Graham R (Ed.) - Anarchism - A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume One - From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)

War And Revolution In Europe /291
volt, and that later on they will be again used against them in order to compel them
to undergo and endure capitalist exploitation.
To the workers on fa rm and field it is necessary to show that after the war they
will be obliged once more to bend beneath the yoke and to continue to cultivate the
lands of their lords and to feed the rich.
To all the outcasts, that they should not part with their arms until they have set·
tled accounts with their oppressors, until they have taken land and factory and work·
shop for themselves.
To mothers, wives, and daughters, the victims of increased misery and priva·
tion, let us show who are the ones really responsible for their sorrows and fo r the
massacre of their fathers, sons, and husbands.
We must take advantage of all the movements of revolt, of all the discontent, in
order to fo ment insurrection, and to organize the revolution to which we look to put
an end to all social wrongs.
No despondency, even before a calamity like the present war. It is in periods
thus troubled, in which many thousands of men heroically give their lives fo r an idea,
that we must show these men the generosity, greatness, and beauty of the Anarchist
ideal: Social justice realized through the free organization of producers; war and mil·
itarism done away with forever; and complete freedom won, by the abolition of the
State and its organs of destruction.
82. Emma Goldman: The Road to Universal Slaughter (1915)
When the United States did not immediately enter the war, there was a concerted propaganda
campaign infavour of u.s. involvement under the rubric of "Preparedness, " resulting ill a mas·
sive increase in U.S. military forces. In response, Emma Goldman published tIl is essay,
"Prepardedness: The Road to Universal Slaughter, " in Mother Earth, Vol. X, No. 10, December
1915, and also as a pamphlet.
In February 1917, revolution broke out in Russia. In April 1917, the United States entered the
war and, as Emma Goldman had predicted, began an aggressive attack on radicals at home.
Goldman and Berkman, actively campaigning against cOllScription, were arrested in june
1917, sentenced to two years in prison and deported to Russia upon their release, while distri·
bution of Mother Earth and Berkman's paper, The Blast, was effectively prohibited.
EVER SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE EUROPEAN conflagration, the whole human
race almost has fallen into the deathly grip of the war anesthesis, overcome by the
mad teaming fu mes of a blood soaked chloroform, which has obscured its vision and
paralyzed its heart. Indeed, with the exception of some savage tribes, who know