To
keep the living counters quiet, to make them jump into the pool of
their own free will at the word "Go," the statesmen, diplomats,
trusts, and profiteers debauch the name of patriotism, raise the
watchword of liberty, and play upon the ignorance of the mob easily,
skillfully, by inciting them to race hatred, by inflaming the brute-
passion in them, and by concocting a terrible mixture of false
idealism and self-interest, so that simple minds quick to respond to
sentiment, as well as those quick to hear the call of the beast, rally
shoulder to shoulder and march to the battlegrounds under the spell of
that potion. Some go with a noble sense of sacrifice, some with blood-
lust in their hearts, most with the herd-instinct following the lead,
little knowing that they are but the pawns of a game which is being
played behind closed doors by the great gamblers in the courts and
Foreign Offices, and committee-rooms, and counting-houses, of the
political casinos in Europe.
I have heard the expression of this view from soldiers during the war
and since the war, at street-corners, in tram-cars, and in
conversations with railway men, mechanics, policemen, and others who
were soldiers a year ago, or stay-at-homes, thinking hard over the
meaning of the war.
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