Thursday, July 19, 2018

Shrapnel Splinters (1915)

From the August 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dilly, Dilly, come and be killed.

Why are all the labour crooks visiting “the front"?

Is it merely to run round telling us what a picnic it is?

War is hell — Capitalism is war — therefore, Capitalism is hell.

When are “we" going to dig the German Fleet out "like rats"?

Why has the gas-bag hero of Sydney-st. been so quiet lately ; is he waiting for it to come off?

When Mr. Churchill said : “There are worse things than bloodshed," had he a prophetic vision of losing his job?

Now that the value of physically fit men (such as shunters) has risen so, are we within sight of the adoption of automatic couplings?

Who are our merchant seamen most grateful to — the man who lowered the Plimsoll line “with a stroke of the pen," or the men who raise it with a torpedo?

Which is the easier death, to be “gassed" in a bleaching-powder factory, or "gassed" in the trenches? St. Helens chemical workers want to know.

Is it true that the miners who have enlisted don’t like trench warfare because it presents no change from the features of death by gas, explosion, fire, and earthfall of their trade?

What is to become of the mangel crop now that those patriots who cannot pull a trigger in the trenches have been frustrated in their noble endeavour to commence operations on the moors on the 5th instead of on the 12th?

“The enemy in their victors’ march know not what they are doing. Let them beware, for they are unshackling Russia."- (LI. George at Bangor, Aug. 5th, 1915.)

May we, then, be permitted to say ‘hock!" to those who are about to unshackle Russia?

"If right is worsted in this conflict civilisation will be put back for generations."- (Same speaker, same time, same place.)

May we, then, be permitted to assume that it is wrong that is unshackling Russia, and right, in the persons of Russian autocracy and its noble allies, that is preventing it from doing so? Or is the solution lo the riddle this—that Russia unshackled is civilisation put back?

The .lohnson-Jeffries fight was banned from the Cinema halls, but the Willard-Johnson fight was not. Is this change of policy due to the discovery both in France and England that the man of colour is morally fit to fight the white man (and therefore to give him a hiding) or to the fact that in the first case the black man won, while in the second case he lost? I only want to know where we stand on the colour question.
Bill Bailey



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