Chapter Nine.

The Cross, the Cannon, and the Cash-Register.

“Never land long lease of empire won whose sons sat silent while base deeds were done.”—James Russell Lowell.

Speak! Speak!—you leaders of the toil-stained multitude whom the Great Christ of Peace so boldly defended.

Speak!

Rebuke the brutes who betray Christ’s humble followers!

Speak! There is no excuse for silence—on your part.

Speak defiantly—and clearly.

You have for nearly two thousand years held the brain of vast portions of the human race in your hands. Have you taught peace—effectively?

Look—see that gaping war-stab in the breast of the working class.

THE CASH COST OF MILITARISM IN THE WORLD FOR FORTY-EIGHT HOURS WOULD BE SUFFICIENT TO PROVIDE A 150–PAGE BOOK AGAINST WAR FOR EVERY PERSON ON EARTH WHO CAN READ. THREE SERMONS PER YEAR AGAINST WAR IN EVERY ONE OF 160,000 CHURCHES OF THE UNITED STATES COULD BE PAID FOR, AT THE RATE OF $50 PER SERMON, WITH LESS THAN THE COST OF TWO FIRST-CLASS BATTLESHIPS.

“Nothing can be clearer than that the leaders of Christianity immediately succeeding Christ, from whom authentic expressions of doctrines have come down to us, were well assured that their Master had forbidden the Christians the killing of men in war or enlisting in the legions. One of the chief differences which separated Roman non-Christians and Christians was the refusal of the latter to enlist in the legions and be thus bound to kill their fellows as directed.”

Eagerly we search the world for relief from the hell’s horror of war.

There! There is the Church—the Church with her vast influence!—and she breathes, “Peace, good will to all men.”

The Church?

Will the Church save us from war?

We shall see.

Reader, let us always open wide our souls to every man and to every influence great enough to make us socially wholesomer.

Sincerely, I admire every great Priest, every great Rabbi, and every great Preacher of our time who is too fine, too proud, too nobly social and international to rent his eloquent voice to the captains of industry for the blood-spilling business of conquering the markets of the world with sword and cannon and for the equally brutal business of benevolently stealing large sections of the earth to be swinishly exploited by money-greedy capitalists.

These men are masculine—unafraid. Let us salute them: “Good cheer, noble friends!”

Boldly these greater Priests refuse to toady to industrial and political masters and thus refuse to scream for war.

Defiantly these greater Rabbis refuse to inflame the tiger lurking in every human breast and thus refuse to prepare men for war.

Nobly these greater Preachers refuse Caesar and Shylock, and thus they stand by the Man of Peace and abhor war.

But, unfortunately, these grand bold souls are in helpless minority—at present.

And thus again we find the following question burning for an answer:

Which way shall the working class turn for deliverance from the curse of war?

Who will rescue the working class from these cyclones of lead and steel?

The Church? The Clergy?

Let us study this matter.

Long ago when the deluded soldiers of an “established” church “patriotically” murdered the Great Carpenter, the “established” church of his locality hypocritically stood by the pagan Roman government, lending assistance to the pagan government and urging the pagan soldiers to slay Jesus Christ. And today the Christian church flatters the soldiers, “stands by the government,”—any and all “Christian” governments,—in any and all wars, and thus refuses to protect the working class from the sword and cannon; refuses to draw the bayonet from the breast of the humble working man; refuses to defend the working class woman from the blood and tears of war; refuses to shield the faces of the little children of the working class from the steel-shod hoofs of the galloping war horse.

This Chapter is a discussion of one of mankind’s misfortunes, to show the despotism of the dollar,—TO SHOW THE TYRANNY OF THE ECONOMIC ELEMENT OF HUMAN LIFE; and let me here give most sincere assurance that this Chapter is written with not even the slightest degree of malice toward the Church. However, the Church taught me: “Speak the truth.”

Well, here is a truth, a truth to be stripped naked and expressed because it is so vitally important to hundreds of millions who toil:—

The three mighty hosts of the Peace-Preaching Christ, the Greek Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant Church, these, bitterly at war with one another and defending the industrial despotism called capitalism,—refuse, flatly refuse, to unite their powerful voices in a defiant and effective declaration against war; refuse thus to help lift the huge burden and curse of war from the toil-bent shoulders of the working class; refuse to remove the thorn-crown of war from the brow of labor. The working class, millions of them loving Christ sincerely as I do, must learn and face the fact that the Church of the Great Carpenter Christ refuses to save the working class from the periodic baptisms of blood and fire called war.

“Put up thy sword,” said Christ.

“Business is business! There is no sentiment in business! We must conquer the markets of the world,” say the capitalists.

And there is the parting of the ways for toads and men, for the time-server and the prophet, for the emasculate and the masculine.

In 1898 a certain man lived in a small western “city”—and took notes. A local company of working class volunteers was organized to go to Cuba to slaughter the working men in the Spanish army and thus secure greater opportunity for American capitalists. On the day of departure of the volunteer company the people, thousands of them, assembled on a wide public square, surrounding the local volunteers. Suddenly, when interest was intense, a high table was rushed to the center of the square, a banker thoughtfully assisting. Hastily a meek and lowly follower of the Peaceful Jesus—a preacher—took his place upon this table, his eyes flashing hate and his chest bulging heroically. All hats were off. All heads, but two, were bowed in prayer. With head erect and eyes open the preacher, in prayer, addressed—the audience. With his eyes to the sky, the preacher, praying, used the name of God and the ears of the people. There was no “praying in secret” about that “eloquent effort.” The prayer was “powerful.” That prayer was an assault—an assault upon the finest sentiments that bloom in the human heart, the sentiments of the brotherhood of man.

But what of that? “Business is business.”

That eloquent prayer electrified the vast audience. The preacher became an incendiary—he committed arson. His ferocious rhetoric set on fire the gullible souls of young men, humble women, innocent small boys and tender little girls. With crafty eloquence he petted the working class volunteers till they stood more erect in manly pride and licked their lips for the blood of almost equally ignorant Spanish working men; with flattering phrases he seductively praised the plain women who bore these “brave boys” now ready to butcher, praised them till these gentle, humble mothers were warm with an elation known only to mothers of strong men, praised them till they were keen with a savage gladness that they had borne these men now burning to slaughter humble toilers from the working class homes in Spain. With artful power of phrase and voice the preacher praised the small boys present, praying for “more brave boys in future years to stand by the flag”—caressed them thus till the poor little fellows longed to be men in order that they too might rend the flesh of humble working-class men in war—somewhere, anywhere, somehow, sometime. And then with cunning suggestiveness and with vulgar boldness this handsome panderer to capitalist masters rudely invaded the holy of holies, the innocent imagination of tender little girls present, brutally outraged the sacred instincts of kindness natural to these dainty little maids till these young doll-lovers were half excited with a dim but horrible hope, till their faces flushed in anticipation of the patriotic part they too in future years might have in sending their assassin sons to the front.

The prayer ended. The preacher rolled his fine dark eyes and fervently bellowed, “Amen!”

He had done his work. He had played his part. Souls had been branded. Human brotherhood had been suffocated in the hearts of gullible working men—strangled with elegant (and pious) eloquence.

Then the thousands of humble working class people moved off, “hoofing it,” marching behind the soldiers to the railway station. A half dozen bankers, a dozen lawyers, and many other “leading business men” lingered, left their carriages, surrounded the preacher and congratulated him on his “splendid effort”;—and that was part of his pay for his eloquent ferocity. Well-dressed women of the “best families in the city” gave the preacher their gloved right hands and practically embraced him with the virtuous and caressing fondness in their eyes;—and that was part of his pay for scarring the souls of men, women, and little children with the branding-iron of Old Testament ferocity. That savage prayer made him more popular in the city;—and that was part of his pay for his noble ferocity. He was now more secure in his job;—and that was part of his pay for his ecclesiastical buncombe and flap-doodle,—for his jungle growl of civilized ferocity. The collections were for some time larger in his church;—and that, yea, that also, was part of his pay for serving the cash-register and thus playing the rôle of betrayer of the Prince of Peace.

The handsome preacher had performed a miracle. He had so fixedly riveted the attention of the “brave boys” upon the Spaniards that the gullible volunteers noticed nothing strange in the fact that strong, healthy bankers, lawyers, merchants and preachers (patriots all of them of course)—with the stealthy quiet of a cat on a carpet—remained at home just at the very time when “great deeds of glory and patriotism” and manly heroism were to be done.

Doubtless many a shot-torn boy soldier wallowing in his own blood, his chest half crushed with the hoofs of galloping cavalry horses, his splintered bones grinding together at every move, the roar of cannon and the din of curses, prayers, yells, sobs and groans of dying comrades crowding into his ears—thinks of his well-fed, soft-voiced pastor at home far away (and safe), the good man, the nice man, who fired his and his fellow-fighters’ hearts with “lust of death and vulgar slaughter,” who helped betray him and his fellows to the human butchering field. No doubt many working class people fondly hope that the ministers of the Christ of Peace will presently combine and use their vast influence against war—to drive the red demon from the earth that it may no longer desolate the homes of the humble.

Vain hope.

Long ago the cynical, shrewd (and carefully baptized) Napoleon Bonaparte remarked, with biting irony, “God is always on the side of the heaviest battalions.”

Today it is easy to see that not Christ, but the Church of Christ, is on the side of the business man and the politician concerning war.

And thus the bayonet still sticks in the breast of the working class.

Thus the Cross dips to the cannon.

Really, will not the followers of the gentle Christ of Peace presently sweep war from the world?

They most certainly will do nothing of the kind—as long as war is profitable for the “leading citizens.”

“Leading citizens” actually lead. They are the capitalists. Industrially and politically the capitalists have the world by the throat. They force their ambitions, their purposes, and their policies upon both the preacher and the wage-earner. Their purpose is: profits, more profits and still more profits. Their policy is: more markets and more territory—for more profits, at all hazard, in absolute defiance of Confucius, in defiance of Buddha, in defiance of Christ, in shameless defiance of the sacredness of human blood. They will, if need be,—that is, if business, commercial exigencies, require it—they will order the high-salaried generals to wash the earth with the blood of the socially despised working class, while safe in their palatial homes these “leading citizens” will masquerade as patriots, and on the “holy Sabbath day” they will virtually force their salaried pastors to pray and shout for blood-dripping victory.

This is the industrial rulers’ history.

This is the industrial rulers’ present politics.

This is the industrial rulers’ future program.

And the preacher must therefore salute the cash-register and baptize the cannon—or lose his job just like any other hired man who fails to please his economic master.

“Business is business,”—that is “the law and the gospel” of capitalism.

Let us study the matter a little further.

When a war is on the world’s stage the bright lights are so confusing that it is difficult to see the “leading citizens” in the background, “in the wings,” so to speak. For example:

The American people are still clapping their hands and hurrahing for “our noble Christian President” for his part in bringing about peace between Russia and Japan. But why—just why—did not the “noble Christian President” nobly interfere many months before he did interfere? The blood of tens of thousands of humble working-class soldiers in both armies was running down the hillsides in Manchuria in streams—months before. But no interference by the “noble Christian President” (recently so boisterously boastful of “his” own noble slaughtering on San Juan Hill).

Let us understand.

For many months it seemed that Christian Russia would surely win the war and still be able to pay interest and principal of American investments in Russia. Later the Russian Government and Russian credit became very unsteady. Immediately the capitalist actors in the background, with money invested in Russian enterprises, put on the pressure, applied “influence,” to our government, and then, and not till then, did President Roosevelt rush to the footlights of the world’s stage and whine and scream for peace.

For many months, while the blood of Japanese and Russian working class men was gushing from a million wounds, while the humble wives and children of these “common” men were wild with grief—all the while “our noble Christian President,” like all other Christian rulers, was as silent as a fish; but when principal and interest of American parasites got in danger, our “noble Christian President” promptly became nobly noisy and craftily pious and peaceful.

And that is a fair sample of a “Christian government’s” influence for peace.

At no time did the Church urge or demand peace, and at no time did the Church throw its powerful influence upon our President or upon the head of any other government to bring about peace.

Our gentle Christian President, Mr. Roosevelt, head of the greatest Christian republic on earth, said recently to a hand-clapping Christian audience, “I want for soldiers young men not only willing but anxious to fight”; that is, anxious to murder. That foul sentiment should have been drowned with hisses. The ferocious Christian Tsars of Russia, the blood-thirsting Caesars of the ancient pagan Roman Empire, the chiefs of savage tribes and modern republics,—all the ancient and modern, savage and civilized hero rulers who have sat on thrones and stood on the necks of nations—all these bullies have always been eager to have for soldiers “young men not only willing but anxious to fight”—that is, willing and anxious to cut the throats of their fellowmen in an intertribal or international festival of blood called a patriotic war.

And always, since society was first organized on a class-labor plan, the organized “spiritual guides” of society have “stood by the government,” leagued with the hero ruler for the ruling class.

Mr. Roosevelt, for the moral improvement and spiritual guidance of small boys who may read his heroic record as a patriotic warrior, sets it down with evident pride that he shot a Spanish soldier (probably a humble workingman) in the back as the poor, ignorant, frightened fellow fled from the bloody field. Mr. Roosevelt, as related in Chapter Eight,