The Anniversary of a Tragic Blunder

...After this warning, "Pass at your own risk...

...THOMAS FLAYS NRA IN HIS NEW BOOK TPHE Macmillan Company of New * York publishes "The Choice Before Us," By Norman Thomas, which will be reviewed by -David P. Berenberg...

...Counting the Cost By Eliot White With acknowledgment of Norman Thomas' volume, "The Conscientious Objeetor in America," for the fact quoted and admitted by F. P. Kepptl, Third Assistant Secretary of War under Secretary Newton D. Baker...

...War and the Struggle for Liberation /YN November 11, 1918, President Wilson V scribbled a note on A sheet of paper which was displayed in the presS that day...

...That message read as follows: "My Fellow Countrymen: The armistice was signed this morning...

...And this same principle ought to lead us to declare an embargo against exports which can only be intended for purposes of forging weapons of destruction...

...TOD late we have come to our senses...

...A firing-squad could be faced with gallantry...

...The rest of the "poem" forfeits every requirement for lyric elegance...

...Not content with, that we were partners to all the post-war madness...

...Sixteen years after that note was written a string of dictatorships extends across Europe, the imperialist powers are arming to the teeth, the most deadly means of human and physical destruction are being accumulated, and the world yawns at the abyss of another war* The working class of the world starve despite the vast productive powers that are available...

...KS'YONE squeamish ftad better stop with this title and first line...

...That "Prince- of Peace" himself asked, "Which of you intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish iff" War-resisters of our time, are we as deliberately estimating now what our tower of uncompromising refusal may cost...

...And there is even deeper tifigedy in the situation...

...America must stop the race in armaments...

...If., we must fight,- let us fight;for, liberation from capitalism and for a Socialist world...

...And t h a t in terms of purchasing power, is worse than i t was in June 1933...

...We may quarrel over the merits of various...

...The changes made or suggested, including the outlawry of company unions, are indispensable if NRA is not to relapse into a more dangerous futility than prohibition or become a step to fascism...

...In the midst of poverty and unemployment we have initiated a new and madder race in naval armament...

...Here then is modern Militarism, exposed in its uttermost shamelessness...

...The working masses have nothing to lose and everything to gain by refusing to support any war that impends, whether it is disguised as "defensive" or for "democracy" or far any slogan, the ruling classes may coin...

...But it was never true that America entered the war to make the world safe for democracy for any other reason than that our hankers, manufacturers and merchants were thoroughly committed hy their investments to the victory of the Allies...

...It will facilitate that great task if individual young men and women will cause the rulers of every country—emphatically including our own—to know that they are not going to be coerced or cajoled into a new war against conscience and conviction, a war which they must fight againft men and women like themselves, with the same hopes for the future...

...Just a jail would shine resplendent as beacon-fires on hills, with fellowships of our united tltrongs...

...The emotion and the purpose were sincere enough in the minds of thousands of men and women, some of whom died for their faith...

...Therefore, we issue this Anti-War Number of The New Leader and hope that our readers will see that not a single copy^ is wasted, y A variety of views on war and imperialism is submitted in this issue and it hardly need be said that all do not represent the views of the Socialist Party or of The New Leader...

...There is a political program which may tend to avert particular wars while we seek to change the capitalist nationalist system which is the mother of war...

...Capitalist statesmen drool of peace and there is no peace, not even within the'nations and between nations...

...A ten per cent reduction in hours, accompanied by a ten per cent increase in hourly wages, is not scientific planning, and it still leaves the employed worker no better off than he was before...

...It will now be our fortunate duty to assist by example, by sob«|ri friendly counsel, and by material aid in the <ptablishment of just democracy throughout thefrorld...

...If one of these had happened to be the conscripted Jesus, from up-country Naeatvth, refusing to practice on a dummy how to run another man's body through most effectively with a bayonet He would have shared that treatment from a modern era and country far too civilized for anything so dreadful as crucifixion...

...This is the price of peace, and i o r this on April 6th Socialists everywhere should plead...

...m But those who wdhld intelligently resist war have certain other elementary demands to make...

...The book is a Socialist interpretation of capitalism under the NRA and will be of special interest to all Socialists...

...proposals for p e a c e that are presented—the World Court, the League of Nations, and whatnot But surely it is obvious that only popular opposition to war today maintains the peace of the world...

...Are we ready for that...

...We may add that we are convinced that events in the post-war period convincingly prove that leagues of nations and the pow-wows of statesmen representing the ruling classes contribute little or nothing to averting the bloody struggle that is now a fearful prospect...

...If we fail, all our hopes and dreams are vain and the next generation is condemned to a hell worse than any which Dante ever imagined I f we succeed We can turn our attention with new enthusiasm and new vigor to the problem of building the cooperative commonwealth in which alone is the guarantee of peace or o'f plenty...

...In a supplementary note to the publisher since the publication of the book Comrade Thomas, in part, says: "Events have moved fast since I had a chance to comment on them in the pages of 'The Choice Before Us.' General Johnson's own proposals and the great volume of criticism evoked at the hearings confirm and strengthen all t h a t I have said about t h e unsatisfactory progress of NRA, both from the standpoint of labor and the consumer...

...E u r o p e preserves the peace* largely because most governments are not sure which way the soldiers would shoot...

...We have learned nothing that the war taught us about t h e inadequacy of capitalistic nationlism as a principle for organising an interdependent world...

...URING attempts to^foroe objectors to sen>e in the United States Army entering the World War, "In at least two cases men were immersed in the filth of latrines, one of tltem head downward...

...We refused to use our moral and financial power as a nation to bring about such treatment of Germany as would have made Hitlerism forever impossible...

...Never again will we t r y to grow rich or let any of our manufacturers or bankers grow rich on providing belligerent nations with finances and munitions or the raw materials and munitions...

...This negative reaction of war weariness must be changed to a positive determination of workers not to countenance international war...

...America must take the lead in a b a n d o n i n g imperial claims, whether in Haiti or in China...

...I t is for this reason that antiwar rallies April 6th are of profound importance...

...If we had been able to trade with the German group of Allies and not with the French and British, doubtless we should have found some excuse in British conduct in India or Ireland to go to war on the side of Germany...

...On that day with high enthusiasm America entered a war to make the world safe for democracy...

...Not all of them together, however, can make NRA a satisfactory instrument of a cooperative commonwealth...

...We were partners to the Peace of Versailles, which was a peace to end peace, even though in the end our Senate failed to r a t i fy it...

...But...

...Everything for which America fought has been accomplished...

...We, like most of the world, are more passionately nationalist than ever before and thereby ' invite the coming of Fascism...

...And for this not only on April 6th but every day they should organize...

...Indeed, it is only this high determination to resist war which affords us any hope' a t all...

...The tragedy is that it is too late...

...To all this and more the average intelligent American would today assent...

...On the contrary, some views are not in accord with this policy, but on the whole we believe that the contributions are educational and will help to bring home to our readers the dangers that face us...

...Too M i we have recognised facts for what they are...

...Only it's true and needs to be written...

...We have not even investigated the enormous profits of the excellence the war makers of the world...

...America must remove legitimate grievances such as the Japanese may have be negotiating a friendly t r e a t y governing migrations from both nations and substituting such a treaty for the affront of Japanese exclusion...

...In this, and in this only, is our real hope...

...In the hearing of the nations America should announce: That we will not coin the blood of our brothers into gold for ourselves...

...This ia the moat effective way of peace...

...So far as our government is concerned, and probably so far as the dqminent drift of public opinion is concerned, we did not learn enough from the first World War to keep o n t o f the next...

...If we could have traded with both groups of Allies, we might have continued to grow rich, or some of us to grow rich, on the blood of our fellowmen...

...Finally we must insist on t h e bade principle that the United States will cooperate in what makes "for a genuine peace of t h e world but will preserve as near as possible complete Isolation against direct or indirect participation in war...

...We contributed to t h e chain of events which included allies Intervention in Russia and the dismemberment of Europe...

...By, entering the war we destroyed all opportunity for a negotiated peace...

...1 speak instead of personal dedication and of the effective organisation of the workers in count r y and in city against war...

...But I do not speak now primarily of a political program...

...Nothing in the world is so important as to build up the kind of labor movement which will strike and strike effectively against mobilization for war...