Interesting debate. In regards to the `support`for the war in Europe leading up to WW1, one must keep in mind that the populations got behind their war-mongering leaders AFTER huge propaganda campaigns that fooled large segments to support the war in order to prevent a greater calamity. In the end, the war itself was the calamity. Anonymous in Kalamazoo, looks like you`ve got more reading ahead. Medlin had it right. What you are inferring - that Europeans wanted war from the get go - would have to be backed up with facts. You provide no facts. Why would working class and poor people want a war over an assassination, or treaty violation anyway? These are issues that concern the elite... which brings me to those 73 000 conscripts in the US. How many of those conscripts do you think were desperately poor? Or can you find a historian who argues that every conscript was a war loving patriot? Debs' statement stands, as does his life's work.