﻿Produce for Use And Peace Will Come at Last 
By T-BONE SLIM 
 
At last a hurrahing chance! 
Pro-Germans can hurrah the sinking of HMS Hood; pro-British can hurrah for the sinking of the Bismarck.  
Everybody is accomodated. Everybody is happy. The cost of that fun came from the workers’ pocket. 
The USA is fortunate in being so composed that it can fit the military command to suit all conditions. If the war be to defend Britain, the command will bloom with pro-British. If the war be to defend Germany, the command will be roseate with pro-Germans. If the war be to defend China, the command will take on a distinct squint, etc. 
We can arrange it, no matter whom we defend. 
And all that the pro-foreigners and native sons need do is sling the lead and dodge the enemy’s capsules. 

They have blown their basoons to the end that the “lot of the common herd shall be grievous indeed if Hitler wins,” but they do not mention what the lot of big business shall be. It was feared that such announcement would sour the baby’s milk. Great emphasis was laid on the surplus production we have in store and on the inability to get a fair price for it abroad––if Hitler wins. (The price was missing before Hitler became an outstanding factor and a goat for our rollicking chiselers.) 
But why should we over-produce to feed foreigners at cut rates? Why not produce for ourselves alone? 
But that would not be business. 
Of course not, and inasmuch as business is war––it would be peace; hand to mouth peace. 
There is a choice between two evils: 
Fascism, as a capitalist institution, gets your roll through roughhouse tactics; imperialism, as a capital institution, relieves you of your roll in true Chesterfieldian manner. You are accepting of capitalism’s offers ether way. Heluva place to go looking for bait! 
If we enter this war we shall have done so in instalments––a very bad strategy, for the old rule is: Get there first with the strongest b. s. 

Dr. Thomas Parran, Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service, favors a nationwide drive for better nutrition as a defense measure. The principle is the same as tossng the turkey a few handsful of corn just before Thanksgiving Day. Needless to say, however, Parran is positively correct––we eat only “Just before the battle, Mother.” 

The dispatch with which we can make a soldier is astonishing––just throw a uniform at a yokel and next minute he is qualified to act as expert military observes abroad where the shot and shell are screaming on the battlefield. 

Newspapers say the King of Greece was actually in Crete. I didn’t think he’d stop this side of Johanesbourg. Papers now say he’s in Alexandria. 
Can the reader guess under which shell reposes the monarch? 
This country is an ideal place for all nations’ “rump” governments––we are a cosmopolitan nation. The Greek king, for instance, could come over here and lord it over a part of the goulash industry, etc. 

Jingo-interventionists are hugging themselves . . . “Hitler Can’t invade England.” 
Now tell me why dosn’t Churchill invade Germany? 

“Let’s stop thinking that all business leaders are Satans.” 
Second the motion; we aint a bit superstitious. Business leaders are very gullible chaps that have allowed themselves to be snared into foreign entanglements––the whole world was to be dished them on a platter. Yea bo, and they’ll be lucky if they get a few comebacks from the larder that is the world’s swillbarrel. Satan would blush! Let us for cripes sake quit kidding ourselves that our belligerency is merely an act to kid Britain out of a few war orders. (The accusations will come later, much later, and we shall be hailed as low-down, double-crossing hypocrites.) 

Unionism is as disunited as the nation, but the “wob” is not to blame. Some characters mourn the fact that the IWW is allergic to political action; that it doesn’t make of the House of Labor a variety show; that it stands uncompromisingly on industrial action at the point of production, uninfluenced, unafraid, refusing to hash the detail. 
Political action has put many a promising nation on the rocks; job action never yet wrecked a nation. 

It has been said that the great T-Bone Slim is slipping––and don’t I know it, that his present day catarrhal outbursts are as nothing compared to the time he had rheumatism? I subscribe to that viewpoint and can only mourn the fact that the IWW trusted the care of my head to a wrong guy. Plenty of fellow workers in the movement could take better care of it than I can.––Mourn no more, what’s one head among so many?