**Editorial Note: Debs
delivered this speech to the Ohio State Convention of the Socialist Party. He was convinced and imprisoned for
"uttering words intended to cause insubordination and disloyalty within
the armed forces of the United States, to incite resistance to the war, and to
promote the cause of Germany."
He ran for president on the Socialist Party ticket in 1920, from jail,
and received almost one million votes.
Comrades, friends and
fellow-workers, for this very cordial greeting, this very hearty reception, I
thank you all with the fullest appreciation of your interest in and your
devotion to the cause for which I am to speak to you this afternoon. To speak
for labor; to plead the cause of the men and women and children who toil; to
serve the working class, has always been to me a high privilege; a duty of
love.
I have just returned from a
visit over yonder, where three of our most loyal comrades are paying the penalty
for their devotion to the cause of the working class [three Cleveland
socialists imprisoned for opposition to the war]. They have come to realize, as many of us have, that
it is extremely dangerous to exercise the constitutional right of free speech
in a country fighting to make democracy safe in the world. They may put those
boys in jailÑand some of the rest of us in jailÑbut they can not put the
Socialist movement in jail. . . .
Why should a Socialist be
discouraged on the eve of the greatest triumph in all the history of the
Socialist movement? It is true that these are anxious, trying days for us
allÑtesting days for the women and men who are upholding the banner of labor in
the struggle of the working class of all the world against the exploiters of
all the world. They tell us that we live in a great free republic; that our
institutions are democratic; that we are a free and self-governing people. This
is too much, even for a joke. But it is not a subject for levity; it is an
exceedingly serious matter.
I hate, I loathe, I despise Junkers and junkerdom. I have no
earthly use for the Junkers of Germany, and not one particle more use for the
Junkers in the United States. These are the gentry who are today wrapped up in
the American flag, who shout their claim from the housetops that they are the
only patriots, and who have their magnifying glasses in hand, scanning the
country for evidence of disloyalty, eager to apply the brand of treason to the
men who dare to even whisper their opposition to Junker rule in the United
Sates.
Every solitary one of these
aristocratic conspirators and would-be murderers claims to be an arch-patriot;
every one of them insists that the war is being waged to make the world safe
for democracy. What humbug! What rot! What false pretense! These autocrats,
these tyrants, these red-handed robbers and murderers, the
"patriots," while the men who have the courage to stand face to face
with them, speak the truth, and fight for their exploited victims--they are the
disloyalists and traitors. If this be true, I want to take my place side by
side with the traitors in this fight. . . .
Why, the other day, by a vote
of five to four--a kind of craps game--come seven, come eleven--they declared
the child labor law unconstitutional--a law secured after twenty years of
education and agitation on the part of all kinds of people. And yet, by a
majority of one, the Supreme Court a body of corporation lawyers, with just one
exception, wiped that law from the statute books, and this in our so-called
democracy, so that we may continue to grind the flesh and blood and bones of
puny little children into profits for the Junkers of Wall Street. And this in a
country that boasts of fighting to make the world safe for democracy! The
history of this country is being written in the blood of the childhood the
industrial lords have murdered.
These are not palatable
truths to them. They do not like to hear them; and what is more they do not
want you to hear them. And that is why they brand us as undesirable citizens ,
and as disloyalists and traitors. If we were actual traitorsÑtraitors to the
people and to their welfare and progress, we would be regarded as eminently
respectable citizens of the republic; we would hold high office, have princely
incomes, and ride in limousines; and we would be pointed out as the elect who
have succeeded in life in honorable pursuit, and worthy of emulation by the
youth of the land. It is precisely because we are disloyal to the traitors that
we are loyal to the people of this nation.
Wars throughout history have
been waged for conquest and plunder. In the Middle Ages when the feudal lords
who inhabited the castles whose towers may still be seen along the Rhine
concluded to enlarge their domains, to increase their power, their prestige and
their wealth they declared war upon one another. But they themselves did not go
to war any more than the modern feudal lords, the barons of Wall Street go to
war. The feudal barons of the Middle Ages, the economic predecessors of the capitalists
of our day, declared all wars. And their miserable serfs fought all the
battles. The poor, ignorant serfs had been taught to revere their masters; to
believe that when their masters declared war upon one another, it was their
patriotic duty to fall upon one another and to cut one another's throats for
the profit and glory of the lords and barons who held them in contempt. And
that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the
subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to
gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and
all to loseÑespecially their lives.
And here let me emphasize the
factÑand it cannot be repeated too oftenÑthat the working class who fight all
the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working
class who freely shed their blood and furnish the corpses, have never yet had a
voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that
invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace.