“I see a world at peace, adorned with every form of art, with music’s myriad voices thrilled, while lips are rich with words of love and truth; a world in which no exile sighs, no prisoner mourns; a world on which the gibbet’s shadow does not fall; a world where labor reaps its full reward, where work and worth go hand in hand, where the poor girl, trying to win bread with a needle—the needle that has been called ‘the asp for the breast of the poor,’—is not driven to the desperate choice of crime or death, of suicide or shame. “I see a world without the beggar’s outstretched palm, the miser’s heartless, stony stare, the piteous wail of want, the livid lips of lies, the cruel eyes of scorn. “I see a race without disease of flesh or brain—shapely and fair, married harmony of form and function, and, as I look, life lengthens, joy deepens, love canopies the earth; and over all in the great dome, shines the eternal star of human hope.” These golden words, these words of immortal beauty, are, “like love, wine for the heart and brain.” They fire the soul, especially the mother’s soul, with a glorious joy, a splendid vision of unstained, untroubled pleasure: Mankind at Peace—Socialized. The children safe. The future vast and beautiful and kind for her and for those that call her Mother. But again and yet again the cannon’s roar will banish the vision. The future holds agony for the mother, especially for the humble mother in the working class. Her husband and her older sons will go to war. They will even thoughtlessly sink to the level of joining the local militia for local war—for strike service. The men she loves have been poisoned—poisoned with the base teaching that brutality is bravery, that the drawn sword marks the patriot. They are ready, ready now, at the word of command from a cheap commander to murder the men of their own class, and break the hearts and mock the tears of the wage-slave mothers of the world. These mothers must defend themselves—for the present. These mothers can defend themselves only through their younger sons and daughters—by teaching them a class loyalty which is a new patriotism that will close the local armory, shame the assassin back to the factory, to the farm, to the mine, and silence all the cannon on all the earth. ----- Footnote 241: See footnote on page 13; and also introductory paragraph, Chapter Seven, preceding Section 1. Footnote 242: See Index: “Another War.” Footnote 243: See Chapter Seven, Section 30. Footnote 244: See Index: “Napoleon.” Footnote 245: _The Moral Damage of War_, pp. 97–99. Footnote 246: See _The Downfall_, passim, Part II., also p. 446. This powerful story (published by the Macmillan Company, New York) is here again heartily commended to all readers of _War—What For?_ Again the author thanks the publishers for reprint privileges. Footnote 247: