thousands of dollars are being spent for the display of these toys. That was the purpose of the American
government in equipping a fleet and sending it along the Pacific coast, that every American citizen should be made
to feel the pride and glory of the United States. The city of San Francisco spent one hundred thousand dollars for
the entertainment of the fleet; Los Angeles, sixty thousand; Seattle and Tacoma, about one hundred thousand. To
entertain the fleet, did I say? To dine and wine a few superior officers, while the "brave boys" had to mutiny to get
sufficient food. Yes, two hundred and sixty thousand dollars were spent on fireworks, theatre parties, and
revelries, at a time when men, women, and children through the breadth and length of the country were starving in
the streets; when thousands of unemployed were ready to sell their labor at any price.
Two hundred and sixty thousand dollars! What could not have been accomplished with such an enormous sum?
But instead of bread and shelter, the children of those cities were taken to see the fleet, that it may remain, as one
of the newspapers said, "a lasting memory for the child."
A wonderful thing to remember, is it not? The implements of civilized slaughter. If the mind of the child is to be
poisoned with such memories, what hope is there for a true realization of human brotherhood?
We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into
spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens. We
are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the attempt
upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the
most powerful nation on earth, and that it will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations.
Such is the logic of patriotism.
Considering the evil results that patriotism is fraught with for the average man, it is as nothing compared with the
insult and injury that patriotism heaps upon the soldier himself,—that poor, deluded victim of superstition and
ignorance. He, the savior of his country, the protector of his nation,—what has patriotism in store for him? A life
of slavish submission, vice, and perversion, during peace; a life of danger, exposure, and death, during war.
While on a recent lecture tour in San Francisco, I visited the Presidio, the most beautiful spot overlooking the Bay
and Golden Gate Park. Its purpose should have been playgrounds for children, gardens and music for the
recreation of the weary. Instead it is made ugly, dull, and gray by barracks,—barracks wherein the rich would not
allow their dogs to dwell. In these miserable shanties soldiers are herded like cattle; here they waste their young
days, polishing the boots and brass buttons of their superior officers. Here, too, I saw the distinction of classes:
sturdy sons of a free Republic, drawn up in line like convicts, saluting every passing shrimp of a lieutenant.
American equality, degrading manhood and elevating the uniform!
Barrack life further tends to develop tendencies of sexual perversion. It is gradually producing along this line
results similar to European military conditions. Havelock Ellis, the noted writer on sex psychology, has made a
thorough study of the subject. I quote: "Some of the barracks are great centers of male prostitution.... The number
of soldiers who prostitute themselves is greater than we are willing to believe. It is no exaggeration to say that in
certain regiments the presumption is in favor of the venality of the majority of the men.... On summer evenings
Hyde Park and the neighborhood of Albert Gate are full of guardsmen and others plying a lively trade, and with
little disguise, in uniform or out.... In most cases the proceeds form a comfortable addition to Tommy Atkins'
pocket money."
To what extent this perversion has eaten its way into the army and navy can best be judged from the fact that
special houses exist for this form of prostitution. The practice is not limited to England; it is universal. "Soldiers
are no less sought after in France than in England or in Germany, and special houses for military prostitution exist
both in Paris and the garrison towns."
Had Mr. Havelock Ellis included America in his investigation of sex perversion, he would have found that the
same conditions prevail in our army and navy as in those of other countries. The growth of the standing army
inevitably adds to the spread of sex perversion; the barracks are the incubators.
Aside from the sexual effects of barrack life, it also tends to unfit the soldier for useful labor after leaving the
army. Men, skilled in a trade, seldom enter the army or navy, but even they, after a military experience, find
themselves totally unfitted for their former occupations. Having acquired habits of idleness and a taste for
excitement and adventure, no peaceful pursuit can content them. Released from the army, they can turn to no
useful work. But it is usually the social riff-raff, discharged prisoners and the like, whom either the struggle for
life or their own inclination drives into the ranks. These, their military term over, again turn to their former life of
crime, more brutalized and degraded than before. It is a well-known fact that in our prisons there is a goodly
number of ex-soldiers; while on the other hand, the army and navy are to a great extent supplied with ex-convicts.
Of all the evil results, I have just described, none seems to me so detrimental to human integrity as the spirit
patriotism has produced in the case of Private William Buwalda. Because he foolishly believed that one can be a
soldier and exercise his rights as a man at the same time, the military authorities punished him severely. True, he
had served his country fifteen years, during which time his record was unimpeachable. According to Gen.
Funston, who reduced Buwalda's sentence to three years, "the first duty of an officer or an enlisted man is
unquestioned obedience and loyalty to the government, and it makes no difference whether he approves of that
government or not." Thus Funston stamps the true character of allegiance. According to him, entrance into the
army abrogates the principles of the Declaration of Independence.
What a strange development of patriotism that turns a thinking being into a loyal machine!
In justification of this most outrageous sentence of Buwalda, Gen. Funston tells the American people that the
soldier's action was a "serious crime equal to treason." Now, what did this "terrible crime" really consist of?
Simply in this: William Buwalda was one of fifteen hundred people who attended a public meeting in San
Francisco; and, oh, horrors, he shook hands with the speaker, Emma Goldman. A terrible crime, indeed, which the
General calls "a great military offense, infinitely worse than desertion."
Can there be a greater indictment against patriotism than that it will thus brand a man a criminal, throw him into
prison, and rob him of the results of fifteen years of faithful service?
Buwalda gave to his country the best years of his life and his very manhood. But all that was as nothing.
Patriotism is inexorable and, like all insatiable monsters, demands all or nothing. It does not admit that a soldier is
also a human being, who has a right to his own feelings and opinions, his own inclinations and ideas. No,
patriotism can not admit of that. That is the lesson which Buwalda was made to learn; made to learn at a rather
costly, though not at a useless, price. When he returned to freedom, he had lost his position in the army, but he
regained his self-respect. After all, that is worth three years of imprisonment.
A writer on the military conditions of America, in a recent article, commented on the power of the military man
over the civilian in Germany. He said, among other things, that if our Republic had no other meaning than to
guarantee all citizens equal rights, it would have just cause for existence. I am convinced that the writer was not in
Colorado during the patriotic regime of General Bell. He probably would have changed his mind had he seen how,
in the name of patriotism and the Republic, men were thrown into bull-pens, dragged about, driven across the
border, and subjected to all kinds of indignities. Nor is that Colorado incident the only one in the growth of
military power in the United States. There is hardly a strike where troops and militia do not come to the rescue of
those in power, and where they do not act as arrogantly and brutally as do the men wearing the Kaiser's uniform.
Then, too, we have the Dick military law. Had the writer forgotten that?
A great misfortune with most of our writers is that they are absolutely ignorant on current events, or that, lacking
honesty, they will not speak of these matters. And so it has come to pass that the Dick military law was rushed
through Congress with little discussion and still less publicity,—a law which gives the President the power to turn
a peaceful citizen into a bloodthirsty man-killer, supposedly for the defense of the country, in reality for the
protection of the interests of that particular party whose mouthpiece the President happens to be.
Our writer claims that militarism can never become such a power in America as abroad, since it is voluntary with
us, while compulsory in the Old World. Two very important facts, however, the gentleman forgets to consider.
First, that conscription has created in Europe a deep-seated hatred of militarism among all classes of society.
Thousands of young recruits enlist under protest and, once in the army, they will use every possible means to
desert. Second, that it is the compulsory feature of militarism which has created a tremendous anti-militarist
movement, feared by European Powers far more than anything else. After all, the greatest bulwark of capitalism is
militarism. The very moment the latter is undermined, capitalism will totter. True, we have no conscription; that is,
men are not usually forced to enlist in the army, but we have developed a far more exacting and rigid force—
necessity. Is it not a fact that during industrial depressions there is a tremendous increase in the number of
enlistments? The trade of militarism may not be either lucrative or honorable, but it is better than tramping the
country in search of work, standing in the bread line, or sleeping in municipal lodging houses. After all, it means
thirteen dollars per month, three meals a day, and a place to sleep. Yet even necessity is not sufficiently strong a
factor to bring into the army an element of character and manhood. No wonder our military authorities complain of
the "poor material" enlisting in the army and navy. This admission is a very encouraging sign. It proves that there
is still enough of the spirit of independence and love of liberty left in the average American to risk starvation rather
than don the uniform.
Thinking men and women the world over are beginning to realize that patriotism is too narrow and limited a
conception to meet the necessities of our time. The centralization of power has brought into being an international
feeling of solidarity among the oppressed nations of the world; a solidarity which represents a greater harmony of
interests between the workingman of America and his brothers abroad than between the American miner and his
exploiting compatriot; a solidarity which fears not foreign invasion, because it is bringing all the workers to the
point when they will say to their masters, "Go and do your own killing. We have done it long enough for you."
This solidarity is awakening the consciousness of even the soldiers, they, too, being flesh of the flesh of the great
human family. A solidarity that has proven infallible more than once during past struggles, and which has been the
impetus inducing the Parisian soldiers, during the Commune of 1871, to refuse to obey when ordered to shoot
their brothers. It has given courage to the men who mutinied on Russian warships during recent years. It will
eventually bring about the uprising of all the oppressed and downtrodden against their international exploiters.
The proletariat of Europe has realized the great force of that solidarity and has, as a result, inaugurated a war
against patriotism and its bloody spectre, militarism. Thousands of men fill the prisons of France, Germany,
Russia, and the Scandinavian countries, because they dared to defy the ancient superstition. Nor is the movement
limited to the working class; it has embraced representatives in all stations of life, its chief exponents being men
and women prominent in art, science, and letters.
America will have to follow suit. The spirit of militarism has already permeated all walks of life. Indeed, I am
convinced that militarism is growing a greater danger here than anywhere else, because of the many bribes
capitalism holds out to those whom it wishes to destroy.
The beginning has already been made in the schools. Evidently the government holds to the Jesuitical conception,
"Give me the child mind, and I will mould the man." Children are trained in military tactics, the glory of military
achievements extolled in the curriculum, and the youthful minds perverted to suit the government. Further, the
youth of the country is appealed to in glaring posters to join the army and navy. "A fine chance to see the world!"
cries the governmental huckster. Thus innocent boys are morally shanghaied into patriotism, and the military
Moloch strides conquering through the Nation.
The American workingman has suffered so much at the hands of the soldier, State, and Federal, that he is quite
justified in his disgust with, and his opposition to, the uniformed parasite. However, mere denunciation will not
solve this great problem. What we need is a propaganda of education for the soldier: anti-patriotic literature that
will enlighten him as to the real horrors of his trade, and that will awaken his consciousness to his true relation to
the man to whose labor he owes his very existence.
It is precisely this that the authorities fear most. It is already high treason for a soldier to attend a radical meeting.
No doubt they will also stamp it high treason for a soldier to read a radical pamphlet. But then, has not authority
from time immemorial stamped every step of progress as treasonable? Those, however, who earnestly strive for
social reconstruction can well afford to face all that; for it is probably even more important to carry the truth into
the barracks than into the factory. When we have undermined the patriotic lie, we shall have cleared the path for
that great structure wherein all nationalities shall be united into a universal brotherhood,—a truly FREE
SOCIETY.
FRANCISCO FERRER AND THE MODERN SCHOOL
Experience has come to be considered the best school of life. The man or woman who does not learn some vital
lesson in that school is looked upon as a dunce indeed. Yet strange to say, that though organized institutions
continue perpetrating errors, though they learn nothing from experience, we acquiesce, as a matter of course.
There lived and worked in Barcelona a man by the name of Francisco Ferrer. A teacher of children he was, known
and loved by his people. Outside of Spain only the cultured few knew of Francisco Ferrer's work. To the world at
large this teacher was non-existent.
On the first of September, 1909, the Spanish government—at the behest of the Catholic Church—arrested
Francisco Ferrer. On the thirteenth of October, after a mock trial, he was placed in the ditch at Montjuich prison,
against the hideous wall of many sighs, and shot dead. Instantly Ferrer, the obscure teacher, became a universal
figure, blazing forth the indignation and wrath of the whole civilized world against the wanton murder.
The killing of Francisco Ferrer was not the first crime committed by the Spanish government and the Catholic
Church. The history of these institutions is one long stream of fire and blood. Still they have not learned through
experience, nor yet come to realize that every frail being slain by Church and State grows and grows into a mighty
giant, who will some day free humanity from their perilous hold.
Francisco Ferrer was born in 1859, of humble parents. They were Catholics, and therefore hoped to raise their son
in the same faith. They did not know that the boy was to become the harbinger of a great truth, that his mind
would refuse to travel in the old path. At an early age Ferrer began to question the faith of his fathers. He
demanded to know how it is that the God who spoke to him of goodness and love would mar the sleep of the
innocent child with dread and awe of tortures, of suffering, of hell. Alert and of a vivid and investigating mind, it
did not take him long to discover the hideousness of that black monster, the Catholic Church. He would have none
of it.
Francisco Ferrer was not only a doubter, a searcher for truth; he was also a rebel. His spirit would rise in just
indignation against the iron regime of his country, and when a band of rebels, led by the brave patriot, General
Villacampa, under the banner of the Republican ideal, made an onslaught on that regime, none was more ardent a
fighter than young Francisco Ferrer. The Republican ideal,—I hope no one will confound it with the
Republicanism of this country. Whatever objection I, as an Anarchist, have to the Republicans of Latin countries, I
know they tower high above the corrupt and reactionary party which, in America, is destroying every vestige of
liberty and justice. One has but to think of the Mazzinis, the Garibaldis, the scores of others, to realize that their
efforts were directed, not merely towards the overthrow of despotism, but particularly against the Catholic Church,
which from its very inception has been the enemy of all progress and liberalism.
In America it is just the reverse. Republicanism stands for vested rights, for imperialism, for graft, for the
annihilation of every semblance of liberty. Its ideal is the oily, creepy respectability of a McKinley, and the brutal
arrogance of a Roosevelt.
The Spanish republican rebels were subdued. It takes more than one brave effort to split the rock of ages, to cut
off the head of that hydra monster, the Catholic Church and the Spanish throne. Arrest, persecution, and
punishment followed the heroic attempt of the little band. Those who could escape the bloodhounds had to flee for
safety to foreign shores. Francisco Ferrer was among the latter. He went to France.
How his soul must have expanded in the new land! France, the cradle of liberty, of ideas, of action. Paris, the ever
young, intense Paris, with her pulsating life, after the gloom of his own belated country,—how she must have
inspired him. What opportunities, what a glorious chance for a young idealist.
Francisco Ferrer lost no time. Like one famished he threw himself into the various liberal movements, met all
kinds of people, learned, absorbed, and grew. While there, he also saw in operation the Modern School, which
was to play such an important and fatal part in his life.
The Modern School in France was founded long before Ferrer's time. Its originator, though on a small scale, was
that sweet spirit, Louise Michel. Whether consciously or unconsciously, our own great Louise felt long ago that
the future belongs to the young generation; that unless the young be rescued from that mind and soul destroying
institution, the bourgeois school, social evils will continue to exist. Perhaps she thought, with Ibsen, that the
atmosphere is saturated with ghosts, that the adult man and woman have so many superstitions to overcome. No
sooner do they outgrow the deathlike grip of one spook, lo! they find themselves in the thralldom of ninety-nine
other spooks. Thus but a few reach the mountain peak of complete regeneration.
The child, however, has no traditions to overcome. Its mind is not burdened with set ideas, its heart has not grown
cold with class and caste distinctions. The child is to the teacher what clay is to the sculptor. Whether the world
will receive a work of art or a wretched imitation, depends to a large extent on the creative power of the teacher.
Louise Michel was pre-eminently qualified to meet the child's soul cravings. Was she not herself of a childlike
nature, so sweet and tender, unsophisticated and generous. The soul of Louise burned always at white heat over
every social injustice. She was invariably in the front ranks whenever the people of Paris rebelled against some
wrong. And as she was made to suffer imprisonment for her great devotion to the oppressed, the little school on
Montmartre was soon no more. But the seed was planted, and has since borne fruit in many cities of France.
The most important venture of a Modern School was that of the great, young old man, Paul Robin. Together with
a few friends he established a large school at Cempuis, a beautiful place near Paris. Paul Robin aimed at a higher
ideal than merely modern ideas in education. He wanted to demonstrate by actual facts that the bourgeois
conception of heredity is but a mere pretext to exempt society from its terrible crimes against the young. The
contention that the child must suffer for the sins of the fathers, that it must continue in poverty and filth, that it
must grow up a drunkard or criminal, just because its parents left it no other legacy, was too preposterous to the
beautiful spirit of Paul Robin. He believed that whatever part heredity may play, there are other factors equally
great, if not greater, that may and will eradicate or minimize the so-called first cause. Proper economic and social
environment, the breath and freedom of nature, healthy exercise, love and sympathy, and, above all, a deep
understanding for the needs of the child—these would destroy the cruel, unjust, and criminal stigma imposed on
the innocent young.
Paul Robin did not select his children; he did not go to the so-called best parents: he took his material wherever he
could find it. From the street, the hovels, the orphan and foundling asylums, the reformatories, from all those gray
and hideous places where a benevolent society hides its victims in order to pacify its guilty conscience. He
gathered all the dirty, filthy, shivering little waifs his place would hold, and brought them to Cempuis. There,
surrounded by nature's own glory, free and unrestrained, well fed, clean kept, deeply loved and understood, the
little human plants began to grow, to blossom, to develop beyond even the expectations of their friend and teacher,
Paul Robin.
The children grew and developed into self-reliant, liberty loving men and women. What greater danger to the
institutions that make the poor in order to perpetuate the poor. Cempuis was closed by the French government on
the charge of co-education, which is prohibited in France. However, Cempuis had been in operation long enough
to prove to all advanced educators its tremendous possibilities, and to serve as an impetus for modern methods of
education, that are slowly but inevitably undermining the present system.
Cempuis was followed by a great number of other educational attempts,—among them, by Madelaine Vernet, a
gifted writer and poet, author of L'AMOUR LIBRE, and Sebastian Faure, with his LA RUCHE,[1] which I
visited while in Paris, in 1907.
Several years ago Comrade Faure bought the land on which he built his LA RUCHE. In a comparatively short
time he succeeded in transforming the former wild, uncultivated country into a blooming spot, having all the
appearance of a well kept farm. A large, square court, enclosed by three buildings, and a broad path leading to the
garden and orchards, greet the eye of the visitor. The garden, kept as only a Frenchman knows how, furnishes a
large variety of vegetables for LA RUCHE.
Sebastian Faure is of the opinion that if the child is subjected to contradictory influences, its development suffers
in consequence. Only when the material needs, the hygiene of the home, and intellectual environment are
harmonious, can the child grow into a healthy, free being.
Referring to his school, Sebastian Faure has this to say:
"I have taken twenty-four children of both sexes, mostly orphans, or those whose parents are too poor to pay.
They are clothed, housed, and educated at my expense. Till their twelfth year they will receive a sound, elementary
education. Between the age of twelve and fifteen—their studies still continuing—they are to be taught some trade,
in keeping with their individual disposition and abilities. After that they are at liberty to leave LA RUCHE to begin
life in the outside world, with the assurance that they may at any time return to LA RUCHE, where they will be
received with open arms and welcomed as parents do their beloved children. Then, if they wish to work at our
place, they may do so under the following conditions: One third of the product to cover his or her expenses of
maintenance, another third to go towards the general fund set aside for accommodating new children, and the last
third to be devoted to the personal use of the child, as he or she may see fit.
"The health of the children who are now in my care is perfect. Pure air, nutritious food, physical exercise in the
open, long walks, observation of hygienic rules, the short and interesting method of instruction, and, above all, our
affect