Life — June 21, 1917 — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Y e BNW {MA GOLDMAN is opposed to the draft. So are Alexander Berk- man, Leonard Abbott and George Syl- vester Viereck. Elizabeth Gurle Flynn is opposed. Also Morris Hil- quit and John Maurer. Also several thousand other citizens in variou: ts of the country, including three young members of Columbia University, one a girl, and one, as his picture shows, of the amusing, though unfortunate, type that goes about with its mouth open. The three children of Columbia had to be arrested. Other persons of a like disposition have been arrested in New York, Kansas City, Topeka, Columbus and other places, all the way from New England to Texas and be- yond. It will be noticed that the names above that are familiar are names of habitual objectors. It is nothing against the draft that they object to it. If there was no draft coming they would be objecting to something else, and holding meetings about it, and making speeches upbraiding society and objurgating the government. It is the trade of this group of our fellow citizens to object, and they work at it with edifying diligence. If one were to criticise them, it could be suggested that in disparaging the draft they are hitting at the likeliest instrument to Allies of Prussia conduct the world in the direction they profess to wish to have it take. They profess to be out for liberty, self-gov- ernment and suppression of the rule of might in all its forms. But the Prussian purpose in bringing on this war was to establish the rule of might in Eurofe and head off the increasing inclinations of the German social democrats towards self-government. The aim of the draft which our ob- jecting brethren object to is to pro- vide selected soldiers to help to beat the Prussian purpose, and “fight out upon the fields of the world,” as our President has put it, “the cause of human liberty.” The professed cause of the objectors to the draft is this cause of human liberty, but their true cause is the cause of Prussia. Some of them know i some of them are not intelligent enough to realize it; but the obvious truth is that they are busily at work on the German job to hold the world in bondage. And perhaps that is more nearly the employment they belong to than we realize. Nobody's rights are dear to these people. Order has no charm for them, duty no appeal. Their contri- bution to society is noise. There is al- ways plenty to make noises about. There are always just grievances against any social order that exists Emma and Alexander and Elizabeth and Morris and their fellows make the noises heartily and grieve the griev- ances with due clamor. But do they bring any cure in their wallets? None that ordinary people can discern. What they aim at seems to be the destruc- tion of society, and as that is also the present errand of the Prussian autoc- racy, one finds William the Kaiser and his pa mma the Red and hers, working faithfully together to banish liberty and destroy order in the world. With them are those Russian radicals who, with strikes, insurrections and revolts, are doing the Germans’ work in Russia, and emperilling the struggle there for free government. John Spargo, ist, internation- alist, anti-militarist, in resigning the other day from the Socialist party in the United lates, declared that its leaders had “placed it in the position of favoring precisely the things de- sired by the German Foreign Office and of opposing the things the German Foreign Office opposed.” That is the gist of it. The purpose of the selec- tive draft is to provide a force for the defense of democracy against Prus- sianism. The opposition to the draft is an opposition to representative gov- ernment, and since there must be or- comichooks, com