﻿And Nothing Good Shall Come Of It–– 
The next war shall be a chemical one––my guess––it is already going on and has been going on in various degrees of violence since the good old days of Nero (the guy that didn’t have the guts to suicide)––and mebbe before. 
Chemical science has advanced to the stage, in the decomposition of “the crudes”, to such an extent that it will be no trouble at all to decompose man and all his works. 
But the powers that be need not start their celebration just yet. 
While the battalions are out there gassing one another, the non-combatants back home will be running around with their modest stinkpots, giving all and sundry inside information as to the wonderful progress of science in the field of medical extermination. None shall survive, or be immune to this last epidemic of dementia––it has happened before, Sodom and Gomorrah. But will not civilization perish? 
No It has been gone ALREADY! Civilization in the hands of barbarians cannot prevail. 
It will be remembered “Lot’s wife looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt”––wellsir, our bone-headed pikers of the chemical racket can go over there with a leadjug of, say, 1200 proof sulphuric acid and turn that pillar of salt into muriatic acid (hydro chloric)–– if you want to really know what Lot’s wife was made of––and lots and lots of wives today expose an acidity that would cause muriatic to grow selfconscious and try to hide in the fumes of its blushes . . . 
Not yet has chemistry reached the stage where it could take a sack of salt and transform it into a baby girl, or a barrel of salt into a flapper, or a carboy of muriatic acid into a bathing beauty, but the way they are slinging acids around it would seem logical to think the nuts will eventually and accidentally stumble against something––if in the meantime they do not spill some of it on their precious person––what nuts these mortals be; will they ever learn? 
One thing is sure, in the next war there will be no bullet or acid proof jobs––all hands shall participate in it; either as active soldiers of the front or home combatants of the rear. The fall of sinecures shall presage the folding up of civilization and its darling capitalism. Therefore I beseech you, O ye lunatics, have a care that this unnecessary thing shall not come to pass––it is NOT inevitable; it entails no sacrifice––discontinuance of an insane racket is not a sacrifice––self-preservation dictates it. 
Discard the capitalist system, proved fruitless––a la I. W. W. 
Join the Industrial Workers of the World. 
Now go on your own! 

Irritations the likes of which hell knows no worse. 
This condition is no discredit to the B. E. F.––if anything it discredits the law: the chickens have come home to roost. The twelve million unemployed are much in a similar position. Washington doesn’t want ‘em. Nobody wants ‘em. They can’t even scab themselves a job because over one half of the job-holders have already scabbed themselves to less than half-pay (half-pay is close to average because a percentage is working for nothing and begging their clothing: That cancels those that get more than half-pay––$100.00 week bosses are getting $30.00 a week etc.) 
The solution is not from driving them from town to town––even discounting the cost in lives and materials . . . 
It lies in economic organization––you can’t even vote intelligently lest you have a one big union, and then you won’t need to: the goose will lay a golden egg.  

THE WORKERS 
The workers should blush with shame when leading politicans and capitalist exploiters pay them compliments on their wonderful patience. It is no credit to them that they are patient with injustice, patient with poverty, patient with unemployment, patient with insults and lies and betrayals. We do not advocate violence, because it is merely a blind and instinctive way of expressing resentment against conditions. What we do urge upon the workers is a policy of intelligent impatience. They should use the most determined and fundamental measures of direct economic revolt with a view to abolishing the system which oppresses them. Under conditions of tyranny, the spirit of freedom is the great virtue, and patience is the worst weakness. 

We used to hold that the workers couldn’t run the industries of the country, that the brains and initiative of the capitalists were needed. Well, just look at the results! Could the workers do worse?