Volume 6, No. 2, June, 1918

The Internationalist Page five
unable to agree upon a new rule of action, they resort
to
arms.
During hostilities they do whatsoever they have the
power to do in line with their interests.
Such acts become the rule of action for the future.
Hitherto, it has been wrong, but henceforth it will
be right to seize the ships of weaker neutral powers and
to press them into service.
Thus commercial law is born and its wisdom (?)
manifested.
Who is so blind that he cannot see the degrading
tendencies of brute force?
LOVE
o
LOVE!
sets a premium upon good character by sending
a thrill of joy through the heart of the rightdoer
for every righteous act. Thus it blazes a pathway
of ever-increasing happiness through a world of tribulations,
to a haven of blissful wisdom.
It opens the heart and mind of all by the touch of
its magic wand.
It demands honesty and good faith and yields in return
absolute liberty.
It opens beautiful fields of activity on every hand
and bids its children welcome.
GREED
GREED !
undermines and destroys character; adds
ambition to power and bitterness, and anguish of
heart to both.
It leads into entangled briers and quagmires, blinding
its eyes with deceit and robbing itself of understanding.
It closes every honest heart and mind against it,
uses treachery as its stepping-stone upon which it descends
into intellectual bondage.
It pillages every field it enters, ravishes everything
it touches, bewilders every heart in which it dwells, and
makes enemies of
AFTER
all.
a year of struggle and disappointment, the
Socialist party of the United States is beginning
to see that the policy outlined by the Majority report
adopted at St. Louis was a profound mistake.
It goes without saying that Socialists have always
opposed war.
For a quarter of a century we saw conditions
developing that were leading directly to this
cataclysm and we did all within our power to avert it.
But it came.
Now that the country is engulfed, what shall the Socialists
do? What stand shall we take?
Upon this question the Socialists are not agreed.
Some are opposed to taking part in the war;
some are
in favor of it. The same is true of the entire citizenship.
Those who are opposed to
the war are,- for the most
part, believers in the doctrine of pacifism. They are
not cowards. They will die for their convictions.
Neither are those who believe in war cowards. They
will die for their convictions, No man is a coward
who will lay down his life for his convictions.
The pacifist would rather be killed than to kill. We
find pacifists among the Socialists and among all religious
denominations. We find them also among the
general
citizenship.
What are we to do with those who oppose war because
they believe it wrong to kill—who would be
killed before they would kill?
What shall we do with this fact?
Every pacifist, who, upon oath, 'declares that he
would not take life,
should be excused from combatant
service, just as a juryman who is opposed to capital
punishment is
excused from jury service.
I am more than confident that, as a compromise,
ninety-five percent of the pacifists would render most
efficient non-combatant service while they would die
or go to prison rather than render combatant service.
Opening the opportunity for non-combatant service
to all such persons would unite the forces in the United
States in a manner that each could render service in
keeping with his conscience.
Better by far have a united country with the service
of all in this manner, than a disunited country, however
large or small the factions may be.
ARE
the Socialists of Russia responsible for German
success in the far East?
Many capitalist papers and magazines are flaunting
this theory before the world.
They are still clinging to capitalism.
They do not know it is dying.
They do not know it is dead in Russia.
They do not know that the new order is being born
now among the Slavs.
They do not scent the decay of the
old.
They will not know the new when it comes.
Forgive them: they know not what they do. They
belong to
the dying past.
Let the dead bury their dead.
HOPE dwells in the mansion of prospective possibilities.
Despair dwells in the mansion of prospective impossibilities.