Bayonet Quotes
His assumption about whether an army was “willing or able to train its guns on inoffensive people” was a little naïve. The Ottomans had massacred the Armenians, and soon the German troops would murder innocent civilians. As did the Japanese. The Russian Communists on many occasions massacred civilians engaging in passive resistance. In Cambodia, the Kmer Rouge Army killed almost 2 million, most of whom had educations which might have made them passive resisters. Islamic Fascist governments like Syria and Iran used heavy weapons to kill citizens in their own homes because they were in neighborhoods that housed many passive resisters. Extreme Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorists regularly killed innocent civilians in their homes, on the streets or in busses, just to intimidate others to surrender to their religious and political demands. He was right that democratic governments and armies would not engage in such killing of their own people, but there are unfortunately still many other governments.
This quotation became a slogan of the miners. Lewis did not originate it. It has been referred to as early as 1902 in the bitter coal strike of that year. Generally coal mining strikes have involved more force and military than most labor disputes. While labor representatives maintain that force does not help, mine owners have believed that force is absolutely necessary. See Richard B. Mellon’s testimony to Congress in 1937--{563576}.
