This law contains twenty-six sections, every one of which should be
studied carefully by the working class of the United States. The Union
labor bodies should urge local newspapers to publish parts of the law
selected by the unions. The more the law is examined the more food for
reflection will be found in it.[192]
The English capitalist government has also recently enacted a new
military law, a species of “Dick” law, called the Territorial Force Act.
This law transforms a “voluntary citizen soldier” into a “regular”
soldier. Says _Justice_:[193]
“Under the new act the Volunteer must ‘enlist’ and serve under
‘military law.’ He will be as much a regular soldier as a Life Guard
or a Lancer, and can be called out to shoot down strikers in labor
disputes as was actually done at Featherstone ... and at Belfast
only a few months ago.”
“The Volunteer,” says the _Morning Post_, “will no longer be a
citizen soldier, he will be a soldier without the blur of
citizenship.... He may be mechanic; many of the best Volunteers are
mechanics. If there is a strike in his works, ordered by the trade
union to which he subscribes, and if the Mayor is afraid of the
Strikers, and wants soldiers to shoot them, in case of need, the
Volunteer, renamed ‘man of the Territorial Force,’ is just the man
he wants; and the bill empowers the Mayor to call him out for the
purpose.”
The “Dick” law was passed by capitalist “friends of labor,” of course,
both Republicans and Democrats; and the “Territorial Force Act” was
similarly passed by capitalist “friends of labor,” both Liberals and
Conservatives. As the unarmed army of the unemployed grows threateningly
larger and the armed army of bribed butchers grows larger—ready to
murder those who starve—it is in order, in “Old England,” in “New
America,” everywhere in order, for the working class to give more
careful attention to the “good men” who are so tearfully and fearfully
“friendly to labor.”
(=12=) Why should the working class give the capitalist governments a
free hand in the murder of the workers? Why not rigorously restrict the
power to call millions of men to arms?
What would happen if the working class should refuse to fight?
“That ‘the government can not put the whole population in prison,
and if it could, it would still be without material for an army, and
without money for its support,’ is an almost irrefutable argument.
We see here [‘in passive resistance, not simply in theory, but in
practice’] at least the beginnings of a sentiment that shall, if
sufficiently developed, make war impossible to an entire
people....”[194]
Five points to be emphasized here:
(1) Require all the school teachers to teach all the children to despise
and hate war.
(2) Arm everybody or nobody.
(3) Train everybody or nobody.
(4) “The right of the people to bear arms shall not be
infringed.”—_Constitution of the United States: Third Amendment._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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