1917] "More than Pacifism" 



The week before, so I was told, three leading public 

 men had come together at the Union League Club, 

 with reporters present, and informally declared war 

 against Germany; furthermore, an intolerant mass 

 meeting had just been held in the Garden. Both 

 incidents greatly exasperated the people of the East 

 Side, for "the rich man's war is the poor man's fight," war pros 

 and a unanimous "boo" welled up from the crowd P erit y* 

 when the names of Root and Roosevelt were inci- grimjok{ 

 dentally mentioned as recipients of the Nobel Peace 

 Prize! 



Certain resolutions were passed by the audience, 

 but I did not prepare them or know their contents 

 until they were put before the meeting, although 

 some phrases of mine were apparently drawn upon. 

 And I must admit that participation laid me open 



chests and pinched faces whose lives had been spent over stitching machines, 

 street-car conductors, dock laborers, young excited men and women such as 

 can be seen during any political campaign at street-corner gatherings, during 

 any garment strike at union locals. These people were not thinking mainly 

 either of international affairs or of unadulterated pacifist philosophy. But there 

 were certain details of our social organism that had come close to them. . . . 

 They had heard much of prosperity. . . . They had read of vast profits . . . 

 one hundred per cent, two hundred per cent dividends of our great industrial 

 companies as a result of war. The rising cost of living, it had been drummed 

 into them, was a result of the war. They remembered the strikes ... in 

 this, that, or the other industry in which the financial powers had almost invari- 

 ably been against them. Now the cry was that Wall Street wanted war; nothing 

 could be more obvious. The spokesmen of the money power who had con- 

 sistently opposed unionism and all extensions of democracy had been in vocifer- 

 ous evidence for a long time, asking the United States to fight in behalf of liberal- 

 ism and democracy abroad. To the people in Madison Square Garden this had 

 grown to be more than a grim joke it was an insult, an outrage. ... This 

 . . . is a war against a predatory autocracy, and the United States is going 

 into it with one of the best causes and one of the most hopeful purposes for 

 which a nation ever fought. But the clean purpose and enthusiasm of the nation 

 is poisoned by our own internal class struggle. Our plutocrats, whether they 

 know it or not, are themselves largely responsible for the bitterness of the 

 protest. It is they who have made the American purposes seem insincere . . . 

 while we are fighting for democracy abroad, the American Bourbons dare no 

 longer delay us in the task of perfecting it at home." 



C7I93 



