Jottings. (1915)

The Jottings Column from the September 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

  "I have confined myself intentionally to only one aspect of the cotton question ; but undoubtedly we have been supplying our enemies with the means of destroying our troops ever since the beginning of the war." Sir R. W. Ramsay, "Daily Mail," July 1915.

And what will they, the masters say when their children ask "What did you do, daddy, in the great war?"

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Upon the declaration of cotton as contraband the same paper sums up in the following terms.

   "How many valuable lives have been lost by this gross ineptitude it is impossible to say. Next to the blundering of the negotiations with the Balkan States and the Shell Tragedy it is easily the worst feature of the Government's connection with the war, bad as that is.” - “Daily Mail" editorial, Aug. 21st, 1915.

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War the Leveller.

  "Mr. Ben Tillett, addressing a labour meeting at Bristol yesterday, said that the hell at the front had made brothers of dukes sons and labourers' sons.
   "I wish people at home could be as united in their efforts to crush the foe,' he added.”

"Daily Express," July 26th, 1915.

Well there now! we always asserted the certain conviction regarding the worker and this resurrection-era of affluence, but we scarcely thought it would be achieved through the crushing of some other section of the working class. Sickening, ain't it ?

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Just as water finds its own level, so too do the labour misleaders find their true groove - that of dutiful devotion to the master class in time of national conflict. We were waiting for news of that peerless "Daily Herald" sun-god, Tom Mann, and here it is ("Daily Express" 21.8.15) "Since the war began Mr. Tom Mann has visited all the ports to help in the manning of transports.” D-------- if we didn't think so.

B. B. B.