* * * * * How long will strong men of the working class accept a kick as a compliment—from so-called “great” men? ----- Footnote 1: Reports of the Department of War for the years 1907, ’08, ’09, pp. 17, 21, and 18 respectively. The Reports of the Secretaries of War include no losses by suicide from 1901 to 1906 inclusive. The suicide record reported by the Secretaries of War for 1907, ’08, ’09, are: 1, 26, 39 respectively. Fifty-eight per cent. of all desertions in 1906 were desertions by men (boys) in their first year of service; over half of these in first half year of their service. See Index: “Desertions.” CHAPTER ONE. A Confidential Word With the Man of the Working Class. BROTHER! Whoever you are, wherever you are on all the earth, I greet you. You are a member of the working class. I am a member of the working class. We are brothers. Class brothers. Let us repeat that:—Class Brothers. Let us write that on our hearts and stamp it on our brains:—Class Brothers. I extend to you my right hand. I make you a pledge. Here is my pledge to you:— I refuse to kill your father. I refuse to slay your mother’s son. I refuse to plunge a bayonet into the breast of your sister’s brother. I refuse to slaughter your sweetheart’s lover. I refuse to murder your wife’s husband. I refuse to butcher your little child’s father. I refuse to wet the earth with blood and blind kind eyes with tears. I refuse to assassinate you and then hide my stained fists in the folds of _any_ flag. I refuse to be flattered into hell’s nightmare by a class of well-fed snobs, crooks and cowards who despise our class socially, rob our class economically and betray our class politically. Will you thus pledge me and pledge all the members of our working class? Sit down a moment, and let us talk over this matter of war. We working people have been tricked—tricked into a sort of huge steel-trap called war. Really, the smooth “leading citizens” tried their best to flim-flam me, too. They cunningly urged me to join the militia and the army and be ready to go to war. Their voices were soft, their smiles were bland, they made war look bright, very bright. But I concluded not to train for war or go to war—at least not until the brightness of war became bright enough to attract those cunning people to war who tried to make war look bright to me. I have waited a long time. I am still waiting. Thus I have had plenty of opportunity to think it all over. And the more I think about war the more clearly I see that a bayonet is a _stinger_, made by the working class, sharpened by the working class, nicely polished by the working class, and then “patriotically” thrust into the working class by the working class—for the capitalist class. The busy human bees sting themselves.