For many months, while the blood of Japanese and Russian working class men was gushing from a million wounds, while the humble wives and children of these “common” men were wild with grief—all the while “our noble Christian President,” _like all other Christian rulers_, was as silent as a fish; but when principal and interest of American parasites got in danger, our “noble Christian President” promptly became nobly noisy and craftily pious and peaceful. And that is a fair sample of a “Christian government’s” influence for peace. At no time did the Church urge or demand peace, and at no time did the Church throw its powerful influence upon our President or upon the head of any other government to bring about peace.[288] Our gentle Christian President, Mr. Roosevelt, head of the greatest Christian republic on earth, said recently to a hand-clapping Christian audience, “I want for soldiers young men not only willing but _anxious_ to fight”; that is, anxious to murder. That foul sentiment should have been drowned with hisses. The ferocious Christian Tsars of Russia, the blood-thirsting Caesars of the ancient pagan Roman Empire, the chiefs of savage tribes and modern republics,—all the ancient and modern, savage and civilized hero rulers who have sat on thrones and stood on the necks of nations—all these bullies have always been eager to have for soldiers “young men not only willing but anxious to fight”—that is, willing and anxious to cut the throats of their fellowmen in an intertribal or international festival of blood called a patriotic war. And always, since society was first organized on a _class_-labor plan, the organized “spiritual guides” of society have “stood by the government,” leagued with the hero ruler for the ruling class. Mr. Roosevelt, for the moral improvement and spiritual guidance of small boys who may read his heroic record as a patriotic warrior, sets it down with evident pride that he shot a Spanish soldier (probably a humble workingman) in the back as the poor, ignorant, frightened fellow fled from the bloody field.[289] Mr. Roosevelt, as related in Chapter Eight, Section 16, urged in an Annual Message that rifle-practice ranges be provided in the public schools for young school boys—presumably that the little fellows may become “not only willing but anxious to fight.” And the Church of the Peaceful Christ did not dare rebuke the “great Christian President” for urging such a barbarous outrage upon the schoolboys’ dawning social consciousness and their finer sentiments of the brotherhood of man.