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Workers Against Warfare: the American and Australian Experiences Before and During World War 1

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Workers Against Warfare: the American and Australian Experiences Before and During World War 1 Workers against Warfare: the American and Australian Experiences Before and During World War 1 Verity Burgmann and Jeffrey Johnson Before and during World War I, the far-left in Australia and the USA campaigned against militarism and involvement in the Great War in differing circumstances: Australia’s immediate involvement from 4 August 1914 and the United States’ later entry into the war on 6 April 1917; contrasting roles played by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW); and wartime divisions in Australia being played out within the Labor Party, in government until it split over conscription. However, in one important respect the situation in both countries was similar. Both were governed by parties with traditional doubts and qualms about militarist exploits abroad, but which unfortunately overcame these reservations to bring their respective nations enthusiastically into the fray. The Australian Labor Party was committed programmatically to the cultivation of “Australian national sentiment,” toying even with republican notions in its most radical moments of hostility to continuing British sovereignty over Australia. Nonetheless, Labor leaders had shifted towards an outlook more acquiescent towards Britain and the Empire, a process especially apparent during Labor’s period in government 1910-1913. This transition away from customary Labor Party wariness about British imperialism was confirmed by Labor leader Andrew Fisher when he famously announced on 31 July 1914 that should the mother country become embroiled in war: “Australians will stand beside our own to help and defend her to our last man and our last shilling.” Robin Archer argues that the Australian Labor Party’s position stemmed from its precocious strength as a political party already 1 capable of forming government and therefore keen to hold the support of the median voter—in comparison with other labour and social democratic parties who opposed the drift to war.1 Douglas Newton deems Fisher’s speech a calculated political tactic that would protect against the accusation that the Labor Party, seamed through with Catholic supporters of Home Rule for Ireland, was unfit to govern if war broke out.2 It worked. The election held a month after the outbreak of war convincingly returned a Labor government, judged by the nation at large in this period of patriotic fervour as competent to conduct the war effort. Yet many within the party, both in parliament and amongst the rank and file, especially in the trade unions, were hostile to the war, influenced still by labour movement traditions of anti-militarism and anti-imperialism. A moderate weekly labour newspaper in Melbourne commented at the outbreak of war: “The workers have nothing to gain in the evidently coming slaughter, but all to lose.”3 As its truth became ever more apparent, this position became an increasingly popular one within the labour movement. In the US the governing Democrats were solidly “isolationist”—until external exigencies prompted them to reverse more than a century of this valued national tradition in which they had strongly shared. American isolationism dated back to Thomas Jefferson’s 1801 inaugural address where he famously warned that the US should avoid Europe’s “entangling alliances.” When war broke out in Europe in the spring of 1914, the US stood committed against involvement. American reluctance on the road to war is not surprising, given the attitudes of its citizenry and leadership. Most Americans felt Europe’s quarrels were its own, and specific immigrant communities had compelling reasons why America should stay out of such conflicts. 1 Robin Archer, “Stopping War and Stopping Conscription,” Labour History, no. 106 (May 2014): 62. 2 Douglas Newton, “At the Birth of Anzac: Labor, Andrew Fisher and Australia’s Offer of an Expeditionary Force to Britian in 1914,” Labour History, no. 106 (May 2014): 19-20, 25, 30. 3 Quoted in Brian McKinlay, The ALP. A Short History of the Australian Labor Party (Melbourne: Drummond, 1981), 39. 2 Irish Americans, for example, did not care to help England so opposed engagement; and thousands of German-Americans did not want to fight countrymen from their homeland. One of the more popular songs of 1915, “Don’t Take My Darling Boy Away,” seemed to encapsulate these broader American isolationist attitudes.4 The outbreak of war in Europe had not made US intervention inevitable; but by 1915, “preparedness” took an increasingly strong hold despite traditional American attitudes favouring isolationism. Ex-President Theodore Roosevelt and others argued that a large and ready military remained critical to international prowess. Nonetheless, President Woodrow Wilson and the Americans who broadly supported non- intervention adhered to an isolationist course for almost three years. Wilson, a pacifist and a late-career politician with considerably more experience domestically (as governor of New Jersey and a former Princeton professor) typified isolationist feelings. “It would be the irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs,” he joked to a friend. However, he and his Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, also a pacifist with little foreign policy experience, were consumed by foreign policy questions and the war. Nonetheless, Wilson remained committed to isolationism during these relatively early days. Even after the Lusitania attack, Wilson maintained in his declaration on neutrality that the US “must be neutral in fact as well as in name during these days that are to try men’s souls.” And Wilson won reelection in 1916 under the campaign slogan “He Kept Us Out of the War.”5 However, President Wilson’s positions had begun to shift, particularly in light of the threats posed by U-Boat attacks and Pancho Villa in New Mexico. As US involvement seemed increasingly unavoidable, preparedness advocates claimed that a strong defence network, particularly a ready army and navy, mattered. Public displays 4 Harry Von Tilzer, “Don’t Take My Darling Boy Away!” sheet music (New York: Broadway Music, 1915), available online at the Duke University Digital Collections (http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/hasm_a6074/). 5 David R. Woodward, Trial by Friendship: Anglo-American Relations, 1917-1918 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993), 7; Pearson’s Magazine vol. 33 (February 1915): 250. 3 of preparedness and patriotism became increasingly common. On 14 June 1916, Wilson headed Washington’s Preparedness Parade in front of an estimated 60,000 men, women, and children. Papers billed it “the most remarkable patriotic spectacle in the capital has even seen.” By presidential order, all federal offices closed for the day. A wide array of individuals joined the march, including cabinet officials, members of congress, scientists, suffragists, boy scouts, and more. At the front was Wilson, confidently marching with his head erect, shoulders back, and donning a straw hat. The President even carried an American flag over his shoulder. He smiled broadly and often raised his hat to the cheers from the crowd before stopping and reviewing the rest of the parade from a grandstand. At one point handlers released several hundred carrier pigeons into the air in front of the President—“to take the message of preparedness all over the capital.” In February Wilson had asked the crowd of 18,000 at Convention Hall in Kansas City to join him in a singing of “America.” And thousands more marched at Seattle’s 1916 Preparedness Day Parade. Across the nation, preparedness parades and rallies occurred, meant to celebrate American readiness and participation.6 Though the outcomes were the same, Wilson took considerably longer than his antipodean counterparts to lead his country into the war. In the US, therefore, anti- militarist agitation was focused much longer on campaigning against the idea of preparedness. For many, indeed most, on the left, preparedness represented militarism run amok, which the left had long opposed. In this campaign against preparedness, the left, dominated by the Socialist Party of America (SPA), was careful to distinguish its position from simple American isolationism. Socialist ideology had never fit with militarism. For example, the Socialist Party of Washington’s 1912 platform outlined formal objections to the Boy Scouts and the militaristic lessons of the organization. In 1917 they similarly adopted resolutions against compulsory military training in Washington’s high schools. Anarchists and syndicalists were also hostile to militarism 6 New York Times, 15 June 1916, 3 February 1916. 4 and US involvement in the conflagration in Europe. Emma Goldman, for example, delivered anti-war addresses across the country that warned of the dangers under titles such as “Preparedness: The Road to Universal Slaughter.”7 But American socialists led the charge. Without question, they proved to be the most unabashed and outspoken critics of US potential and actual involvement in the European war. The Marxist interpretation of the war in Europe offered by the SPA was clear: Capitalism inevitably evolves into imperialism, as countries must expand beyond their boundaries; eventually, imperialism continues until capitalist nations confront each other’s economic interests, the outcome of which is inevitably war as these nations endeavour to satisfy capitalist pursuits. “Every intelligent workingman and woman,” announced the International Socialist Review in 1914, “is opposed to all capitalist wars.” Socialists also stressed that workers provided the bulk of armies; the march to war would ultimately mean the working-class in the trenches. Left-wing newspapers printed graphic reports, such as the atrocities at Verdun, to provide evidence for avoiding the viciousness of warfare. One from a French captain dramatically described 7,000 dead bodies “heaped” along a 700-yard front. Socialists used these vivid descriptions of war involving the death of European soldiers to encourage working-class opposition. “The workers of one country are misled to believing that they have some advantage in slaying the workers of another country,” SPA leader Eugene Debs contended in the Northwest Worker.
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