Prepared

Martha Gruening

1916

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This entry contains content that some may find disturbing.
As long as I can hang a Jew and burn a nigger,
Or ride the labor agitator on a rail;
As long as I can put any man I don’t like
In jail, and keep him there
On the flimsiest pretext or none,
And shut the mouth of the fool
Who cries for free speech and assembly—
When for chastity’s sake, I jail the prostitute
After I’m through with her; when, revering mother-hood,
I snatch the bread from the lips of the working mother;
When unwritten laws proclaim my belief
In the sacredness of lust, jealousy, possession, and revenge,
And the written law’s limit is given those who stir up discontent;
When I can throttle science and art and the right to belief and opinion,
My prejudices squatting like toads in the path of freedom;
When God is officially my pal and does my dirty work,
And I can kill a political rival with the terms “Atheist”
And “Free-lover”—even though my own life smells to heaven;
When I can put a ban on truth and make obscenity pay dividends;
When American life is kept cheap and American profits sacred,
Why shouldn’t I stand prepared to defend American freedom?
Why shouldn’t I shed my blood as well as the blood of my neighbor
To guard these inherited rights against any alien invader?

Credits

Martha Gruening, “Prepared,” The Masses, Mar. 1916, p. 13.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 7.

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Creator Bio

Martha Gruening

1889–1937

Born in Philadelphia to an affluent German Jewish family who valued public service and social justice, Martha Gruening attended the Ethical Culture School in New York. Gruening became an activist journalist who worked with W. E. B. Du Bois for a time. A tireless advocate for women’s rights and African American rights, she was board secretary of the NAACP (1912–1914), and after graduating NYU Law School in 1917, cofounded the first free legal aid organization in New York. “Prepared” is her searing poetic response to a 1916 survey, “Do You Believe in Patriotism?” in The Masses magazine.

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