Mother Earth Magazine |
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beginning, and it should continue. If the twelve million women should throw themselves between the fighting armies, what would be the result? Wouldn't the further continuation of the war become impossible? What would be the effect if the transport workers, the railroad and coal workers should combine to make the war impossible, as they combined in Great Britain to secure higher wages! These three industries could, if they would, make an end to the gigantic crime of human slaughter.
Indeed, there is much to be done. Our voices as anti-militarists, as Anarchists and free thinkers must be raised much louder and more powerfully in all the countries where burns the torch of the war, and also where the torch is still to be lit.
Instead of "Not a man and not a penny for militarism" we see the last man and the last penny taken from us, and we meekly submit. We lack the courage to fight for our own interest, but we have enough of it to protect the coffers of the capitalist. How long yet?
In Amsterdam we found it necessary, in these ambiguous days, to make clear our position, and to present to the world the following manifesto:
"In view of the declared European war -- the result of capitalism, made possible by militarism, which sets the people of Europe against each other in armed camps -- this gathering energetically protests against the horrible human slaughter that defies all culture and humanity, and also protests emphatically against international Christianity, as well as the international Social Democracy, both of which misuse their influence with the people to cultivate national prejudices and antagonisms.
In view of the circumstance that each day might see the invasion of Holland by a foreign army,
and that the wage worker has no quarrel with the workers of other nations,
and that he has no interest in the defense of arbitrary boundary lines, nor in the preservation of ruling dynasties or of any existing régime,
and that he is doomed to a miserable existence and poverty under any and all flags and governments, and that under no government will he enjoy greater rights
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