"How is a military drilled and trained to defend
freedom, peace and happiness? This is what Major General O'Ryan has to say of
an efficiently trained generation: 'The soldier must be so trained that he
becomes a mere automaton; he must be so trained that it will destroy his
initiative; he must be so trained that he is turned into a machine. The soldier
must be forced into the military noose; he must be jacked up; he must be ruled
by his superiors with pistol in hand.' This was not said by a Prussian Junker;
not by a German barbarian . . . but by an American major general. And he is
right. You cannot conduct war with equals; you cannot have militarism with free
born men; you must have slaves, automatons, machines, obedient disciplined
creatures, who will move, act, shoot and kill at the command of their
superiors. That is preparedness, and nothing else." —Emma Goldman,
Preparedness: The Road to Universal Slaughter
"YOUNG MEN: The lowest aim in your life is to become a
soldier. The good soldier never tries to distinguish right from wrong. He never
thinks; never reasons; he only obeys. If he is ordered to fire on his fellow
citizens, on his friends, on his neighbors, on his relatives, he obeys without
hesitation. If he is ordered to fire down a crowded street when the poor are
clamoring for bread, he obeys and see the grey hairs of age stained with red
and the life tide gushing from the breasts of women, feeling neither remorse
nor sympathy. If he is ordered off as a firing squad to execute a hero or
benefactor, he fires without hesitation, though he knows the bullet will pierce
the noblest heart that ever beat in human breast.
"A good soldier is a blind, heartless, soulless, murderous machine. He is not a man. His is not a brute, for brutes kill only in self defense. All that is human in him, all that is divine in him, all that constitutes the man has been sworn away when he took the enlistment roll. His mind, his conscience, aye, his very soul, are in the keeping of his officer. No man can fall lower than a soldier—it is a depth beneath which we cannot go." — Jack London
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