"But let this fact burn its way into your brain to save you from hell and rouse you for the revolution—this fact:
Nowhere on all that battlefield among the shattered rifles and wrecked canon, among the broken ambulances and splintered ammunition wagons, nowhere in the mire and mush of blood and sand, nowhere among the bulging and befouling carcasses of dead horses and swelling corpses of dead men and boys—nowhere could be found the torn, bloated and fly-blown carcasses of bankers, bishops, politicians, "brainy capitalists" and other elegant and eminent "very best people."
Well, hardly.
Naturally—these proud, cunning and intelligent people were not there, on the firing line.
Listen, oh, listen—you betrayed multitude of toil-damned, war-blasted workers of all nations:
If the masters want blood, let them cut their own throats.
We don't want other people's blood and we refuse to wast our own.
Let those who want "great victories" go to the firing line and get them.
If war is good enough to vote or to pray for, it is good enough to go to—up close where bayonets gleam, swords flash, canon roar, rifles clash, flesh rips, blood spurts, bones snap, brains are dashed,—up close where men toil, sweat, freeze, starve, kill, groan, scream, pray, laugh, howl, curse, go mad and die,—up close where the flesh and blood of betrayed men and boys are pounded into a red mush of mud by shrieking canon balls, by the iron-shod hoofs of galloping horses and the steel-bound wheels of rushing gun-trucks.
"What is war?"
They say "War is Hell."
Well, then, let those who want hell, go to hell. "