INTRODUCTION BY THE PUBLISHERS.
In issuing this well-known speech of Gustave Herve's as one of the publications of our Bureau we are contributing to an agitation that is now universal in the capitalist world, and is of prime importance as well in the United States as in France. The universal character of Herve's appeal will be apparent to the American reader, notwithstanding the author’s illustrations and allusions are drawn from European experiences alone. We have only to substitute the name America for France, Germany or Russia in order to observe the same process of “making a patriot." Here, as in France and in all other countries, the child’s brain is stuffed with stories of alleged "heroes" of American history from George Washington to Theodore Roosevelt as a preparatory schooling for the future slave to acquire the necessary respect for and obedience to his master—whose mastership, in America as in Europe, has resulted from fraud, cunning, financial manipulation, land steals, and by fishing in troubled waters during and after wars of conquest or expansion, as well as through the merciless exploitation of the working class in industry. All the facts of American history stand out in bold relief to sustain Herve's masterly expose of "capitalist patriotism" and of the baneful effects of the "patriotic" illusion upon the minds of the toilers.
However, there appear to be some differences between the United States and France—the patriotism of the latter is perhaps intensified by a greater weight of tradition and by the fact that the "enemy," though near at hand, is still outside the national boundaries; while on the other hand the United States dominates a continent, and in its development has become like a sea into which have emptied the streams of all nationalities. The patriotism of the American worker, then, has more the characteristics of a shallow "jingoism" combined with race and nationality prejudices born of proximity rather than of distance. The "foreign enemy" is not beyond our boundaries, but in our midst. Although carefully nurtured by the capitalist in his own interest, this form of "patriotism" is likely to prove less deep-rooted and endurable than that in France, on account of fewer traditions here and of the enforced association of native with foreign workers in American industry.
This association of workers on the job, combined with the agitation for ONE BIG UNION of all slaves against all masters, will shortly break down the wails of race and nationality prejudice in the United States, and unite the slaves of all nationalities for emancipation from their "patriotism" and masters of whatever nationality.
The INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD is peculiarly pledged to this task. It aims to unite all wage-workers, without distinction of race, nationality, sex or any other consideration except that they are exploited by a master, into One Big Union of the Working Class, "to take possession of the earth and the machinery of production and abolish the wage system," thus putting an end forever to the rule of the robber class. Then shall we see the dawn of that day dreamed of by the poet Tennyson:
"When the war drums throbbed no longer, and the battle flags were furled
In the Parliament of Man—the Federation of the World."
Note—The above introduction was written in 1912.
