Mary E. Marcy with one of her Socialist fables, this one on the idiocy of nationalism as the First World War drowned the planet in its bloody consequences.

‘Three of a Kind’ by James Morton (Mary E. Marcy) from International Socialist Review. Vol. 15 No. 6. December, 1914.

HE came into the office to buy a copy of Merrie England. He was on his way back to England from South Africa. Obviously a Briton and proud of the fact. Naturally we talked of the war. What did he think of it, we asked.

“The war” had been “forced” upon France and England by the insatiable greed and desire for more territory of the kaiser, he declared. His two brothers had joined the army and he would fight himself, if need be, to protect England from the aggressions of Germany.

“We have to protect our foreign trade,” he argued, “or Germany will step in and take it all away from us. We will die fighting against the encroachments of the terrible Huns.”

“Yes? It is to be supposed then that you have a business of your own?”

“No, I am a clerk. I am looking for work,” he said. “If you are in need of someone to do work of this kind in your office–“

“Just which one of the privileges you possess now is it that you are willing to shoulder a gun to maintain?” we asked. He did not reply.

“What is it that you are afraid you will lose?” we continued.

“Our provinces, our power, our–our–our INDEPENDENCE!” he snapped promptly. “We shall keep up the fight until Germany is wiped off the seas, until the kaiser is beaten to his knees.”

“Shucks!” broke in our Socialist office boy. “English foreign trade, ‘nd power, ‘nd provinces, don’t seem to have got you nuthin’. Look where you get off at now. What’d England ever do fer you?”

The Englishman prudently ignored so base an intrusion. He had been inoculated with the virus of Patriotism. Was it worth the effort to try to cure him?

Far up in the northern counties of Michigan, between White Lake and the woodlands, dwells Oscar, the German, upon the farm of Mein Herr Altschuler. When last I saw him he was pretending to cut the grass upon a charming hill that overlooks the lake.

His great scythe smote the long stalks of sparse timothy as gently as the wind. There was no change apparent in the path he had trod from the way he was going. But Oscar made no note of these small things.

He was six feet tall and twenty-two and his heart was not in his work. Of that which was beneath his hat you shall yourself be judge.

He was not loth to have speech with me, or you or anybody who chanced to climb the hill for that matter, and he told me about the Great War. His father had gone and his uncles, in Germany, had gone. He suspected the whole male element of the family was at the front.

He’d just-as-lieve-gos-as-not. In fact, he’d rather. Anyway, if he heard from the Old Country he’d HAVE to go.

“What are the Germans fighting for?” I asked.

“I dunno,” said Oscar, dully. “‘Course we’ll have all the other countries after the war,” he added.

“Who will?”

“Oh-er-well-the GOVERNMENT.” He felt a triumph in his ability to find a reply to that question.

“Are they going to give the land they win from their enemies to the German SOLDIERS?” I asked.

“Did they give your father a piece of Alsace Lorraine because he helped to take that land away from the French in 1870?” I asked.

“No,” said Oscar.

“You mean that the German soldiers can have the land they may win from their enemies if they BUY IT?”

“Well–” began Oscar, as he finished his seventeenth pear and began the plum tree, “well”

“They can buy it NOW IF THEY HAVE MONEY ENOUGH. They can go into France or England or Russia and buy all the land they can PAY for now. And it will be just like that after the war.” But Oscar was not a man to be lightly stirred from a mighty purpose. “I don’t care,” he insisted, “I go, just the same.”

That evening I met Oscar and his friend, the French hotel chef, on their way to the skating rink. Their shoes were very new and they both wore red geraniums in their buttonholes.

“Louis,” said Oscar, pointing to his friend. He go to the war, too. He is French.”

“Why do you cross the water and travel such a long way before you fight?” asked my friend. “Why not get your guns and fight each other here on the shore of the lake?”

Oscar looked at Louis and Louis at Oscar. Their broad shoulders were shaking with merriment. How could a man make answer to so absurd a query?

“What on earth,” began my friend with the fervor of the born propagandist, “do you want to fight about?” (He had not yet begun to realize the material he was working with.)

“The kaiser–” began Oscar. “Libertee!” said Louis.

“Good heavens:” said my friend, settling himself to make an end of the folly, “fight if you MUST, fight if you WANT to, but for goodness’ sake, fight FOR something for YOURSELVES.

“If you like using a gun or a sword and you are bent on fighting, why don’t you band together and HOLD UP the railroad paymaster some night when he is making out the payroll?

“Why don’t you get a dark lantern and relieve your boss of some of your hard-earned dollars when he crosses the bridge on his way to the bank some day? Why don’t you put all bosses to work and take a share in the returns?

“It wouldn’t be any worse to kill your BOSS than it would to shoot Oscar or Louis or to be killed yourself, and you MIGHT get something out of the fight.” Oscar looked fearful; Louis shook his head.

“No. We MIGHT be ARRESTED!”

“No,” they said, with resigned finality.

I turned my head away. I could hear tears in the voice of my friend. There are tears everywhere. I am weary of them. Even the newspapers are wet today. For me, I am not a Christian. I will be no martyr for the czar, the kaiser or the king. I will not fight for their honor and for their power. Neither will I weep away the days for Oscar and for Louis.

Let every man stand upon his own head if he so will it.

Perhaps it will be just as well that the Three Men in the same Boat fight each other. You cannot stop them. My friend, who has still the tears in his voice he cannot stop them. I cannot stop them.

But I shall not weep. I shall laugh at the Great Comedy and I shall wish that good luck attend them–Oscar, Louis and the Englishman. Then at least they cannot multiply and replenish the earth with a score of little Louis and small Oscars with very crowded shoes and nothing at all beneath their hats.

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/v15n06-dec-1914-ISR-riaz-ocr.pdf