MIA > Archive > Bill Haywood
Source: From International Socialist Review, Vol. 13 No. 4, October 1912, p. 327.
Transcription: Matthew Siegfried.
HTML mark-up: Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists Internet Archive (2019).
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2022). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
A WAR with Mexico seems imminent. The United States troops have been at the border for months waiting for a pretext to begin the blood-letting.
The working people of the two countries are about to be driven to butcher one another in the interest of a handful of capitalists, oil magnates and owners of railroads, mines, ranches and franchises.
Now is the time for Socialists to act. The Socialists of England and other nations are at this moment voting on a motion proposed by the English and French delegates at the last international congress, calling for a general strike, especially of railroad employees and the producers of military supplies, in the case of a declaration of war. The motion will undoubtedly be carried, and the Socialists of this country cannot afford to wait until the final decision has been reached. Our time to act is now.
This general strike may require some time for its preparation. Immediate action is also possible. The Socialist Party should at once declare that any of its members who enlist either for this or any other threatening war, such as the impending attack on Nicaragua, ceases by that act to be a member of the Socialist party.
This action is demanded not only by the danger of fratricidal butchery but also by our duty to come, however late, to the aid of our brother revolutionists in Mexico – who might be in a far better position today if the Socialist Party had not steadily refused to do its duty in this regard up to the present time.
We hereby call upon the membership of the Socialist party and the working class generally to take immediate steps to prevent war with Mexico. (This resolution is being voted on by the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party as we go to press.)
Last updated on 10 June 2022