The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-04-07
The Next War>>Against
Whom!

president ROOSEVELT sets the keynote for
what all the governors, mayors, army officers,
and other self-styled patriots were spoutng yes
terday, and will spout today all through the land,
In glOrihcauon of Army Day.
This is what Roosevelt wrote:
"The celebration Of Army Day on April s
each year, concentrating as it does our entrance
into the World War indicates in part the graft
tude of nation to army, which so valiantIy
served this country in its every emergency"
For these emergencies" Roosevelt is taking the
aggressive lead in the vast enlargement of an
already gigantic war machine, ready now to spring
into action overnight-men, arms, munitions. fac
tories all organized with the place of each in the
monstrous apparatus already determined; the secret
orders and plans all finished and ready
What are these emergencies"
This is a question of the most immediate and
vital concern to every worker, every farmer every
student every professional every member of those
great masses whose bodies and lives are looked
on by capitalism as the cheapest of the munitions
of war.
Defense Of the homeland; protection of life and
property, law and order; defense of democracy,
of civilization, Of culture; punishment of the ag-
gressor"-these are the slogans under which masses
are swept along behind the drums of imperalist
war.
There can be no doubt that these noble-sound-
ing slogans exert tremendous influence over
enormous masses.
We must examine them carefully; we must
learn how to explain them clearly and patiently
again and again. to those millions of toilers who
hate war, but not afraid to fight We must
know how to show them why they are fighting,
and against whom to fight.
"nEFEND the homeland. Whose homeland? Is
it ours, does it belong to the millions of work
ers farmers, students, who are called to fight their
class brothers Of other lands?
Does it belong to the masses, Of whom today
100000 can get no work, are mot wanted" out
casts in the land of their birth? In the land of
unparalleled wealth, where those who are allowed
to work are robbed of their own produce, live on
the edge of misery and in constant insecurity?
The workers and toers have no fatherland
if the fatherland does not belong to them When
the oppressed and exploited are called to fight in
defense Of the "fatherland," it is in defense of
their oppressors and exploters that they are called
to fight
Today, the workers and toilers Of the world
have but one fatherand-and that is the one
land which belongs to the workers the land in
which the workers and toilers have destroyed the
oppressors, and taken for their own-the Soviet
Union.
"The protection Of life and property, law and
order" Whose life and property, whose law and
order? Is it not the life and property of the
exploters, the law and order of the oppressors
the very devices by which the enslavement and
the insecurity and misery of the toers are secured
for the benefit of those who own the vast wealth
Of goods and machines which the workers have
produced.
The defense Of democracy, civilization culture"
Whose democracy" whose civilization" whose
"culture?" Is it democracy where misery and
starvation Of the are legally provided Have
the workers any part in the state which provides
the laws and the armed forces by which they are
exploited and starved, their strikes broken, their
struggles violently suppressed
And what of the civilization" of a society which
permits the masses but the minimum of education
which makes them useful producers, which keeps
millions Of the Negro and white masses in cultural
darkness-a society in which, in it's crisis the
schools, the scientific institutions the libraries the
health services. the very fruits of science and
culture, are the first to go in order to preserve the
profits OF handful OF boated richq
Only in the Soviet Union, only in the workers
fatherland, are civilization AND culture the prop
erty OF the broadest masses preserved and fostered
as the priceless right of all toilers
Punishment Of the aggressor"-Who is the
aggressor in the neyer-ending economic war among
the imperialists, in the ending class war of
the capitalists upon the workers?
1t is never a question of Who is the "aggressor I"
VINO is waging an unjust war? The question
must always be- who is on the imp4faHst side
who represents counter-revoution who represents
exploitation, and who represents the fight against
the capitalist oppressors?
Among the opposing armies, none of the fighters
not one of the workers and farmers in uniform