frankly intended to be a short, shrill call: “Danger!” and also a guide-board for the producer’s road to power. Too long, too madly and sadly, too gullibly the flimflammed working class have broken their own hearts and wet the earth with their own blood and tears; too meekly and weakly the toilers sweat themselves into stupidity and then—like cheated children—gullibly hand over the choicest culture, clothing, bread, wine and shelter to the robbers and rulers who despise them and betray them. What for? They have the habit. O, my brothers of the working class, no matter what language you speak, no matter what God you worship, no matter how bitterly you would curse those who would teach you and rouse you—wherever you are, in the barracks or in the mines, in the armories or in the mills, in the trenches at the front or in the furrows on the farm—let us clasp hands—_as a class_. Let us talk over this matter. And in talking it over among ourselves let us be frank. We must be very frank. And let us be friends. Even as I write this, mighty fleets of gun-laden ships of steel are steaming up and down the seas provoking, insulting, challenging war; and in several parts of the world thousands of our working class brothers are slaughtering one another in wars _they_ did not declare, and they do so simply because they do not understand one another; and they do not understand one another because THEY HAVE NEVER TALKED THIS MATTER OVER AMONG THEMSELVES in friendly frankness—like brothers, without flattery and without bitterness toward one another.