"war means recruiting propaganda, conscription, military discipline, the death penalty, the whole damnable business of organized dying and killing. Max Eastman said in Madison Square Garden two years ago, "When our own war comes you'll know it, because it won't be necessary to conscript the workers to fight in it." I thought he spoke a profound truth. I do not think so now. When we heard about those democratic regiments formed in Russia after the first revolution, I thought, "This is a real workers' army." Now I know there can be no such thing as a democratic army. People don't want to die, and except for a few glorious fanatics they are not going to vote themselves into the front line trenches."
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Atheists from the United StatesPeople from New York (state)Libertarians from the United StatesConservatives from the United StatesFormer Marxists
Original Language: English
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Sources
The Liberator (August 1919) article, in Crystal Eastman on Women and Revolution
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Eastman
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Max Eastman
Max Forrester Eastman (January 4, 1883 – March 25, 1969) was an American writer on literature, philosophy and society; a poet, and a prominent political activist. For several years, he edited The Masses. With his sister Crystal Eastman, he co-founded in 1917 The Liberator, a magazine of politics and the arts.
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