Emma Goldman's Critique of Militarism "P reparedness, the Road to Universal Slaughter" was written by the anarchist Emma Goldman and published in New York in 1915. Emma Goldman (1869–1940) was born into a Jewish family in Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire. As a teenager she moved to St. Petersburg, where she was first exposed to radi- cal politics, and at sixteen she moved to New York. As a young woman she advocated violence and assassination, tactics that were deeply rooted in Russia's anarchist and revolutionary traditions (see Chapter 23). Later she became a pacifist, prefer- ring mass organization as a means of countering the economic and political oppression of industrial capitalism. Louise Bryant, who attended a speech by Goldman in Portland in 1914, was just one of many young Americans stirred to radical political action by her oratory. The two became well ac- quainted, and Goldman attended the funeral of Bryant's husband John Reed in Moscow in 1921. Goldman was arrested several times, once for heading an anticonscription campaign in the leadup to the First World War. After the Alien Act of 1918 allowed the deportation of "undesirable" im- migrants without a trial, in 1919 the U.S. govern- ment deported her back to Russia. She left after two years, profoundly disappointed at the suppression of civil rights by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Goldman then settled in Canada, traveling fre- quently to France and England, and continued to write and speak in defence of individual liberty. Source: Mother Earth 10, no. 10 (December 1915). Preparedness, the Road to Unlversal Slaughter "Ammunition! Ammunition! 0, Lord, thou. who rulest heaven and earth, thou God of love, of mercy and of justice, provide us with enough ammunition to destroy our enemy." Such is the prayer which is ascending dally to the Christian heaven.... [All] of the European people have fallen over each other into the devourtng flames of the furies of war, and America, pushed to the very brink by unscru- pulous politicians, by ranting demagogues, and by military sharks, is preparing for the same terrible feat. In the face of this approach- ing disaster, It behooves men and women not yet overcome by the war madness to raise their volce of protest, to call the attention of the people to the crime and outrage which are about to be perpetrated upon them. America is essentially the melting pot. No national unit composing it is in a posl- tion to boast of superior race purity, particu- lar historic mission, or higher culture. Yet the jingoes and war speculators are filling the air with the sentimental slogan of hypocriti- cal nationalism, "America for Americans," "America first, last, and all the time." This cry has caught the popular fancy from one end of the country to another. In order to maintain America, military preparedness must be en- gaged in at once. A billion dollars of the peo- ple's sweat and blood is to be expended for dreadnaughts and submarines for the army. The pathos of it all is that the America which is to be protected by a huge military force is not the America of the people, but that of the privileged class; the class which robs and exploits the masses, and controls their lives from the cradle to the grave. No less pathetic is it that so few people realize that prepared- ness never leads to peace, but that it is indeed the road to universal slaughter.... Forty years ago Germany proclaimed the slogan: "Germany above everything. Germany for the Germans, first, last and always. We want peace; therefore we must prepare for war. Only a well amed and thoroughly prepared nation can maintain peace, can command respect, can be sure of its national Integrity." And Germany continued to prepare, thereby forcing the other nations to do the same. The terrible European war is only the culminating frution of the hydra-headed gospel, military preparedness.... But though America grows fat on the of Americanism that Jefferson had in mind when he said that the best government is that which governs least; the kind of America that David Thoreau worked for when he pro- claimed that the best government is the one that doesn't govern at all; or the other truly great Americans who aimed to make of this country a haven of refuge, who hoped that all the disinherited and oppressed people in manufacture of munitions and war loans to the Allies to help crush Prussians the same cry is now being ralsed in America which, if carried into national action, would build up an American militarism far more terrible than coming to these shores would gtve character, quality and meaning to the country. That is not the America of the politician and munl- tion speculators... Supposedly, America is to prepare for peace; but in reality it will be the cause of war. It always has been thus-all through blood- stained history, and it will continue until na- tlon will refuse to fight against nation, and until the people of the world will stop prepar- ing for slaughter. Preparedness is like the seed of a poisonous plant; placed in the soll, it will bear polsonous fruit. The European mass de- struction is the fruit of that poisonous seed. It is imperative that the American workers real- ize this before they are driven by the jingoes into the madness that is forever haunted by the specter of danger and invasion; they must know that to prepare for peace means to in- vite war, means to unloose the furles of death. German or Prussian militarism could ever be, and that because nowhere in the world has capitalism become so brazen in its greed and nowhere is the state so ready to kneel at the feet of capital. "Americanization" societies with well known liberals as members, they who but yesterday decried the patriotic clap-trap of today, are now lending themselves to befog the minds of the people and to help bulld up the same destructive institutions in America which they are directly and indirectly helping to pull down in Germany-militarism, the destroyer of youth, the raper of women, the annihilator of the best in the race, the very mower of life.... The very proclaimers of "America first" have long before this betrayed the fundamen- tal principles of real Americanism, of the kind.