A drowning wave of flag-waving, patriotic hokum accompanied U.S. entry into World War. An utterly repulsed Debs ‘dares to be a coward’ in rejecting it entirely. For his ‘cowardice’ Debs was imprisoned, at age 64, for sedition in Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.

‘Dare to be a Coward!’ by Eugene V. Debs from Social Revolution. Vol. 14 No. 1. March, 1917.

Wendell Phillips said at the time the United States government was in control of chattel slavery that he wanted two words inscribed upon his tomb as his epitaph. These two words were “traitor” and “infidel”–traitor to a government which protected human slavery and infidel to a church which sanctioned the crime.

It sometimes happens that the “traitor” is the true patriot and the “infidel” the man of real faith.

It happens also that the popular “hero” is sometimes a coward while the despised “coward” is the real hero.

There are times when it requires courage amounting to heroism to be a coward. The present critical period when this country is about to be engulfed in war by the capitalist class is such a time. For months the big interests that rule this nation, for reasons perfectly obvious to all but the stone-blind, have been intent upon dumping this nation into the European slaughter pit or at least bringing it to the verge of the abyss. The attempt to force a war upon Mexico for the benefit of Wall street, which is mainly responsible for the uprising and continuous turmoil there, proved a fiasco, notwithstanding it cost the government the enormous sum of $162,418,000. Another effort must be made to put over the “preparedness” program with its billions of outlay to militarize and terrorize the people, and now it is Germany with which the United States must go to war. At this writing a state of war already exists and all that is lacking is the formal declaration by congress which is expected to follow the first “overt” act committed in the submarine warfare.

The one outstanding fact of the situation is that the people of the United States do not want war with the German people, do not wish to murder them, and that the people of Germany do not want war, do not wish to kill the people of the United States. But the people, the MERE PEOPLE are not consulted. They have no voice, nothing to say. They have only to pay in blood and treasure, foot the bill to the last drop and the last farthing.

For months the big interests have been conducting an “educational” campaign, lavishly financed, whose ostensible object has been to inspire the people with “patriotism” but whose real purpose is to prepare the common herd for slaughter. In this infamous conspiracy against peace and all things of good report the press has been the harlot-in-chief. With but few exceptions, and these of little influence, the capitalist papers and magazines have filled the air with the cry of “Wolf” and made the most frenzied appeal for “preparedness against foreign invasion. The pulpit has almost unanimously echoed the cry and the appeal. The subserviency of press and pulpit to the ruling class is quite as flagrant and despicable today as it was a few decades ago to the power of chattel slavery which then ruled the land.

The schools have also been prostituted in this insidious campaign to make murderers of school children and turn what is left of this republic into a military despotism. School board after school board is echoing the demand of the plutocrats to enforce military training in our public schools and to convert what should be our educational institutions into soldiers’ barracks and recruiting grounds for the grand army of capitalism’s hired killers.

The church too has been seized with the same spasm of “patriotism,” a fact not at all strange in the light of history and of the plain fact that the church, as a rule, has always been on the side of the exploiters and oppressors, the class in power. Preachers without number are shouting for “preparedness”; trustees and deacons and elders are vouching for the “patriotism” of their “flock,” and even the teachers of Sunday schools are rising to pledge the loyalty of their innocent wards to the lords of war and murder.

Oh, what a spectacle, what shameless, sordid, soulless, ghastly spectacle is here seen in all its naked horror and repulsiveness!

In this nation-wide campaign of mis-education “preparedness” is the slogan of the pirates of Wall street and elsewhere who are as destitute of genuine patriotism as sharks are of mercy for their victims. “Preparedness” of the capitalistic brand is a sham, a delusion, a fraud and humbug, deserving only the scorn of men who have sense enough to see through the flimsy game and manhood enough to denounce its infamy.

By all the subtle and satanic means conceivable this insidious and treacherous campaign for “preparedness” has been waged. In theatres and picture shows and other places of amusement hints and suggestions appear in the program, winding up with the display of “old glory” all tending to inculcate a false and vicious patriotism, to arouse the killing instincts of the people, and incidentally to arm the nation to the teeth for the destruction of the people’s liberties. It is not amusing but disgusting almost nauseating, to sit at a picture show and witness the ghastly attempts at applause led by shallow-pated clacquers when a cheap hero or some other shoddy imitation of “patriotism” is thrown upon the screen. The ignorance thus on exhibition, steeped-up and impenetrable, is enough to move the most optimistic to tears of despair.

The break with Germany is a God-send to Wall street and the big interests that own the country and control the government. They are now able to put over their program with perfect ease. Congress is tumbling all over itself voting the hundreds of millions to fasten the great standing army on the country and provide the capitalists with the kind of a navy they have long wanted to back up their imperialism and their conquest of the world’s markets.

And mind you, dear reader, when they have that army organized up to its war strength it will never be reduced. That army is coming to stay and if the workers, especially those who voted the present administration into power, have any doubt about it that doubt will be dispelled at some future day when “prosperity” has taken flight and they are out on a hunger strike.

There is absolutely no reason, no excuse for plunging this country into the European hell of slaughter. To do so would be nothing less than a monstrous crime against the American people.

There may be only a few of us sane people compared to the “patriots” that have been wrought into frenzy for war to “defend the flag and the honor of the nation,” but we have our convictions and we will speak out and hold our ground or perish where we stand.

If there is a fraud behind which slimy hypocrisy has hidden, lo, these many years, it is the fraud that masquerades as “the defense of the flag and the honor of the nation.” The politician screams it as if he meant it and every penny-a-liner, every sycophant and time-server takes up the cry.

We are told that it is our solemn duty to protect our citizens at home, on the high seas, and abroad. Well, we know how we protect them at home where more than half a million of them are slaughtered or maimed in industry every year and millions of others are on the ragged edge of starvation. As to the citizens on the high seas and those hobnobbing with the parasites of Europe and luxuriating in the proceeds wrung from the sweat of *

the slaves at home, we are not particularly interested in providing special protection for their benefit. They are not of the working-class. The latter are in the pits and hell-holes of industry slaving their lives away. They never get to the high seas, nor do they visit the art galleries of Europe. They work and support the nation, including its gilded parasites, yet the capitalist congress does not worry itself about their defense” in the slightest degree. All its concern is about the “better class” who do not have to work but put in their time skylarking about with the parasites of other lands. For the “protection” of these worthies the government is ready to declare war in an instant and shed the blood of hundreds of thousands who are never permitted to enjoy the luxuries of travel. But it is not at all strange that the government is so sensitive about those “abroad” for they are of the class that own the country and of course the government is but the instrument of their power, their rule, and their convenience.

The capitalist class and their fawning henchmen are attempting to show that we are bound to go to war with Germany on account of Germany’s ruthless submarine warfare. They lie. We are bound to do nothing of the kind. Germany’s submarine warfare is without doubt perfectly infamous, but it is not directed at this country. It is aimed at the countries it is fighting, and its war zone is about as well justified as is the blockade of its ports by Great Britain. It is a game of desperation and starvation in which the United States has no part. Let American ships keep out of the war zone or if they enter there with full knowledge of the risk they are taking let them bear the consequences. Again we speak from the point of view of the working-class. The workingmen who will be called upon to be maimed and murdered if war is declared are not riding in these ships; the war will never be declared on their account but on account of the master class and then they will have the privilege of being riddled and torn with shrapnel and slugs that their masters may defiantly sail into the war zones of the belligerent nations. What on earth have the American people, the people we mean, the working people, to gain in a to gain in a war with Germany? What have the people of Germany to gain in a war with the United States? Nothing, absolutely nothing. But they have everything to lose, including their lives. They may have their arms shot off, their legs torn from their bodies, their eyes gouged out, their brains blown into froth, and if anything is left of them they may limp back with it and beg their masters for a job or a hand-out, and while they are waiting they may meditate upon their “patriotism” in having “defended the flag and honor of the nation” and, “protected its citizens at home and abroad.”

NOW IS THE TIME TO DARE TO BE A COWARD. In this hour of made-to-order “patriotism” that is sweeping over the land like a whirl- wind, the real man, the true patriot though he stand alone, will assert himself. He is too cowardly to be a hired “hero,” too cowardly to be a parrot “patriot,” too cowardly to be a murderer, to kill his fellow-worker or be killed by him for the benefit of the class that robs them both and holds them both in contempt.

In the name of all that is fit to be called civilization and all that may justly pass for humanity we protest against this nation being flung into the fangs of the mad-dogs of Europe.

If the capitalists and exploiters, the profit-mongers of this system in their mad cry for war are patriots then by all the gods we are traitors and proud of it, and if their hirelings are heroes we are cowards, and for the same reason.

Have you observed what “honors” are shown to the “returning heroes” from the Mexican border? The city to which they return is invariably ablaze with flags and decorations. The “business interests” are all stirred up, boards of trade and chambers of commerce are especially active, and the “leading citizens” all subscribe liberally to hire columbian orators, brass bands, etc., etc., to give a royal welcome to the “returning heroes.” Most of the preachers chip in to tell the soldier boys how glorious it is to be a murderer for the love of country and the glory of God.

Is it possible that you are so blind that you cannot see through this shameless confidence game? Do you ever see these capitalists and business men and “leading citizens” associate with these cheap soldiers in ordinary times? Do you ever see them together at the club of the capitalist or the cheap saloon and brothel, patronized by the soldier? Never! Then why have these capitalists such a consuming love for these fifteen-dollars-a-month soldiers, and such a passion to publicly honor and glorify them as heroes? Can’t you guess? You certainly can unless you are mentally very feeble.

Woodrow Wilson, our present president, inadvertently let the cat out of the bag when he was urging capitalists and business men to help get the soldiers to Mexico at the time of the Mexican crisis. He told these capitalists and business men in plain terms, though he said more than he meant at the time, that the soldiers were going to the front for no other purpose than to fight and die for the interests of these same capitalists and business men. President Wilson put the whole matter of soldiering and war and murder, and savagery and hell in a nutshell. Soldiers are the hired killers of the master class, the menial defenders of the business interests.

We Socialists are not deceived for we are not blind and deaf and dumb. We have not been studying the capitalist system nor watching the maneuverings of the capitalist class these many years in vain. We know by whom war is declared, by whom the battles are fought, and what for; we also know who are the rich beneficiaries who declare war, but do not go to battle and the poor victims who do not declare war, but do go to battle.

We are they who dare to be cowards when heroism is cheapened and prostituted to hellish ends. We stand uncompromisingly opposed to all capitalist wars of exploitation and conquest. We are of the working-class and we are the comrades of the working-class of every other nation on earth. We have no country to invade and our honor needs no murder and no bloodshed to defend it.

No nation worthy the name can be insulted other than by itself. Nor can any nation be dishonored except by its own betrayal of the principles of right and justice.

We are keenly alive to the need of preparedness, but our kind of preparedness is the opposite of that proposed by the exploiting ruling class. Robbery at home and abroad stands in crying need of capitalist preparedness. Without such prepared- ness the interests of the robbers would be in jeopardy. The system that is corner-stoned in robbery needs must have force and murder to sustain it. Robbery of the people and an army of soldiers to “preserve the peace and “defend the flag and the honor of the nation” go hand in hand. Exploitation of the mass wherever it exists is sustained and supported by armed murderers. Exploitation, robbery, could not exist without armed force to protect its beneficiaries and keep their victims in subjection. That is why capitalism inevitably means war. To abolish capitalism is to remove the cause of war and put an end to war forever.

We of the working-class stand staunchly for the preparedness that consists of the education and organization of our class, for the development of its economic and political power, and the use of that power for the overthrow of capitalism and wage-slavery, for the emancipation of the workers of the world, for the ending of war, for the inauguration of peace, and for the civilization of all humanity and the brotherhood of all the race.

The National Ripsaw, a Free-Thinking, Socialist magazine that, in the 1910s, included the O’Hare’s and Debs on its board. The paper under the O’Hare’s was a voice of the Party’s anti-war wing and became a main literary vehicle for Debs before it, like all of the anti-war Left press, was banned from the postal services. In it’s previous incarnation, The Rip-Saw was an openly racist, exclusionary “Socialist” magazine under editor Seth McCallen from 1903 until 1908 when the paper was taken over by Phil Wagner and the politics of the paper changed.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/national-ripsaw/170300-socialrevolution-v14n01w157.pdf