From the before first shot, Mary E. Marcy and the ISR took an uncompromising stand against the First World War. Here, Marcy writes the editorial as the United States entered the war in April, 1917.

‘You and Your Country’ by Mary E. Marcy from International Socialist Review. Vol. 17 No. 10. April, 1917.

WE ARE wondering whether the thousands of carloads of potatoes and loads upon loads of onions, those cars upon cars of cotton and leather goods, those tons of meats and tons of dried fruits that the newspapers tell us are waiting at the wharves on the east coast of the United States, are going to feed and clothe the soldiers in Europe or whether they are going to lie at the docks and spoil while “OUR” government allows workingmen and women to starve in the United States.

The big American shippers are clamoring for protection to their ships and their cargoes—and their PROFITS—and demanding universal military service and war with Germany. They claim that Our National Honor has been smirched; that trade is threatened and that TWO HUMAN LIVES—American lives—have been snuffed out by submarine warfare. We can imagine the heartaches caused to the Honorable Messrs. Rockefeller, Loeb, Kuhn and Morgan, the Guggenheims and Schwabs, the Beef Trust, the Lumber Trust and the coal combines, the railroad companies, at the thought of two American lives being lost through the activities of a German submarine.

You know, and I know, that these great financial pirates have calmly sat by while the lives of thousands of workingmen and women have been sacrificed to their greed for dividends, and that the loss of American lives caused by Germany is only one more excuse they have seized to arouse the workers of this country to jump into war with Germany and spend hundreds of thousands of other lives in order that their profits may flow uninterrupted, their exports continue, their power remain unbroken.

But do not be deceived. “Your” country is concerned only because PROFITS are threatened.

What does Your Country do for you when you are out of work?

What does the National Government, the State Government, the Municipal Government do for you then? Those mighty minions of the law, the police, beat you up when you land in a town looking for work, and send you to jail or to the rock pile, or take you to the edge of town and drive you forth cold and hungry and homeless ai the point of a gun.

And if there are many of you producers of the world’s food and clothing and homes, if there are many of you who come into a town asking for work, for food, for shelter, the state’s soldiers are called. And you are driven from one place to another—ever on and on—because you are homeless and hungry, because you are cold and because you are without money to buy the things you need.

When you have worked through the year and piled up many products and large dividends for your employer, “Your” Government permits your employer to throw you out of work, if he is unable to USE YOU AT A PROFIT. “Your” Government takes no thought of your life. It believes that it is better for a workingman to be thrown out—workless, homeless, penniless, hungry and cold than that a capitalist employ this worker at a LOSS. Your Country sacrifices the workers’ LIVES to insure the employers’ PROFITS.

When a starving worker, out of a job, steals a loaf of bread, the municipal, the state, the national government (“Your” Country) sends him away to prison. “Your” Government says that a loaf of bread is more important than a worker’s life. It protects property and allows the workers to starve. PROPERTY FIRST, USEFUL HUMAN LIVES SECOND.

What was the first thing done in cities where the working women have raised their voices in a cry for “Bread” and have demanded food for their families during the past month?

Did “Your” Government stretch out its benevolent hand and scatter flour and meat and potatoes to the working class which toils and produces for wages insufficient to LIVE ON?

Did all the elected officials in this Glorious Land of Liberty raise their voices and open their purses to relieve your distress? Did anybody hear any Congressman or U.S. Senator get up on his hind feet in those marble halls in Washington and suggest that the troops be sent to seize food and prevent suffering among the working class?

Well, what did Your Country do?

It called for the police and special reserves, which were rushed to the scenes of the “riots” and shot into the crowds of workers^ who dared to lift their hands toward the food supplies produced by the working class, and appropriated by the owning class.

The police force, the soldiers, are primarily maintained to protect the owning class and their property from the hunger-madness, the want-desperation of the world’s workers.

Think it over, Fellow Workers. What has “Your” Country ever done for you?

The International Socialist Review (ISR) was published monthly in Chicago from 1900 until 1918 by Charles H. Kerr and critically loyal to the Socialist Party of America. It is one of the essential publications in U.S. left history. During the editorship of A.M. Simons it was largely theoretical and moderate. In 1908, Charles H. Kerr took over as editor with strong influence from Mary E Marcy. The magazine became the foremost proponent of the SP’s left wing growing to tens of thousands of subscribers. It remained revolutionary in outlook and anti-militarist during World War One. It liberally used photographs and images, with news, theory, arts and organizing in its pages. It articles, reports and essays are an invaluable record of the U.S. class struggle and the development of Marxism in the decades before the Soviet experience. It was closed down in government repression in 1918.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/isr/v17n10-apr-1917-ISR-riaz-ocr.pdf