9 THE CLASS STRUGGLE War and Public Opinion By AUSTIN LEWIS masses.
person (a) to limit the facilities for transporting, producing, manufacturing, supplying, storing or dealing in any necessaries. b) to restrict the supply of any necessary. d) to prevent, limit or lessen the manufacture or production of any necessaries, or to enhance the price thereof; or (e) to exact excessive prices for any necessaries, or to aid or abet the doing of any act made unlawful by this act.
Should this paragraph still need comment or interpretation, such is amply furnished by the defeat, with 162 against 45 votes, of the motion of Congressman Keating, Colorado, providing that nothing in this bill be regarded as repealing the (alleged) strike rights provided for in the Clayton anti Trust act.
Thus, hand in hand with the political suppression of the working class, will come the economic enslavement of the Their last weapons will be wrested from them, weapons that are indispensable in their struggle for better conditions. fitting reward, forsooth, for the treachery of Samuel Gompers and the of machine.
Two years ago, at the banquet of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, John Spargo answered a preparedness speech of Charles Edward Russell in sentiment that should not so soon be forgotten. Democracy is not a thing that can be brought from without. It is inherent in the life and thoughts of the masses, and can be brought only by and through the action of these masses. Democracy and preparedness, democracy and war, are incompatible. The two cannot exist side by side, in the same social fabric. War and preparedness inevitably mean reaction. We have but one choice war and reaction, or peace and democracy.
Make the world safe for democracy. There is but one way.
Democracy will come only where the working class, by the strength of its numbers and its convictions, succeeds in forcing the capitalist class to the wall. Not war, but revolution, will bring democracy, in Russia, in Germany and in the United States.
The recent demand for a referendum prior to a declaration of war is apparently based upon the notion that public opinion is averse to war. This has lately received some support from the vote of Australia against conscription. This fact is, however, offset by the equally important one that Australia has furnished her quota to the war by voluntary enlistment. It seems to be fairly certain that all the governments are supported by the public opinion of the respective countries and this is true even if we allow for the censorship and the restrictions on public meetings.
Of course there is no question that some wars have been unpopular, but their unpopularity has not hindered their prosecution. There have also been intensely popular wars. As far as the British possessions are involved it may be truthfully said that this war is one of them. The zeal of the public has appeared not only in the enlistments and monetary contributions but even more in the violence of the social disapproval which has marked any unwillingness to serve.
Where the means of subsistence are threatened even indirectly the group is a unit in the struggle to maintain them.
Even where the maintenance mores, the system of customs at the foundation of the group prosperity appear to be in danger, the same vehemence of public opinion in their defense is manifested. The raids of barbarian tribes upon their neighbors for the purpose of stealing cattle, and thus increasing the food supply or forays with the idea of annexation and thus broadening the opportunities for making a living have always met with the approval of the public. For under such conditions the appeal to the emotions of the crowd meets with a ready response and public opinion is easily developed.
At the beginning of the war the German government was wonderfully well placed for an appeal to public opinion. The statement that the country was threatened by a Russian in