talk is an excuse for armies
that really serve another purpose. For Socialists believe that the rule
of society by economic classes, and rule by war or brute force, in the
Socialist view, are one and the same thing. No Socialist has expressed
this view more clearly or forcefully than Mr. George R. Kirkpatrick, in
his recent book, "War--What For?" Addressed to the heart as well as to
the head, and based upon all the most important of the previous attacks
on militarism war, whether Socialist or not, it may be doubted whether
any non-Socialist could have presented as powerful an argument. Mr.
Kirkpatrick gives the following interesting outline of the typical
Socialist view of the development of primitive warfare into modern
militarism and of slavery into the present industrial system (here
abbreviated):--

"For a long time in these intertribal wars it was the practice to
take no prisoners (except the younger women), but to kill, kill,
kill, because the conquerors had no use for the captive men. When,
however, society had developed industrially to a stage enabling the
victors to make use of live men as work animals, _that new
industrial condition produced a new idea_--one of the greatest and
most revolutionary ideas that ever flashed into the human brain;
and that idea was simply this: A live man is worth more than a dead
one, if you can make use of him as a _work animal_. When
industrially it became practicable for the conquerors to make use
of live men captured in war, it rapidly became the custom to take
prisoners, save them alive, beat them into submission--tame
them--and thus have them for work animals, human work animals.

"Here the human ox, yoked to the burdens of the world, started
through the centuries, centuries wet with tears and red with blood
and fire.

"Thus originated a _class_ of workers, the _working class_.

"Thus also originated the _ruling_ class. Thus originated the
'leading citizens.'

"Thus originally, in war, the workers fell into the bottomless gulf
of misery. It was thus that war opened wide the devouring jaws of
hell for the workers.

"Thus was human society long ago divided into industrial
classes--into _two_ industrial classes.

"Of course the interests of these two classes were in fundamental
conflict, and thus originated the class struggle.

"Of co