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Do You Want War?
By C. B. Hoffman.

I MEAN you—the mother—the father—the brother—the
sister—the woman—the man. I am asking you: DO
YOU WANT WAR? I am not asking the money lender,
the bond broker, the manufacturer of ammunition, of guns,
shot and shell nor the exporter of foodstuffs and mules. I
am asking YOU. Not the politician, the statesman, the
patriot, the American, the Englishman, the German, the
Frenchman, the Russian, the Turk. I GO BEYOND THESE
—TO THE REAL YOU. I appeal to your heart, your soul,
to your manhood, your womanhood, TO YOU AS A MEMBER
OF THE GREAT BROTHERHOOD—MANKIND.

Do you want war? Do you want to drench the whole
world in blood? Is it not enough that Europe is blood-mad
frenzied with fire, rape, murder? Is America to be drawn
into the orgy—into the death-dance of civilization?

Are you forgetting that this is a war of the rich? This
is not a revolution of the people against their oppressors—
of the workers against their exploiters—of slaves against
masters—of poor against rich. This is a war of the ARISTOCRACY
—OF KINGS AND PRINCES.

It is a great blood-letting of the PEOPLE, planned and
ordered by the rulers to quiet the spirit of revolution—
democracy—Socialism; to weaken and exhaust the people;
to blind them with hatred; to divide them into nations and
countries; to reduce them into tribes and clans; to set them
to fighting and killing each other; to forget that they are
brothers, common men and women who own nothing except
their strength to toil and have nothing to lose but their
chains.

Beware, you sticklers for national honor—you prodders
of patriots!

Should you succeed in involving America in war you
may be unable to control the universal frenzy.

The exploited of the world, the homeless, jobless vagabonds,
the tramps and loafers, the degenerates who rot in
your jails and asylums—who fester in your slums and
swarm in your cities, may take you at your word, may follow
your preaching and example and burn, rape and kill
on their own account.

You are playing with fire—hell's fire—when you push
this game to the limit.