pamphlets, meetings and organizing campaigns, would quite naturally
hamper the country in its war work. On the face of their indictments
these men were accused of interfering with the conduct of the war; in
reality they were sent to jail because they held and expressed certain
beliefs.

As a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, Ralph Chaplin did
his part to make the organization a success. He wrote songs and
poems; he made speeches: he edited the official paper, "Solidarity".
He looked about him; saw poverty, wretchedness and suffering among the
workers; contrasted it with the luxury of those who owned the land and
the machinery of production; studied the problem of distribution; and
decided that it was possible, through the organization of the
producers, to establish a more scientific, juster, more humane system
of society. All this he felt, intensely. With him and his
fellow-workers the task of freeing humanity from economic bondage took
on the aspect of a faith, a religion. They held their meetings; wrote
their literature; made their speeches and sang their songs with
zealous devotion. They had seen a vision; they had heard a call to
duty; they were giving their lives to a cause--the emancipation of the
human race.

When the war broke out in Europe, with millions of working-men
flinging death and misery at one another, men like Chaplin, the world
over, regarded it as the last straw. Was it not bad enough that these
exploited creatures should be used as factory-fodder? Must they be
cannon-fodder too? Why should they fight to increase the economic
power of German traders? of British manufacturers? The war was a
capitalist war between capitalist nations. What interest had the
workers in these nations? in their winnings or in their losses? So ran