CHAPTER SIX. Tricked to the Trenches—Then Snubbed. (continued 2)
Reading edition
Refuse, brothers, refuse. Be proud. Refuse. Stand by your own class. Refuse. Bankers refuse. Manufacturers refuse. All the shrewd “prominent people” refuse. You also should refuse to let your flesh rot and your bones bleach at the bottom of the ocean in the interest of these international leeches.
Lift up your meek faces, you tricked toilers of the world. The war trenches are yawning for your lives—a gulf in which the hopes, the happiness, the blood and the tears of your class will be swallowed.
Refuse.
When you understand, brothers, you will defend yourselves.
The day is dawning when the working class will not only shrewdly refuse to be tricked to the trenches, but will also proudly seize all the powers of government in defense of the working class. The working class must defend the working class. The state, the school, the press, the lecture platform, and even part of the church, all these powerful institutions, are at present used to fasten and hold the burdens of toil and the curse of war on the backs of the brutalized and despised working-class producers and the working-class destroyers.
It is our move, brothers. Have we sense enough for self-defense? See Chapter Ten: “Now What Shall We Do About It?”
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