Let it be remembered that in the gentle heart of a humble mother whose loving sons have been butchered in battle, it is always winter. The cheap rhetoric and hypocritical compliments of the coarse-grained political orator, the honeyed words of any man in any profession—sacred or secular—craftily exempted from the war which slew her loved ones, these can not charm the wintry desolation of her life into rare June weather. Nor can the wound in her mother heart be healed with a stingy quarterly allowance of filthy money called a pension. When her loved ones were slaughtered her joys were slain. This woman must indeed protect herself; and she can protect herself, somewhat,—if she will. She can do this: She can teach her child to hate—to hate war.[243] (=2=) Mother, is your five-year-old son strong, healthy and handsome? Yes? Well, that is fine. But think of him at the age of twenty in slaughtering clothes, being transformed into a swaggering armed bully. Mother, if he should be tricked into the army and butchered and his torn corpse should be brought home to you, you would then know what _other_ mothers feel when their boys, whom your son butchers, are brought home to them. Then, perhaps, war would seem quite different—far less “great” and “glorious” to you. You see, mother, in a war _some_ mothers’ boys must be butchered. Perhaps a false patriotism has been taught to you—just as a false patriotism is taught your sons. Both the mother and her sons are confused. To get the working class boy ready for war the capitalist must first confuse and trick the mother. Kings, emperors, presidents, tsars, and capitalists of all lands are lovingly interested in the problem of “race suicide,” the problem of small families,—interested in the “food-for-powder” crop, the “bullet-stopper” crop,—EAGER THAT EVERY WORKING CLASS MOTHER SHOULD BECOME A BREEDER. After Napoleon Bonaparte had had multitudes of the men and boys of France butchered, making it difficult to find soldiers, he impatiently exclaimed, “What France needs is mothers!” What he meant was that France needed more human breeders flattered into bearing and rearing more butchers for Napoleon. Of course Napoleon was shrewd enough to confuse the humble mothers with plenty of cheap flattery concerning their “patriotism.”[244] Capitalists today want larger working class families for more soldiers, also for a larger army of unemployed—in order that the capitalists may, in the industrial civil war, more tyrannically dictate the wage terms to the workers and also more easily secure substitutes in case of a war. And to this end the capitalists are willing to pay the price; that is, willing to pay for the social chloroform, for the false teachings, necessary to beget a slave’s blind enthusiasm for the master that betrays him—called patriotism.