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Hellraisers Journal – Tuesday August 25, 1914
General Death and Private Suffering Stride over Europe
From the Appeal to Reason of August 22, 1914:
War?
If the masters want blood,
let them cut their own throats.
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Once more over Europe stride General Death and Private Suffering. About the feet of the great commander bloom, like flowers around the skirt of spring, white human skulls; the foliage before him grows red with brother gore; song birds turn to vultures; and fleecy white clouds are transformed into smoke curling from charred ruins. Everybody salutes you, General Death.
Though muffled in a military cloak, your face wears an unlipped smile. Though the sword in your bony fingers drips with blood, there is a something familiar in the terrifying personage. I know you now. You are the old Taskmaster, commanding to grimmer toil. But your fangs show, and the blood-tipped sword is a pen transformed. The burdensome flesh has dropped away, and I see the death’s-head of-CAPITALISM.
But the spirit-I see it now. At one time I believed your spirit-grim Capitalism with the lying smile, General Death the Hyde of the two-in-one-was wholly fiendish and deformed; but now I know it to be merely the concentrated spirit of the workers themselves. It is their own subserviency, their own ignorant imaginings, that give power to the whip-hand of the respectable and force to the sword-hand of the upbraided. Being that you materialize to the world. Should the workers change their own servile manner, change of conditions would immediately follow.
A change of spirit, and capitalism would disappear. He who has been materialized as General Death would cease both uniformed race-war and dress-suit class-war. Instead of the warrior and the slave, there would stand the Happy Worker, with glad wife and child by his side. Instead of skulls at his feet there would be flowers and fruit. For the vultures, birds of peace would throat carols of joy. Smoke of destruction would give place to placid skies. The bloody sword would be transformed into the tool that with a touch would pile before him beauty and abundance.
The lipless mouth of General Death, made to live through the spirit of the workers themselves, opens in prophecy. It bites this wisdom into dull ears:
“Evil is of your own making. The rivers of blood that shame the earth come from your own veins, from the blind strokes you yourselves dealt. Some day you will see and know. When you discern the truth, war will be forever at an end; the master will disappear; poverty and ignorance will vanish away; and then the hands that have slain shall make beautiful and good and joyous all the hills and valleys of earth, while fingers clasp across the borders that now are battlefields.”
LINCOLN PHIFER
[The Appeal warns that the U.S. may yet get involved in this war:]
International War May Involve the United States
Eight nations are now involved in the European war. Fifteen million soldiers are in the field, with prospect that twenty millions will be marching ere long. The loss in life exceeds already a hundred thousand. The situation, with big navies and aircraft taking part for the first time in the struggle of powerful nations, is appalling. Already starvation faces nations. The greatest calamity of all time threatens the world.
There is strong possibility that even America may be drawn into the war. The new Panama canal is a point of danger. If some navy should be permitted to use that short cut, then other navies would protest. A hundred possibilities suggest complications that might bring war.
The situation is extremely grave. Capitalism is on the verge of collapse all over the world, and in its effort to continue its existence is ready to drag to ruin all peoples and all advancement. This is the immediate threat.
Of course, beyond that is glorious possibility as well. The world will sicken of war. Autocracy will condemn itself. Capitalism is committing suicide. Just beyond the terrific crisis lies the beginning of the Co-operative Commonwealth. Socialists have everything to hope for, and are the only people on the earth who can see light in the darkness. We may congratulate ourselves on the tremendous sentiment that is already developing against war and against autocracy in industry. It is coming by leaps. The nations will be forced to Socialism in order to save themselves and civilization.
[Emphasis added.]
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