The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-08-01
". THE THANKS OF THE FArHERLAND

During four and a half years the masses of
toilers of every country sacrificed their lives and
possessions the altar of capitalist profit During
four and half years they allowed themselves to
be slaughtered and made into cripples, they allowed
their wives and children to toll and rot in the hell
of the armament factories, their fields to be laid
waste and the basis of their existence destroyed.
And all this happened during period when the
possessing class was pocketng rich war profits
you are sure of the thanks of the Fatherland,"
they shrieked into the ears of the soldiers at the
front and those left behind in the country Fiji
teen years have passed since the ending of the
World War, but the thanks of the Fatherand"
have not yet made their appearance. Where is the
soldier from the front war invalid war widow or
war orphan who can say, in what country the
working class as a whole say, that they have been
able to perceive and appreciate the thanks of the
fatherland?"
When the masses of the workers returned from
the front, they found the conditions of production
and family relations at home undermined, the fac
tory gates closed and general increase of prices
and taxes. The war brought with it tremendous
intensifcation of the international class struggle
If, for the ruling class, the was excellent bust
ness, for the wide masses of the toilers it meant
DEATH starvation, suffering and desperation. After
four and half years of unspeakable deprivations
and death perils, the soldiers from the front re-
of hate against the rulers also the wives who
had been left behind, robbed of their husbands
and sons, subjected to the most shameless expoita-
ton in the hell of the munition factories and left
to suffer want and starvation. The question of
revolution, the question of the political seizure of
power by the proletariat, came onto the order of
the day. The ruling class in those days would have
been rretrievaby lost if the leaders of the Second
International had not taken up the historic task
of acting as the ''boodhounds" of the bourgeoisie
and crushing by force the struggles and strike
tons. In Germany and Hungary, in Poland and
Finland in the Balkans and in Czecho-Slovakia
the bourgeoise answered the demands of the
proletariat with mass terror and mass blood
bath In the countries of the victors in which it
was declared "the enemy will pay ar everything"
the tribute payments flowed into the pockets of
the French armament trusts and into the treasures
of the City of London and of Wall Street, New
York. From 1919 to 1923 serious economic crisis
ragged which, after short period of relative
sterilization. made way for the most intense of all
economic crises which up to the present day pre-
walls in more or less violent form.
The bourgeoise in the conquered countries, who
had been compelled by the Versailles powers to
make heavy payments of tribute, shifted the pay
ment of the costs of the exclusively onto the
shoulders of the masses of the people. The res
toration of the damage inflicted by war was new
profit -making business for the capitalists of all
countries For the tolng masses, however, the
burden of taxation had never been anything like
what it was in the postwar period. In the victor
countries, the toers waited in vain for the coming
of a decisive improvement in their condition of
life The initiation wave swept over the whole of
Europe and plundered the workers and peasants
the employees and petty -bourgeois masses of their
last penny The workers had to pay for the restora
ton of the capitalist production apparatus in the
period OF relative sterilization through rationalza-
Subjected tn q system
of exploitation. In so far as the bourgeeisie had
made concessions out of fear of the social revolu
ton, by granting the eight-hour day social insur-
ance and certain parliamentary rights 1t now took