Victor L. Berger Quotes

I write as a man in the street. Doubtless I am abnormally dense one because I cannot for the life of me see why this country should be drawn into this war [WWI]. Serbia is not worth the life of one single British Grenadier.

I can tell you this: If I'm ever in a position to call the shots, I'm not going to rush to send somebody else's kids into a war.

During the Vietnam era, more than 30,000 draft dodgers and deserters sought harbor in cities like Montreal and Toronto, where public opposition to the war was strong and most residents didn't question their motives.

At the Imperial Conference on December 1, it was decided to make war against England and the United States.

My opposition to the Vietnam War. I was the first Hollywood actor to speak out against it.

Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.

The workers everywhere do not want their sons to die, mangled scraps of flesh … in order to enrich Wall Street. America, keep out of this war!

... we might better reexamine the reasons for entering the war than abolish volunteers and substitute for them men dragged into the ranks by draft.

The immediate reaction of the poets who fought in the war was cynicism... The war dramatized for them the contrast between the still-idealistic young, living and dying on the unalteringly horrible stage-set of the Western front, with the complacency of the old at home, the staff officers behind the lines. In England there was violent anti-German feeling; but for the poet-soldiers the men in the trenches on both sides seemed united in pacific feelings and hatred of those at home who had sent them out to kill each other.

Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece?

Resistance to conscription [in WWI] was quite strong. By the end of the war, the ranks of noncooperators were stunningly large. Roughly 3 million eligible men never registered, in violation of the law — compared with the 24 million who did. And some 338,000 who did register either failed to obey an induction notice or deserted after they joined the ranks .... Altogether, a higher percentage of American men successfully resisted conscription during World War I than during the Vietnam War half a century later.

Once conscription was introduced during the First World War, and once Britain's wars ceased being confined to the empire or to continental Europe and began seriously threatening our own shores and safety, it became much easier to denounce any anti-war agitation and argument as inherently irresponsible and unpatriotic.

Vietnam was what we had instead of happy childhoods.

I want young people to be hesitant to glorify war and to demand of their leaders justification for the sacrifices they ask of our citizens.

I don't think I'm against all wars, but you'd have to have a damn good reason to send your son or daughter to fight, or to go yourself. So often, we are lied to and manipulated by our governments for their own very cynical reasons.

It's one thing to say you're for the war; it's another thing to send your kid to war - your daughter or your son.

The unvarnished truth is that we have spent the last decade funding the machinery of war, and our children have been sacrificed.

In our Country... one class of men makes war and leaves another to fight it out.

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.

I come from a family of pacifists, so it's not like I was going to join the war. Sweden is not like the States or England where you might get sent to Afghanistan next month.

So what really gets me is these chickenhawks, who sent our kids to die, without ever serving in a war themselves. They don't know what it's all about.

I was drafted during the Korean War.

I had a very strong feeling about the Vietnam War, and I had a strong feeling about participating in it. The military draft was in place, I was summoned for a physical exam, and I was either going to be classified as fit for military service or make my objection to it. So I made my objection to it.

I was drafted during the Korean War. None of us wanted to go... It was only a couple of years after World War II had ended. We said, 'Wait a second? Didn't we just get through with that?'

I hate those men who would send into war youth to fight and die for them; the pride and cowardice of those old men, making their wars that boys must die.