LIBERATOR

February, 1919 20 cents

$1,500.00 IN POETRY PRIZES

OFFERED BY

THE LYRIC SOCIETY

For the Publication and Distribution of Poetry in the United States

to be divided equally among the authors of the three best books submitted in manuscript by April 1st for publication by the Society during the year 1919. The whole sum is donated to the Society by a generous American who has asked us to withhold his name.

Are You a Subscriber to the Lyric Society?

You can become one by sending in your check for five dollars-It will entitle you to all the publications of the Society for the year 1919.

The Lyric Society is an attempt to organize the readers of poetry in America with the following ends in view:

1. To get the best books of con-temporary American verse to the largest number of people in America.

2. To make possible for our poets a sufficiently good compensation for their work to enable them to give their best time and energy to their art.

PROGRAM FOR 1919

Three distinguished books of verse.

A volume of Contemporary Criticism.

12 numbers of THE LYRIC, which prints the best new work in verse done on both sides of the Atlantic.

We want as subscribers to the Lyric Society:

Every writer of verse in America, Every editor of an American magazine, Every journalist,

Every public library,

Every teacher of literature in the public schools, high schools and colleges,

Every literary society,

And every other intelligent American who reads as he runs and runs much farther than he reads.

The aims of the Lyric Society are purely cultural. But a wider American culture will further the progress of American movements for more individual freedom. The cause of the Society is therefore the cause of every lover of freedom in the country.

FIVE DOLLARS A YEAR   SUBSCRIBE TO-DAY

Address all communications to

SAMUEL ROTH, Sec'y   1425 Grand Concourse   NEW YORK CITY

"THE STRONGEST BOND

OF HUMAN SYMPATHY,

OUTSIDE OF THE FAM-

ILY RELATION, SHOULD

BE ONE UNITING ALL

WORKING PEOPLE OF ALL

NATIONS AND TONGUES

AND KINDRED"

-Abraham Lincoln

4

THE LIBERATOR

Vol. 1, No. 12   February, 1919

EDITORIALS-

T HE British election has completely enthroned the reactionaries and empowered them to do their worst. The French Parliament by an astounding vote of 38o to 134 has authorized the oldest man in France to put through the oldest policies. In America a victory election had the same result, so far as it could have. In Italy the last timid liberal has withdrawn from the Cabinet. In none of the Allied countries-not even England-has there been any authentic move to restore freedom of speech, press and assemblage to the people. The people are blandly permitting their destinies, and the destiny of the whole world, to be determined in secret conferences by three or four old men. Such is the disaster of victory.

Meanwhile Germany is proceeding with free and popular volition toward Socialism.

We were always doubtful whether this was a war for democracy, and that doubt got us into a good deal of trouble. We might be in worse trouble now if we thought it was a war for democracy, because honesty would compel us to admit that Germany won the war.

The Twilight of Liberalism

T HERE is perhaps something more than the stupid complaisance of victory indicated in those events. In the British election especially there was not only a triumph of the right wing, but a disappearance of the middle. It was the middle, too, that withdrew from the Italian Cabinet, and the middle-or muddle-concealed behind the sanctimonious rhetoric of the White House, that was defeated in the United States. The President exudes an opaque ethical vapor, in the midst of which, like an octopus, with bland face and busy members, he might be doing almost anything he pleased; but we gradually become aware, by examining his wake, that he is doing practically nothing at all but exude that vapor. The forces of imperialism and military and industrial reaction are a little alarmed by it perhaps, the forces of liberty not in the least assisted. The defeat of the President was an expression of disgust from both sides of him. It might be described as a repudiation by God and the devil in unison of the mere odor of sanctity.

That is not what liberalism is, at its best. To be liberal is to be able to enter with one's imagination into any pointof-view that is proposed. This is a dangerous gift, but it is not fatal if one has the courage to stand by one's own pointof-view to the end-if one has the courage to suffer a per-

sonal defeat. A true liberal is one who when he repudiates an idea does so as one who knows what it is to believe it. And when he accepts an idea, he knows what it is to reject it. Iie knows by a sympathetic intellectual experience-he is to that extent gifted with imagination and curiosity.

And this poised and temperately generous person presents for ultimate times perhaps an ideal of mankind, but in a revolutionary age he will have difficulty finding any place or any function whatever, for the depth and force of the conflict compel all men to abandon themselves to one side or the other completely. They can no longer exercise judgment between two parties, because the underlying standards of judgment are in question. The issue is no longer as to the weights of evidence, but as to the acceptibility of the scales. This, I think, is what we see indicated in the British elections-the dawn of a revolutionary age, the forcing itself for-ward of a conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat as absolute, the temporary twilight of liberalism.

Professor Irving Fischer, speaking at a Congress of Economists the other day, voiced the immediate program of the liberals. " There can be little doubt," he said, " that we are facing a great peril today, the peril of perverting the democracy for which we have just been fighting with such devotion. It is our opportunity and our duty to dedicate ourselves to the task of working out economic measures in the interests of humanity and democracy as against the selfish interests of either the capitalist or the laborer as such.

" If we jealously guard our independence and impartiality we shall gain for our profession the enviable position of being the logical arbiters of the class struggles now beginning-arbiters which both sides can trust. We may and should take sides, but only as a just judge takes sides when he renders his decision and only after a fair weighing of the evidence."

That this position is an absolutely impossible one, appears the moment we realize that it is not against injustice, but against justice, as conceived in a capitalist society and founded upon the habits of that society, that the struggle of labor will be definitely directed. Irving Fischer will find himself irresistibly driven by these struggles which he fore-sees so well into the position of an advocate of capital-driven more irresistibly the more resolutely he clings to that judicious and, for ordinary purposes, noble, attitude he has outlined. There can be no judge when justice is on trial.

The Nature of the Choice

C ERTAINLY nothing could be more " illiberal " than Lenin's challenge to our whole bill of rights, con-

THE LIBERATOR

tained in his " 1VIessage to American Workingmen," which we printed last month.

" While all the old bourgeois democratic constitutions," he says, " proclaimed formal equality and the right of free assemblage, the constitution of the Soviet Republic repudiates the hypocrisy of a formal equality of all human beings. When the bourgeois republicans overturned feudal thrones, they did not recognize the rules of formal equality of monarchists. Since we here are concerned with the task of overthrowing the bourgeoisie,, only fools or traitors will insist on the formal equality of .the bourgeoisie. The right of free assemblage is not worth an iota to the workman and to the peasant when all better meeting places are in the hands of the bourgeoisie. Our Soviets have taken over all usable buildings in the cities and towns out of the hands of the rich and have placed them at the disposal of the workmen and peasants for meeting and organization purposes. That is how our right of assemblage looks-for the workers. That is the meaning and content of our Soviet, of our Socialist constitution."

That paragraph has implicated in it the very heart of Socialism as a militant program   the concept of a dictator-ship of the proletariat as a means for bringing all society to membership in the proletariat.. And yet it is shocking to most liberals, and even to many of the tender-minded Socialists, because it is not an ultimately ideal state of affairs. It is not a state of affairs. It is an act-a part of the act of economic revolution. And all social idealists are going to have to choose between this act, involving such idealistic partisan-ship and temporary illiberality as it does, and the opposite act-throwing over the bill of rights, as we are doing in this country, in order to suppress, imprison and slow-murder the agitators of economic revolution, and protect the'profits of capital. The one thing is done with the great vision and purpose of a more real and universal liberty-the other with no vision and no hope of better things to come. It is natural that a majority of the liberals should fly at first to the latter, the well-tried policy. But it is not impossible that many of them-those who are not wholly bound up in a capitalistic profession-will upon reflection discover a wiser course. They might find a use for their temperament, if they would accept the prospect of economic revolution in its completeness, not in trying to " modify " it or make it liberal, but in trying to educate so many to an understanding of it that it may he peaceful if possible.

Roosevelt

T HE death of Colonel Roosevelt was a shock, I think, to everybody who loves life. No man ever lived who had more fun in sixty-one years. And yet his death-with that last frantic reiteration of Americanism and nothing but Americanism fresh from his pen-was like a symbol of the progress of life. The boyish magnetism is all gone out of those words. They die in the dawn of revolutionary internationalism.

Bolshevism and Socialism

T IIE National Security League in outlining its post-war program announces that it is not going to combat Socialism, but it is going to combat Bolshevism. I quote from an official statement:

" The league emphasizes the fact that its efforts will not be directed against socialism, as such, but will be confined entirely to counteracting the various un-American influences parading under the guise of socialism. The league is definitely op-posed to entering into any discussion on the economic claims of socialism. The league has no is-sue as a patriotic organization with the Socialists on their economic doctrines any more than with those who uphold free trade, single tax, or prohibition.

" Our attack is to be made on the Bolshevist op-position to American government, American ideals, and America's war. All good Americans will agree to the necessity of suppressing activities and propaganda of any group aiming at revolution, believing in government by the minority, antagonizing the Constitution and the Supreme Court, and moving to undermine democratic government. The published Constitution of the Soviet Government and the doctrines of Lenine show that the Bolshevist program includes ideas on labor control which are absolutely contrary to the ideals of American labor."

This statement, and many like it that are being made in newspapers and pulpits the country over, present a direct challenge to the American socialists that they ought to meet and reply to officially. For our part, though we have every respect for the historic role of the United States Constitution and form of government, we are not satisfied with them and we want them changed. One of the most obvious changes would be the abolition of that senile veto upon the will of the people which is enshrined in the Supreme Court. We are not among those who will urge the working classes to get out on the barricades and be mowed down by machine guns before they have organized the industrial power to achieve their liberation, but we believe that it .is only by means of a fundamental revolution-a transfer of control to their organizations-that they can ever achieve it. America is not Russia, to be sure, and we shall have our own problems, but the main outlines of the labor republics of the future are laid down in the Russian constitution, and the " doctrines of Lenine " are the doctrines of revolutionary Socialism the world over.

The heart of these doctrines for immediate purposes is contained in Article IV. of the Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic-the article which determines the location of the sovereignty. I quote it in full.

February, 1919   7

Article IV.
THE RIGHT TO VOTE.
Chapter 13.

" 64. The right to vote and to be elected to the Soviets is enjoyed by the following citizens, irrespective of religion, nationality, domicile, etc., of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, of both sexes, who shall have completed their eighteenth year by the day of election:

1.  All who have acquired the means of living through labor that is productive and. useful to society, and also persons engaged in housekeeping which enables the former to do productive work, i, e., ldborers and employes of all classes who are employed in industry, trade, agriculture, etc., and peasant and Cossack agricultural laborers who employ no help for the purpose of making profits.

2.  Soldiers of the army and navy of the Soviets.

• (c) Citizens of the two preceding categories who have to any degree lost their capacity to work.

• (d) Note 1-Local Soviets may, upon approval of the central power, lower the age standard mentioned herein.

" Note 2-Non-citizens mentioned in Para-graph 20 (Article 2, Chapter 5) have the right to vote.

" 65. The following persons enjoy neither the right to vote nor the right to be voted for, even, though they belong to one of the categories enumerated above, namely:

" (a) Persons who employ hired labor to obtain from it an increase in profits.

(b) Persons who have an income without doing any work, such as interest from capital, receipts from property, etc.

• (c) Private merchants, trade and commercial brokers.

" (d) Monks and clergy of all denominations.

• (e) Employes and agents of the former police, the gendarme corps and the Okhrana (Czar's secret service), also members of the former reigning dynasty.

• (f) Persons who have in legal form been declared demented or mentally deficient, and also persons under guardianship.

• (g) Persons who have been deprived by a Soviet of their rights of citizenship because of selfish or dishonorable offenses, for the period fixed by the sentence."

That is what Bolshevism is. It is a transfer of sovereignty to the working-class, leaving every sane man and woman free to renounce his capitalistic privilege, join the working-class, and become a partner in the sovereignty if he wants to.

And that is the kind of constitution and form of government that we intend to establish in the United States. And, though it may not seem to the National Security League an example of old-fashioned Americanism, it is a good deal more American than the program of tyranny, suppression and war-censorship in peace-time, that they have laid out for them-selves. The idea contained in that constitution was first embodied in human statute, as a matter of fact, in the old American colony of Jamestown, Virginia. When starvation and pestilence and the incursion of savages threatened the life of that colony, Captain John Smith proclaimed it upon his word as law that " Those who will not work shall not eat." And that law in that emergency saved the colony, and saved American civilization, for the time, from ruin. Now, again, American civilization is faced with an emergency, for it is an emergency when sixty-five per cent of the people possess only five per cent of the wealth-and there is starvation, also, and'pestilence and the danger of civil war, which is more awful than the incursion of savages, and in this emergency again we are going to save our civilization with a revolutionary law. Only we are going to be a little more moderate than Captain John Smith. We are going to proclaim that those who do not work, and live upon the product of their work, shall not vote. And when that simple thing is accomplished, and the power is there and the organization to enforce it, the life, liberty and civilization of America will be relatively secure.

Testimony

Sometimes you hear something about " the brains of the socialist movement." We have never been able to locate any exact spot in which they are situated, but we believe that the heart of the Socialist movement of America still beats in the breast of Eugene Debs. And when Debs stood up in front of that jury of retired merchants and farmers in Cleveland, about to sentence him to live and die in a felon's cell, and declared his solidarity with the Russian Bolshevik government, his adherence to the class-struggle, his sympathy and respect for the I. W. W., and when he turned to his judge with a magnificent gesture of superiority and said to him,'" Your honor, it is true that I am opposed to our form of government "-the keynote of American Socialism for the coming years was sounded, and no manifestoes of the National Security League, and no contrary testimony from our more prudent parliamentarians can change it.

A League .of Which Nations?

S OME good friends of the LIBERATOR are disturbed at our want of enthusiasm for the League of Nations. We believe in a League of Nations as the one thing that will ever remove the menace of nationalistic war from the earth. We believe that it must be a definite, concrete, continuous and working federation of the peoples. We believe

S   THE LIBERATOR

that such a thing may come to pass in the near future, and we will work for it. But we do not discover in the victorious governments that are meeting in Paris, nor in any of the delegates of these governments, the least disposition to establish such a federation of the peoples. We are not free to say all that we might of these governments, but we can say that the hands they clasp over the council table will be red with the fresh blood of the freest people on earth.

We have read with diligence the manifesto of the " League of Free Nations Association " to which are signed the names of many radical-minded people, and one at least who used to call herself a revolutionist, and we subscribe to much of the abstract wisdom therein contained, but we find the manifesto altogether timid and reticent upon the one question that will determine whether the League is to be a League for peace, or a League for counter-revolutionary war-the question of the admission of Russia. Having been thoroughly drilled by one of the chief sponsors of this association, Professor John Dewey, in the knowledge that every question that arises in the complex of events is a specific question, we do not ask ourselves, " Do you support a League of Nations? " we ask ourselves, " Do you support this League of Nations? Do you think the international proletariat ought to support this league of nations? "

And our answer is, they ought to support it when the Soviet Republic is invited to enter it upon equal terms with the rest. Until then they ought to concentrate their mind and energy upon their own league, their own nations. They ought to see to it that the great power and determiner of the world's future shall not be the League of Business Politicians at Versailles, but the New International, the League of the Working Classes of the World.

And the sharpness of this alternative-let it be understood-is the work of the Business Politicians, not of the revolutionary proletariat. The Soviet Republic has demanded admission to the armistice, has applied for representation at the peace conference, has appointed its delegate. Its envoy at Stockholm has offered terms and concessions to the Allied governments that shock the heart, they show so sacrificing a devotion to the ideal of peace. And the reply has been silence, or criminal slander and renewed invasion of Russian territory. Upon this foundation there can be no league of the peoples of the earth, there can be no peace.

Those radical-minded idealists of the League of Free Nations Association might see this, I should think, and even though they cannot take their stand with the proletariat, they might concentrate their zeal for the League of Nations, upon a bold demand for the recognition of the Soviets-without which the League will be a compact of tyranny, and with which it may conceivably become a means to make the world' more peaceful, more reasonably resigned to the agony of its transformation.

T HE only revealing thing Wilson has said in Europe is that he " would go crazy if he didn't believe in Providence." Most of the people in Europe apparently

would go crazy if they didn't believe in Wilson. Let us hope that Providence has some sense of personal responsibility.

Political Prisoners

T HE Department of Justice reports that there have been 1,281 cases under the Espionage Act. Of the defendants, 252 pleaded guilty and were sent to prison, 237 were convicted after trial, and 792 cases are pending. The Department does not report any acquittals. In addition to this there are no doubt thousands of- cases under the draft act. There are hundreds of conscientious objectors-some of them technically classed as deserters.

A complete catalogue of all these cases is being prepared by the Civil Liberties Bureau. The Department of Justice has declined to furnish them with any statistics beyond the figures above, and they are compelled to gather their information from the press and from personal sources. Readers of THE LIBERATOR who know of cases which they believe deserve to be included in a general amnesty, are re-quested to communicate with the Civil Liberties Bureau, 41 Union Square, New York. Send them the name of the defendant and your address, so that they can write for more information if they require it.

W E are happy and proud to add the name of Eugene V. Debs to our list of Contributing Editors.

THE LIBERATOR

A Journal of Revolutionary Progress

Editors, Max Eastman

Orystal Eastman

Associate Editor, Floyd Dell Business Manager, Margaret Lane

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS :

Cornelia Barns, Howard Brubaker, K. R. Chamberlain, Eugene V. Debs, Hugo Gellert, Arturo Giovannitti, Charles T. Hallinan, Helen Keller, Robert Minor, Boardman Robinson, Maurice Sterne, Alexander Trachtenberg, Louis Untermeyer, Clive Weed, Art Young.

Published monthly and copyright 1019, by the

LIBERATOR PUBLISHING CO., Inc.

34 Union Square, East   New York

Yearly subscription $2.00 (outside the U. S. $2.50). Single copies 20c. Rates on bundle orders and to newsdea]ers on application.

Application for entry as second-class matter at the post-office
at New York City pending.

Problems for Beginners

Hun-Hating

AMERICAN soldiers in Germany immediately get on friendly terms with the inhabitants, but in New York it is compulsory to hate the Hums.-How much hating should a man do who lives in San Francisco?-In Mars?

Government Ownership

T T HE increase in railroad rates under federal administration proves that government ownership is impractical. The decrease in telephone and telegraph rates proves the same thing.-Bring about a reconciliation between these conflicting statements, and show that government ownership is revolutionary, confiscatory and subversive.-Try to imagine yourself an elderly Southern banker.

Reasonable Self-Determination

T ERRITORIAL problems at the peace conference are to be solved by the rule of self-determination.-How many exceptions will be necessary to prove this rule; and vice versa?

Shrinkage

T HERE is a report from Russia that the Soviets have raised an army of 3,000,000. A London paper says that 180,000 would be nearer the truth. The New York Evening Post drops a cipher and guesses 18,ooo.-What should be the size of the Bolshevist army in the Chicago Tribune?-In the Portland Oregonian?

Revolutions

R 'S revolution is complete and overwhelming and is denounced by the newspapers. G's revolution is con= demned as incomplete and therefore insincere.-How mays a revolution keep on good terms with the newspapers?

Indemnities

T AKE the largest number you can think of and multiply it by four. Prove that Germany should be made to pay that much as an indemnity and should not be allowed to earn it by honest toil.

Illiteracy in the Senate

S ENATOR POINDEXTER says that H. G. Wells and William Hohenzollern are very much alike in their views. (I) Point out 87 errors in this statement. (2) Is illiteracy increasing or decreasing in the United States Senate?

Denatured Suffrage

H IS elected mayor of a large city by the votes of the mass of the people, the tax-payers generally opposing him. As mayor he moves to cripple all the people's departments for the benefit of the taxpayers.-Show how the disadvantages of universal, secret suffrage may be overcome.

The Law of the Naval Increase

B EFORE the war we increased our navy; during the war B we increased our navy; now that the war is over and the League of Nations is in sight we are going to increase our navy.-When and under what conditions may a navy be decreased ?-Why not?

Conspiracies

T WENTY-FIVE mine owners and officials were indicted for forcibly deporting twelve hundred striking miners from the town of B. Ninety-three other men were indicted for being members of the I. W. W. The twenty-five were dismissed without trial and the ninety-three were sentenced to prison for Boo years and fined $2,500,000.-Show that this is in accordance with the larger principles of justice.

Russia at a Glance

RITE a short treatise on the situation in Russia, prov-

ing that the Bolsheviki are on their Iast legs; that they are increasing dangerously ; that they are low-browed assassins; that they are impractical idealists; that Nicholas was killed but is still living at various places; that five grand dukes were slain in a well but are still in good health; that in the interest of democracy we should recognize a military dictatorship in Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka, as an all Russian government.-Prove all your statements from current news-papers, leaving loop-holes for escape.

HOWARD BRUBAKER.

10

The socialist Party on Trial

Impressions by William Bross Lloyd

N OT a trial of the Socialist party, positively not---the trial at Chicago, before Judge Landis, which began December 9th and lived into the new year. So the prosecuting attorneys .scrupulously emphasized. So the Judge echoed time and again. Only a trial of five individuals joined in conspiracy to pester the military program of the United States. The reading into the case of every pronouncement about war of the American parry, of similar declarations from every European country in 1914, and of the international resolutions-all merely to show " state of mind." . . . Nothing to do with socialism or socialists as such, nothing at all.

The conspirators: Victor L. Berger, Socialist Congressman-elect, member of the National Executive Committee since the party began, editor-in-chief of the Milwaukee Leader, a Socialist daily, international delegate of the party on many occasions; Adolph Germer, National Secretary of the party since May, 1916; J. Louis Engdahl, editor of the party publications; William F. Kruse, National Secretary and Director of the Young People's Socialist League; Irwin St. John Tucker, knight errant of socialist evangelism. There is a lingering doubt about the proper handle to Tucker's name; it was " Father" on direct examination and " Mister " on cross-examination. There is doubt, too, about this defendant's conspiratorial talents; he is so Tucker= minded. . . . There seems to he a semblance of the Socialist party on trial.

The conspiracy: under the Espionage Act. There you have it. District Attorney CIyne asked each juror, in precisely the same tone intonation of solemnity, " Are you in sympathy with the Espionage Law? " Answer, " Yes," with unfailing rejoinder, " As you are with all laws of the United States." It is quite plausible that Christmas and New Year imprisonment has diminished this spontaneous sympathy with the Espionage Law on the part of the jurors, but it is altogether beyond question that nothing has occurred since December 9th to add to their understanding of the law. In fact, nothing has happened since June 15th, 1917, when the law went into force, to give it definition.

The Espionage Law, legalism aside, is a clumsily subtle way of lending to the Administration the aid of the courts in enforcing the official war morality. The language of the law would seem to bear on actual military happenings, but hardly any of the Federal judges have so read it. Criminality under this law cbnsists of any attempt to impugn the idealistic advertisement under which the war is being imposed. And conspiracy is a joint attempt.

The Debs trial had the severe simplicity and intensity of Greek drama. It was a five day-act performance, vibrant

with the piercing personality of 'Gene Debs. But this party conspiracy trial is scattered, episodic and largely trivial. It takes relief in the few chances offered to the defendants to transmit themselves to the jurors, and in the astonishing revelations of aggressive personality on the part of a half dozen witnesses who took the stand in behalf of the defendants.

`Assistant District Attorney Fleming, who leads in the prosecution, is an agreeable looking young man who looks better than he sounds and sounds better than he thinks. 'When embarrassed he blushes and whatever he says or asks he emphasizes, simply varying the

degree of emphasis.   All in a full, metallic voice,

yielding a grating monotony. The importance of Fleming in my present thought is that I owe him some recognition for the twenty days of irritating stupidity he has inflicted upon me. Secondly, Fleming and Clyne-and Landis and the jurors-make understandable the skirmishing against the class war in Federal court-rooms. Assassination without risk, I call it, with some talent to give grave solemity to nothingness. This young man is curiously in earnest about what he is doing.

Having included Landis in the foregoing generalization, let me pause now to take him out-and promptly to put him back in again. His Honor has figured in these pages before, under pen of jack Reed and brush of Art Young. I will not venture on rivalry in description. Landis is the only interesting judge I have ever seen in action. Judges are not usually in action. Landis is. He is one of the alleviating circumstances of trial tedium. First, you must find him. Then you can study his pose. When he speaks he is either extremely quiet and expressionless or vigorously in eruption, with his eyes flashing fire out of a pallid, dissipated face, _given distinction only by his shaggy crest of gray. Landis is distinctly not stupid, which clearly differentiates him from district attorneys. But his judicial unconventionalities only mark an intense realism, not a diminution of faith in his judgeship. He is dead in earnest about his job, its essentials, not its frills. He takes his judgeship straight.

Landis wanted to try this party case. He undoubtedly gave himself much satisfaction in his disposition of the wobblies." His wholesale distribution of twenty-year sentences and maximum fines, after the automatic verdict in that case-about one-half minute per defendant-was a rare example of judicial ferocity. The refusal to allow bail pending an appeal evidenced a clear consciousness of the remorse-less nature of the fight behind the court-room fight. But Landis disdains sanctimonious pretense in serving the social system in which he functions " willfully " and " knowingly." IIe denied a motion for a change of venue. A judge rarely

February, 1919   11

insists on the prerogative of trying a case simply because it is on his calendar. There is no person in the court-room who .has any doubts about the sentences if there is a verdict of guilty. They will be the limit.

Fleming, inspired by a romantic young braggart named Schiller, once the reddest of the " red " among Yipsels, now the pillar of the prosecution against the American Socialist party, has made the " conspiracy " turn upon the use of the Y. P. S. L. by the Socialist party to carry out an actual assault against the war. The youngest defendant, Kruse, apparently ignored in the indictment, as National Director of the Y. P. S. L. becomes the pivot of the " conspiracy," and most of the Government's testimony centers on him. The details of a convention of the Chicago branch of the Y. P. S. L., held in May, 1917, were repeated ad nauseam. On this one local meeting, by Fleming's insistence, is to turn the " criminality " of the American Socialist party-at a time when the whole world is veering so swiftly toward the new civilization of the dominant proletariat under socialist inspiration that the minds of men are dizzy with joy and fear.

In May, 1917, the young Socialists were in a quandary. There was the war, and the imminence of conscription. There was the St. Louis protest. The authors of the anti-war proclamation and the National Executive Committee failed to make definite the implications of the party position in relation to individual military service. This was unnecessary in April, 1917. It was crucial when compulsory service was ordered.

This was the first time young Americans had faced this problem. American military experience had left only the precedent of ease in raising a volunteer army. There had been nothing more than the skirmishes of marines during the lifetime of those required to register for draft on June 5th, 1917. The European experience was not enlightening, be-cause founded on a principle of permanent militarism, which had always been spurned as un-American. Even so, it had been vehemently argued that the European Socialists should have met death by turning against their exploiters rather than against each other. Whatever counsel came from the older American Socialists to their young comrades, when not enigmatical, was to obey the law.

William F. Kruse is a young man who should make him-self count strongly in the future of American socialism. He was born in jersey City, of German and Danish parentage. His father was a sailor. Kruse went from the factory to the Rand School, and is now completing a night law course. His physical endowments fortify his mental gifts. A tall, stalwart blond, finely featured, Ioose-jointed, of mild expression, a clear thinker and forceful speaker, Kruse has exceptional equipment for party leadership. His spiritual experience of May, 1917, was exactly what might be expected of a young man of fine sensitiveness facing the political and personal problems of conscription simultaneously. He is not the absolutist type, one whose personal actions are rigidly deter-mined by his intellectual conclusions, like the witness Carl Haessler, whom I shall describe Iater. Kruse is strongly

imbued with the organization sense; he sees himself as a unit in a mass, rather than as an individual against the universe.

The prosecutor unconsciously went to the heart of the whole matter in turning his assault primarily against Kruse. I have not the patience to detail here the material by which he aims to prove that Kruse was the responsible mover in anti-draft registration and anti-military-service campaigns, abetted by the propaganda and active co-operation of the other defendants. - But he realized that Kruse presented the opportunity to make graphic to the jury the precise relation between anti-war sentiments and refusal or attempted evasion of army service. And, in a subconscious way, it is true that the test of socialism as antithetical to war is in the spirit of resistance of its young adherents. That resistance, carried to the last extremity by some of the young radicals, has been rewarded by imprisonment and torture. Teaching the spiritual basis of that resistance, whether inspired by economic philosophy or religious faith, has brought ten and twenty year sentences to teachers, poets, agitators and prophets. In this trial both these manifestations of " criminality " have been developed simultaneously.

As the facts stand, Kruse expressed ardent sympathy and admiration for the handful of Yipsels here and there who accepted the party declaration against the war as a mandate against personal service, at the cost of ten-year, fifteen-year and even longer penitentiary sentences. Kruse wrote a letter on the day before the registration expressing uncertainty as to what he would do himself, though he had taken a clear stand against the Y. P. S. L. as an organization going on record against compliance with the draft law. Then, on the day, he registered and advised others to register. The jurors may speculate as to the potential insubordination which Kruse revealed to them on the witness stand, and forego any discrimination between Kruse as an individual and as a secretary.

Carl Haessler came to the witness stand in convict garb. The clash between the man and his clothing was an instantaneous impression. The oversized gray shirt and brown trousers seemed to have little contact with the wearer. In sharp focus was a face to rivet attention, pale and wasted, but alert, of eagle decisiveness-an exceptionally fine fore-head, auburn hair and flashing eyes. Asked to be sworn, he responded in a clear, firm voice: " I do not swear; I will affirm." I never experienced so sudden a change of emotional atmosphere as in that court-room in the moment when Carl Haessler stood erect, hands at sides, looking past Judge Landis to the clerk who read the affirmation.

Haessler came in at the end of two and a half weeks of the trial. Just before him came Mrs. Haessler, a demurely sad bride of " a year and a day." In the hope of persuading the young couple to put the blame of Carl's imprisonment-twelve years at hard labor for refusal to don the uniform-on the advice of Victor Berger, who was his friend and counsellor, Clyne had gone to Fort Leavenworth to inter-view Carl, and Fleming had brought Mrs. Haessler in from

1?   THE LIBERATOR

an Illinois town where she was teaching school to his Chicago office. And it was to reveal this attempt on the part of the prosecution and its utter failure that the defense called both to the stand.

Mrs. Haessler answered under stress of high emotion in a tender voice, giving a sense of hunted bravery and pride. (Carl had been brought into the court-room, handcuffed, while she was on the stand.) Mrs. Haessler stated that she was dismissed by the school authorities immediately after the unsatisfactory interview at Chicago. She had received the impression that if she answered Fleming's questions satisfactorily it might be of help to Carl. Victor Berger, she knew, had urged Carl to put on the uniform because he believed individual protest was not effective.

Then came Carl Haessler, graduate of the University of Wisconsin, a Ph.D. of Illinois, Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, professor of philosophy-convict. The play of his mind for an hour under cross-fire was one of the rare sensations of a lifetime. There was no person in the crowded court-room who missed it. He became an anti-imperialist, he explained, by virtue of the Oxford influences, in contradiction to the purpose of the great imperialist Cecil Rhodes in founding these scholarships. He doesn't know that he has a conscience; his opposition to service in the war is not private, but public in its nature. He was against our entrance into the war be-cause of its imperialistic impulse. He is suspicious about ad-ventures in democracy undertaken by governments controlled by imperialists.

. The answers came quick, clear, decisive and pleasant. The examining lawyer attempted to introduce a note of pathos, which Haessler deftly countered by exhibiting a tempera-mental incapacity for resentment, an impersonality above taint of sentimentalism. Berger was not fast enough to travel in his company in politics and economics. He tried to act as moderator; tried to keep the witness out of jail. Berger was proud of the Socialist record of observance of law; he argued that Socialists in jail are of no use to the movement.

Then Haessler was asked to tell about his talk with Clyne at Leavenworth, and he went on at a terrific rate for about twenty minutes, uninterruptedly, with brilliant answers to Clyne's questions, none of which he seemed to have forgotten -until Clyne begged the court for mercy.

" The St. Louis platform? " A very moderate document, satisfactory as far as it went, but should have included individual as well as mass resistance to the-war. " How did he get his opinions? " In England-and by a careful reading of Wilson and McAdoo explanations of the purposes of the war. " As to Belgium?" Roosevelt had changed his mind, and the witness had not. Would the war be of any benefit? Yes, if the red flag triumphs. What did Berger say? " Why, I don't remember what Berger said; I was more interested in my own views than in his." But Haessler remembered quite perspicuously when he could contrast Berger's opportunism sharply with his own absolutism, as when he characterized Berger as " a two-shirt internationalist."

Mrs. Harriet Thomas, of People's Council distinction, heard Germer make one of the speeches which was stressed against him. Her performance on cross-examination as a witness was a delicious bit of high comedy, with Fleming as the victim of a brilliant feminine intellectuality which he could not hold within any bounds. When he tried to riddle her with the charge of pacifism he was floored with the re-tort that from her viewpoint the political offensive was more important than the military offensive, and that it was eight months after the People's Council had insisted upon defini-. tion of " war for democracy " that Wilson issued his first definite statement (which, by the way, is daily losing all traces of erstwhile apparent definiteness).

Before Fleming could catch his breath at one of her sallies, she turned to the Judge :

" And, Your Honor, I do not think it is necessary for Mr. Fleming to emphasize every question by continually pointing his finger at me." But Fleming was persistent.

" Now then, Mrs. Thomas, if you were a man "-and something about military service. Instantly came the answer:

" If I were a man? That hypothesis does not interest me."

" I object to the witness's voluntary answers."

" And I object to counsel's voluntary insinuations." Poor Fleming.

*   *

The experiences of the American Socialist and the Milwaukee Leader with the post office censorship were told by Engdahl and Berger. It was The Masses story over again. There was no way to comply with the Espionage Law in publishing a paper which Burleson did not like. A single issue was held unmailable; then the second-class mailing privileges were suspended because of irregularity of publication.

In this connection Frank Walsh appeared for the defense. He told about two conferences, one with an assistant to the Attorney General, the other with Postmaster-General Burleson. A number of radical papers were represented. The purpose was to establish a definite basis for the censorship so as to avoid financial ruin and imprisonment for publishers willing to conform to understandable limitations. Frank Walsh, Clarence Darrow, Morris Hillquit, Seymour Stedman, Amos Pinchot and others made common cause in the plea for a " fair " censorship. Burleson swept the whole thing aside with the statement that the Socialists had better say nothing about the war, because they were against it. Let them confine themselves to socialism! If they had any complaints about his way of handling these papers, let them go into the courts. . . . Well, we have been in the courts -and are still there.

There is something refreshing about Frank Walsh. I am willing to drop my grouch against liberals when they function as liberals, never when they talk their vapidities. Walsh made over a hundred speeches for Wilson, so he testified, because Wilson " kept us out of war." He was against going in. Afterward he accepted the need for some control over the press. But espionage laws go against his instincts,

February, 1919   13

and he volunteered his services to help put the censorship on a basis of open play and fair rules. Walsh submitted to President Wilson a draft of a series of rules which would at least have given decency to the process whatever may be said about censorship under any circumstances.

Clarence Darrow, also a witness, took the case of the American Socialist to the President directly. Wilson explained that it was hard " to draw the line." Further, Darrow narrated, they had an agreeable and harmonious " philosophical " discussion. . . . Nothing slipped into the record to show any shift from the stiletto style of censor-ship unto this day.

Engdahl is distinctive among these five defendants, in freedom from perplexities. Everything about Engdahl is straight-forward and complete. He is dead in earnest, with sober endurance and a buoyancy of spirit to ride unperturbed through any storm. He listens as Debs did at Cleveland, as a casual auditor, not as having a personal stake in the performance. With Engdahl, logic and feelings march in even step. He approved the anti-war stand of the party, never questioned it, still approves it. He is an internationalist, in ardent sympathy with the Bolsheviki. Engdahl recounted his associations with the brilliant comrades across the water, particularly his visit with Karl Liebknecht in his Berlin law office.

If acrobatic dexterity in relation to espionage laws be-comes the American way of Socialist agitation, the politically irreverent Tucker will attain dare-devil distinction. Assuming, of course, that he has not yet volplaned himself into jail. Clyne, of sour, puckered mien, undertook the cross-examination of Tucker, proceeding under burden of a heavy weight of nothingness. He proved an excellent foil for Tucker's aggressive wit. Tucker did not testify; he " held forth " . . . During the past three weeks Tucker has been busy writing poetry and nonsense, lecturing on ancient and modern imperialism, holding church services. He attends the trial regularly, as the best farce in town.

Conspiracy? Tucker worked in the National Office for six weeks.

" I fired him," Germer testified.

" I resigned," explained Tucker, " for two reasons-one that I couldn't get along with Germer, the other that he couldn't get along with me."

And Berger-who now holds the centre of the stage, and talks on the witness-stand just a little less tempestuously than in committee session, with more of the patience of the school-master. His explosive naturalness of intonation and gesture, and forgetfulness of court proprieties, make the scene incongruous. Berger said that the St. Louis Convention was not his kind of a Socialist convention. He insists that he is a " constructive Socialist," an " historical Socialist, instead of an hysterical one." He speaks cynically of the Bolsheviki, of the I. W. 'W., of the " impossibilists." Not anti-militarist, not. anti-national, for obedience to all

laws, but against this war because it is a capitalistic war. Nevertheless, a subscriber to war loans and charities, and boastful. of a family record of army service.

I might recall more of Berger's testimony. He has been at it two or three days. . . . I heard Debs at Cleveland. I remember everything he said. It warms the heart like the rising sun.

[After the verdict was rendered Mr. Lloyd telegraphed this final comment: " The verdict in the Berger trial proves that the Socialist Party is an illegal criminal organization, as viewed by our courts and prosecuting attorneys. Very well. So was the Russian Socialist Party, and see where it is now. No American Socialist need fear for the future of his party."]

Good News

Dear Max: I have just read the December LIBERATOR, in which you say the moment has come for me to " come back into the Socialist movement, leaving us convinced that a reasoned belief about the relation between autocracy and political democracy in the evolution of capitalism was the cause of his withdrawal." I cheerfully agree with you-except that I will not for a moment admit that I " withdrew from the Socialist movement "; I withdrew from the left wing of the movement to a kind of central position, and on November 11 last, Armistice Day, I packed up my' intellectual bag-gage and made ready to move back to the left wing. While you were writing your invitation to me, I was writing as follows in my magazine:

" Ten months ago, when the first number of this magazine was written, the world lay under the threat of the wickedest organized force that had ever appeared in human history. It seemed to the editor that it was the duty of every liberal to devote his every energy to the task of overthrowing the Beast with the Brains of an Engineer.

" But now the Beast is dead, and the whole face of the world is changed. We are free to carry out the promise we made to ourselves and to our readers-that when the war for political democracy abroad was won, we should return to the struggle for industrial democracy in America.

" The first eight issues of this magazine were in-scribed, ' For a Clean Peace and the Internation.' Neither the Clean Peace nor the Internation has yet been won, but every hour makes it clearer that the only obstacles in the way of these two great aims of humanity are the forces of special privilege in the capitalist countries of the world. To overthrow these forces becomes the first task of all friends of progress.

" From now on this magazine will bear a new inscription. We want Social Justice, by peaceful means if possible; but we want Social Justice first of all things in this world."

UPTON SINCLAIR.

.14

RANDOLPH BOURNE

(Died December 22, 1918)

BRAVEST of us all. And sweetest, Dead .

Well, Randolph, I am going to speak from my heart And tell about you. . . .

I remember you first when I was editing The Seven Arts Just about the time we entered the war . .

I was shocked to see you, a cripple, hunchbacked, With twisted ear and protruding teeth . . .

You had difficulty in making yourself heard

And I wanted to avoid you. . . .

But you handed us an article on the war,

And with it your soul . . .

I shall never forget that article, nor those that followed: They are your immortality. . . .

And when we became friends

I found that they all lied about you:

They lied who said you were venomous,

They lied who said your soul was like your body, They lied who said you were insincere. . . .

For you were sweet, friendly,

With a passion for humanity

Almost terrible . . .

You could never keep away from a trial where some poor rebel was being persecuted,

You held out your hand to the conscientious objector, You hated war and hate . . .

Your soul writhed over injustice and sham and the masquerades of virtue;

And your mind-

I kept marveling at it-

Such a mind-

A vivid play over the world, a realism penetrating like a keen blade,

A sad humor sparkling along the steel,

An intellect never cold, never dry,

But burning up from the depths of emotion.

You lived, isolated, in a poor lodging,

Writing book reviews for a living,

All your fine friends scorning you or afraid of you.

I remember how the cold of last winter drove you to my grate,

And we sat out mornings before the red coals,

Groping in the darkness of Doomsday. . . .

It was because you loved too much, Randolph,

That they persecuted you. . . .

What do the cowards want with love?

And the easy intellectuals, the liberals, those that follow the star of creative intelligence,

What do they want with truth?

For you loved, not as others love,

You loved the morning star of a better life, You loved, and so you hated,

Hated everything that hurts humanity.

You were

A triumph in yourself,

You were a victory. .

I think of your body, the miserable crippled little thing, Wheezy and malformed,

Which you had to take with you wherever you went And exhibit in all its ugliness and humility to others, Which loaded the dice against you, and made it for you

a giant's task to meet the world. . .

And how out of passion and imagination,

And passionate intellectual discipline,

You surmounted your body,

And made yourself a clear victory in the world, The most delightful of comrades,

The brilliant talker in groups,

Most lovable of friends,

So that at the last those who took you to their hearts

Saw only your eyes-beautiful, wistful, the eyes of a simple child-

And so saw you with their souls,

A wonderful human being.

Now we have lost you . . .

Oh, surely this is Doomsday, and our human world is tottering and crashing to pieces. .

The great decayed palace of civilization, all of it, its plushy, muffled, cushioned upper rooms,

And its foul and reeking basement rotten with slums, Is toppling into chaos. . . .

Those terrible antagonists, the oppressors and the oppressed, Between them are pulling it down,

Devil and God in man are breaking it asunder. .

And in the ruins now you also, my friend, are among the dead. . . .

Here in America you stood with your back to the wall, Cheered by a scattered handful,

But really alone, one against all of the millions . . Alone, unswerving, dreading and fearing prison and persecution,

Yet continuing in your own truth.

Well, I know, and know intimately, how despair grew upon you,

Until at last you ceased hoping. . . .

What was there left to do, but die?

In this America, with its colossal ignorance, conceit and prosperity,

Its mass-docility, its worship of astounding phrases, its glib, smug self-content.

February, 1919   1)

It is such as you who are persecuted, stoned and lynched. . . .

You, hope of a truer life here,

Bit of the dawn of a real people,

Forecast and harbinger of a better time.

Let it be so:

Let our strong and weak, our masters and slaves, our intellectuals and ignorant

Continue in greed and cowardice:

Let them go on in physical and spiritual comfort: Let them surely lynch anyone who is uncomfortable:

And here, too, the whole rotten structure shall crash to

ruins. . . .

Perhaps it must be so.

But I, this morning,

Only know this:

That you are dead. . . .

And I come as a representative of that future people, Who, Iooking back, shall remember you,

And Iay a wreath of maple leaves and of early roses on your coffin. . . .

-Your light shall, live through us,

And beyond us, to the new day.

James Oppenheim,

The Silent Defense in Sacramento

By Jean Sterling

``) 0 the defendants, not represented by attorneys, wish to interrogate the talesman? "

The court reporter held his pencil suspended. The forty-three defendants faced with mocking eyes and closed lips their jailers, prosecutors and the presiding judge.

" Do they wish to exercise the right of challenge?"

For a tense second the inexorable wheels of justice stopped turning. Some one had thrown a felt slipper in the cogs. The defendants gave the prospective juror not so much as a glance. They had read and yawned and gazed vacantly out of the high windows while the attorneys for the prosecution had been probing the talesman's soul for any humane or mod-ern ideas on the subject of Iabor.

Then, after a decorous silence, such as is observed in court procedures and funeral rites, the judge said quietly, " If, then, there are no objections to the talesman, he may take his seat in the jury box."

And so the juryman, an ancient rancher, the prophesy of the type to follow, took his seat.

And in this manner did the forty-three defendants, I. W. W.'s, now being tried in Sacramento, California, on charges of conspiracy, under the Espionage Act, open their " silent defense."

Three of the group have employed lawyers. All three have domestic ties or dependents, which makes this separate action imperative. But the remainder, the forty-three, who are in jail during the trial because of the exorbitant bail which was demanded in each case, will maintain throughout the entire trial a defense of unbroken silence.

"We decided upon the silent defense," said Mortimer Downing, elected spokesman for the group, " because we despair of justice for the workingmen being achieved through the courts. The Mooney case, the Frank Little incident, the Bisbee cases, the Chicago trials-these have convinced us of the uselessness of legal defense. 'We are tried in a prejudiced community. Some of our men have been held incommunicado. They have been prevented by United States agents

from mailing courteous appeals to the court. Some of than have been confined, untried, for a year. These conditions are intolerable, and this ` silence strike ' is to preserve the self-respect of ourselves as members of organized labor."

And so they sit there in the big white court-room, challenging neither talesmen nor evidence nor exhibits nor witnesses. They have grown pallid from their long sojourn out of the sight of the sun. They are emaciated. They are unshaven, many of them. Their clothes are ill-fitting and thin. But their eyes smile and are unafraid. There they sit, throughout the long sessions, coughing, coughing, several of them obviously tubercular, their incessant coughing shattering into fragments the well-cemented evidence against them. Up on his bench, the judge sits with his handkerchief pressed against his nose and mouth, lest the contagion from the defendants spread.

As they cough the prisoners raise their hands to their mouths-the shrivelled hands of old men, of men not old, blue and cold and calloused. These are the hands that have helped to sink the shafts and mine the gold in frozen Alaska, that have .cut spruce and pine in the deep wet forests of Washington, packed salmon in Oregon, harvested the crops in the sun-scorched valleys of California. These are the hands that have worked incredible hours in steaming canneries, in shrieking saw-mills, on fog-swept wharves and down in starless mines.

Unconsciously they offer these hands in evidence of service to their country, these hands with the scars and the wounds of labor upon them. And their bodies, too, they offer, illy-nourished, warped and broken by toil.

True, these defendants belong to an organization which they think will eventually prevent these wounds, these trials, Even their silence does not deny this charge in the indictment. And it may be-I do not know-that some of them as individuals have struck out in retaliation against powerful and unseen forces which sapped their vigor and burned out their youth; that they pitted their own'puny force against the overwhelming force of established society.

16   THE LIBERATOR

But, whatever they have done or have not done, they will not speak in their own defense. " It is useless," they say. " We despair! Look for yourself to the history of our case. Look at the powers arrayed against us! "

The hidden springs of these trials begin far back, even farther back than the spring of 1916, when a coast-wide drive was started against organized labor. In the seasonal trades, which form so large a part of the work of the Pacific Coast, the I. W. W. organization was numerically strong. Among these modern nomads was fast quickening a sense of industrial solidarity. Meanwhile in the cities, particularly in Seattle and'San Francisco, the American Federation of Labor unions were politically powerful.

The Chamber of Commerce in San Francisco was said to have collected a fund of a million dollars with which to fight organized workers. Economic battles raged in camps, in fields and factory. Legal battles were fought in Everett, Washington. In San Francisco, the famous Mooney case began, backed by the Chamber of Commerce. America's entrance into the war did not reconcile the clashing economic interests, except superficially. So that while the I. W. W.'s in Sacramento are being tried on charges growing out of war conditions, we find the same influences lined up, politically and industrially, as lined up before the war.

We find Deputy United States Marshall lMIulhall, a special investigator for the Department of Justice in the Sacramento cases, in frequent discussion with Fickert over the methods to pursue and the probable outcome of the two cases. " I am going to link the Mooney case with the Sacramento case," Fickert tells his assistant. " I'm going to have a meeting with Mulhall tomorrow." (Dictagraph record.)

Mulhall came, and in the course of their conversation Mulhall told Fickert, " If ever you get in a hole send for

me. 1 can take any of these

witnesses and pull the friendly stuff on them and generally get what I go after." Mulhall discussed the possibility of losing out in the Sacramento cases and also in the Mooney case. Finally he said, " You know that if this thing ever breaks we will go down hill so fast that all hell won't save us."

These are the main facts in regard to the Sacramento case : During the course of this interminable Mooney trial a recall was started against Fickert. On December 17th, 1917, the night before the recall elections, a bomb exploded under the back steps of the Governor's mansion in Sacramento. It

did no harm, except to return Fickert to office.

A round-up of all I. W. W.'s followed. Their hall was raided, books, papers, properties were seized. Within ten days forty-eight men were in jail.

Federal investigators appeared in Sacramento; but the trail from the scene of the explosion, instead of inevitably dipping toward the jail, wound in a curiously opposite direction. Don Rathbun, special agent for the Department of Justice, reported that they " found nothing to warrant action." The Governor's own detective was unable to connect the men in jail with the explosion. . . . But the men stayed in jail.

A demand was sent to the Department of Justice in Washington that the men be held. D. W. Marmichael, president of the Chamber of Commerce and head of the Sacramento City Council, together with the editor of " The Sacramento Bee " and Ray Benjamin, Deputy Attorney General, Fickert's personal friend, the official whitewasher of Oxman whose perjured testimony sent Mooney to jail, demanded that the Federal Government take action.

" The Sacramento Bee questioned the willingness of the United States Government to act and called upon the " aroused citizens to take the law in their own hands." It printed a letter from the secretary of the Chamber of Commerce in Tulsa, Oklahoma, recommending that " a coat of tar and feathers be embossed on the prisoners' backs through the lashing process."

The following February, after being held in jail for nearly three months on one charge, the charge was dismissed and the men were re-indicted by the Federal Grand Jury. Others were added to the group. Theodora Pollok, the one woman indicted, was included. Theodora Pollok is a woman of gentle breeding and fine culture, who had given of her frail strength in the defense of Ford and Suhr.

February, 1919   17

Months went by without the defendants being brought to trial. I am told that for sixty days they slept on the cold cement floor, in winter, with only a scant cotton blanket; that when food was brought to them from the outside it was placed before their eyes but out of their reach.

Meantime the daily papers abounded with " outrages " committed by the I. W. W.'s. Candidates for the governor-ship toured California, sowing the seeds of hatred and misunderstanding. " Successful prosecution of the war for democracy " and the " extermination of the I. W. W.'s " were the two great issues common to both sides in the campaign.

In September, eight months after the original arrests, down in Fresno County another round-up of I. W. W.'s took place. Twenty men were jailed on charges of arson. " The fires in the haystacks are due to incendiary bombs," say the arresting officers. " Due to imperfectly cured hay .or the disciplining' of refractory non-members of the Farmers' Association," say the accused men.

In October a final indictment was returned. It consolidates the Sacramento and the Fresno cases, grouping them all under the charge of conspiracy. By this arrangement, men in jail are charged with crimes committed long after their imprisonment. This last indictment dropped a number of the lesser defendants and others. took their places, more dangerous to society. Up to this day no one has been apprehended for the explosion at the Governor's home a year .ago.

Finally in December, a year after the original arrests, they are all brought to trial-all but five who have died in jail-brought to trial down in the rich silt valley of the Sacramento, where bitterness has grown rank, where are located the great hop ranches of Ford and Suhr fame, where " The Sacramento Bee " is to be found in every home and on every ranch-the paper that urged lynching as the solution of the labor problem. In the heart of this beautiful valley lies the city of Sacramento, gay in its Christmas greens and red street lights; and in the heart of the city stands the Federal Building, a structure of enduring stone.

Walled in by the high Sierras and the Coast Range is this garden spot. Walled in by collossal prejudices and actual circumstances are the defendants. No utterances of their grievances, of their point of view, reaches the outside world. Their publicity committees are arrested. Their offices are raided. Their paraphernalia and plans of defense seized. Their Defense Bulletin is denied the mails. All incoming and outgoing mail is, of course, read by the jailers. All conversations are in the presence of detectives-as with all prisoners. Scareheads in the local papers warn the public of a possible bomb at the trial, and therefore " in the interest of the public," the spectators' door is kept locked during the sessions. Visitors are questioned as to their interest, who they are, so that either through fear or inconvenience, no one comes to " listen " to the " silent defense." The seats for the public remain empty.

" Don't you see," they say, " the uselessness of the usual defense? "

And they continue to sit in silence. But their silence is not sullen; neither is it pert. It has back of it a conviction rather than a mood. It is intellectual rather than emotional. It is always challenging, argumentative; piquing the curiosity of judge, of prosecutor and of jury. It is not the silence of death; not of winter, but of early spring.

Silently they sit, awaiting the inevitable sentences, so cool, so unbroken in spirit, proving that man does not live by bread alone; making strangely artificial and pompous the perfunctory decorum of the court.

In spite of the constant coughing a certain pleasantness pervades the court room. The fact that the defendants-the silent group of forty-three men-do not oppose the prosecution, or through lawyers seek to block and outwit the state, makes the prosecutor's task an easy one. He can be almost himself. And " himself " is a cheery, grandfatherly man from the little town of Ukiah, up north, and he jog-trots along with his load of evidence, as if on a pleasant country road. He is assisted by an amiable young lawyer of the Sunday school type who " helped " in the Chicago convictions.

So far, the prosecution have only read and read and read; hour in, hour out, from " Solidarity " and from the I. W. W. Song Book. Everything they read is intended to show the attitude of the I. W. W.'s toward grave social questions, problems which have not as yet disturbed the sweet-scented serenity of the Sacramento valley; articles which portray the class struggle in the coarse language of' the " blanket stiff " as he trudges the dirty plate route." In kindly voice, the young prosecutor explains to the jury, as one would to little children, what " sabotage " and " the cat " and " one big union " mean-to him. He shows them pictures of cats and wooden shoes.

By four o'clock the defendants have sunk far down in their seats. Their heads rest on the back of their chairs. The coughing is more and more frequent. The judge presses his handkerchief' tightly over his mouth and nose. Can it be that there is danger of infection from these ideas? The deep-set eyes that look out over his mask, seem almost tender in the fast fading light. A judge should have sterner eyes!

The jury-such old, old men ! look bored and helpless. What horrible ideas they have just heard! Jesus, " a blanket-stiff! " " Pie in the sky ! " Employers called " snakes " and " reptiles," and the word " prostitute " right out in print. For this is a country jury, good men.

At last five o'clock. The judge instructs the jury to " form no opinions " and they go their separate ways. The judge comes down from his bench. The prisoners are lined up by their jailers to be taken down an elevator, through a tunnel under the Federal Building, back to their jail. The big white room, tomblike in its marble, is full of shadows and unsaid things.

As the elevator with its human freight drops into subterranean regions, a hollow cough echoes up into the vaulted chambers of justice.

18

Wlio's who in the

[The " Answerer" in this conversation is a young man who lived in Germany many years, as a newspaper reporter, and had the privilege of personal acquaintance with most of the present revolutionary leaders. He requests us not to use his name.]

Q. I notice that a great many of the journalists who were praising Liebknecht as a saint about six or eight months ago, are now praising him as a devil, and the main thing I am interested in. is getting a personal portrait of the kind of man he is,

A. Well, he is not a saint and he is not a devil. He is an extremely human being. He is very dark, you know, has a dark olive complexion.

Q. Has he a kindly friendly eye-he looks a little Kaiser-like in his picture?

A. Oh, no, he is very kind and smiling. He is full of humor.

Q. Was Liebknecht sentenced to prison before the war? A. Yes, Liebknecht served a 12 months' sentence in prison in 1907.

Q. That was because of that book which was recently published?

A. Yes, " Militarism," which was recently translated into English.

Q. When did you first meet him personally?

A. I met him in 1908. He is a lawyer and has three partners. Two of them are his brothers. It is a very busy office, Liebknecht at that time, in 1909, was both Alderman and Assemblyman.

I was kept waiting outside his office for two hours, and at seven o'clock in the evening the office closed, and one of his brothers came down and said, " My brother is always late. You cannot expect my brother to come on time."

There were then about twenty-five people waiting for him. A Russian wanted to know about the entrance examinations to the University, a German woman had a fight about a chicken, etc., etc., and they all came to ask advice of that wise Liebknecht.

He is a European rather than German. He is not a machine. He is spontaneous and kind, the finest manners, courteous.

Q. Then he is a man that is really loved by the people as well as respected?

A. Oh, yes, he is very much loved. I have talked with many working people about him, and they always speak of Karl with affection.

Q. How old a man is he?

A. About 47. He was born in 1871-August 13th, 1871.

Q. Is he a healthy man? Bullet proof like Lenine?

A. He never was ill in the five years I was with him-continually running from one meeting to another-first to the Assembly, and then to the Aldermanic meetings, and

German Revolution?

to the Reichstag later, delivering speeches, writing papers and after that going home and taking his sandwiches and lunch on the train. He lives out of town. He has very few personal friends. He has no time-he is so busy-and the time he has, he likes to be with working people.

Q. Is he married?

A. Yes, he is married for the second time. His first wife died. He is married to a Russian now.

Q. What about this report in the papers that he is dying of tuberculosis?

A. That cannot be true, because according to an article in Vorwaerts his health was not injured by imprisonment at all. Let me read you this article as a tribute from his political opponents, the Majority Socialists.

" Liebknecht, we can all state with great joy, has not suffered in health on account of his being in prison. Even in spite of his very strong opposition against the party from which he separated himself, he has never used any of the methods of fighting which too often have been used by others. He has always despised such methods, and thus is explained why many are friends with him although they can not follow his political doctrines. They feel for him a sincere sympathy even though their ways and views must needs be separate. Liebknecht is like a lieutenant who in time of battle hurls himself against the enemy; he follows these same methods in his political struggles. He goes through thick and thin. He is not in the least a strategist. It has not been an easy thing to get him out of prison and to get him free, because the authorities have feared that if he should he set free there would be evil results in military discipline. . . ."

Q. Vorwaerts is still in the hands of the majority Socialists?

A. Yes. The minority socialists are divided into about six groups, you know. First there is the Liebknecht group-the Spartacus, which does not recognize any war of defense. They do not recognize the principle of nationality, practically at all. They recognize only internationality-only the international.

Q. Was this Spartacus group-was that name applied to them, and were they a group before the war?

A. No, it was derived from a series of Ietters written after the split came-after August 4th-and secretly circulated. They were signed " Spartacus." They were not all written by Liebknecht. - Some were written by Franz Mehring. He is one of the. finest minds in the German Social Democracy. He is practically the best philosopher the Socialists have. He has written a splendid history of the Social Democracy and other books on German history, and then he has written a splendid book on Lessing and Schiller.

Q. Is he of proletarian origin?

February, 1919   19

A. No, he is an intellectual, academic man. He was one of the organizers of the German Peoples' Theatre and used to write a wonderful introduction to each new play.

Q. You have not seen any mention of him since the,war, have you?

A. No, he is not a debater or a political man. He is a philosopher. and a writer.

Q. Did he write a great many of these Spartacus letters? A. Yes. Those which are written well are written by Mehring. Liebknecht does not write very well.

Q. Does he speak well?

A. He speaks very forcibly. His language is not the best -I mean the sentences are very long. He is not a demagogue at all. He does not act as a demagogue. When he ..speaks to people he is forceful, and speaks just what the people want, not because he wants to please them, but be-cause it is what he feels, and that is why the people like him. Scheidemann, for instance, is a demagogue.

Q. You mean, he gets them with his eloquence?

A. If you wish to call it eloquence you may, he uses big catch words and phrases which don't mean much. Liebknecht is always thinking about the meaning of what he says, not the sound.

Q. Who else is prominent in the Spartacus group besides Mehring and Liebknecht?

A. In that group, Rosa Luxemburg and Clara Zetkin. And none of them are really German, except Franz Mete-ring. Liebknecht's mother was a Jewess. Clara Zetkin was adopted by Germans. She is of French origin, I think, and she is a very brilliant woman. At the international convention at Copenhagen, I remember she spoke and translated all the languages very fluently. And then Rosa Luxemburg is certainly not a German. She is a Polish Jewess.

Q. What is she like personally?

A. Well, she is too busy to be human. She is very, very efficient, and the most brilliant debater in Germany. Q. What does she look like?

A. She is stout, short, lame. When she comes out, you think she is going to eat you up. That is the first impression. She has not any time to say, " How are you "? She is too busy. She starts talking.

Q. I never heard anybody describe her before, but I always thought she looked something like Emma Goldman?

A. She is something like that. She is something like Emma Goldman, only she is more able, I think, than Emma Goldman, and then she is not-well

Q. She is not what?

A. She is not-she has no hysteria.

Q. Emma Goldman is more emotional than intellectual, you think?

A. Well, I don't want to say that. I don't know enough about her, but I get that impression from other people. But that is not at all the case with Rosa Luxemburg.

Q. Well, I should not call Emma Goldman hysterical. She is not that kind of a person in the least. She is one

of these intense people who are all absorbed in the cause.

A. Well, that is Rosa Luxemburg, but more logcalmore logical.

Q. Has she any humor?

A. Oh, yes, she has humor, but she has no time for it. She is an artist, too. When I came to meet her the first time she was busy painting. She said, " That is how I spend my spare time."

Q. Painting pictures?

A. Yes, a landscape. When I gave her a letter of Liebknecht's, she looked around twice carefully, then she read the letter, and then she let me in. She was spied upon so much by the police.

Q. How old is she? Is she a gray haired woman?

A. No, about 48. She married this Doctor Luxemburg, with whom she never lived, only to get his name.

Q. A passport marriage?

A. No, it was because she would have been exiled from Germany if she were not a German. In Germany no foreigner could agitate for Socialism. They are so severe that if a foreigner was found reading a Socialist paper he would be exiled. I guess they wished many times they could annul that marriage and make her Polish again!

Q. What is Clara Zetkin like?

A. Oh, she is a silver-gray-haired woman, fine, sympathetic, just like a great mother, not very old-seeming-she is nearly sixty. She is one of the best editors-the editor of the best woman's socialist paper published, Gleichheit. She has two sons in the army, yet she opposed- the war, and was watched and persecuted and thrown into prison. They took her out of prison finally, being afraid that she would die there. She is a very splendid woman, human, kind.

Q. Have you met Mehring?

A. Yes, Mehring is a long-bearded man. He is just like an old scholar. He was the former editor-in-chief of the Leipziger Volks Zeitung, and then he was the editorial writer of the Neue Zeit. He signed his editorials with an arrow, and his editorials were like an arrow.

Q. Why did they sign those letters Spartacus-with the idea that they represented the very lowest classes-the slave revolt?

A. I don't know exactly what they had in mind. Probably the fighting spirit. . . .

There is also a group called the " international group," composed of the extreme radicals of the Zimmerwald conference. Then comes the radical minority group under the leadership of George Ledebour, one of the finest speakers in Germany, and Adolf Hoffman. Hoffman is something like Ameringer, only even more humorous. He does not speak German very correctly and when he gets up in the Assembly to talk and is interrupted by the Conservatives and made fun of he answers them, Yes, I am the product of your schools." He is very funny-he is really funny. He has a little white beard. He writes plays and plays in them himself, and he does not allow any intellectuals to have any-thing to do with them. Poor old Hoffman.

20   THE LIBERATOR

Ledebour is the most brilliant speaker I think they have, except Frank, who died at the beginning of the war. He is very radical but a very orthodox Marxian. That is where he differs a little from Liebknecht. I have seen him often in the Reichstag. He is a very excitable man. He is lame. He speaks English very well. He was the one who opposed in Copenhagen in I910 the resolution for a general strike in war time. Speaking for the Germans he said, "We cannot do that now. We will do what we can do when it comes to war, but don't bind our hands."

Q. He just meant he would do it if he thought it could succeed, but he thought it could not be done in Germany? A. Yes.

Q. Did he think this was a defensive war?

A. No. Absolutely no.

Q. He did not vote against the budget?

A. No. In 1915 he was among the 20 who voted against the budget. First was Liebknecht alone and then Liebknecht looked around for somebody to be with him and found Ruhle. Ruble was a schoolmaster and has written a very good book about the child. He voted against the budget with Liebknecht. There were only two, and then a long time passed and the question of the budget came up again. 'Twenty voted against, and twenty-two left the hall, so there were 44•

The fourth group is composed of old men again, or at least one old man. That is Kautsky. He stands almost alone. He is a very fine man. He works continually. Of course he is the best known theoretician of the party, but his position on the war has been too indefinite.

Q. What does he look like?

A. He has a white beard.

Q. They seem to be all patriarchs.

A. Well, Kautsky is a patriarch, only he does not look like a saint at all.

Q. Are there no young ones there?

A. Well, their ideas are old. There cannot be any young ones in that group. They are all old. When I was at his house Kautsky told me, " Do you know every morning we take the bicycles out-I and my children-we take a run through the streets and then we come back again and go to work." That is his life.

Bernstein is different-and Bernstein heads what might be called a fifth group.

Q. Are these groups really recognized and spoken of generally?

A. Well, more or less, yes. Of course the working class doesn't pay much attention to it. They only knew that the war should be ended, and they agreed with those people who wanted to end the war, but they did not care for these sharp distinctions between the Ieaders.. Edward Bernstein is one of the finest persons in Germany, I think.

Q. He was not in the Reichstag, was he?

A. Oh, yes, he was elected, from Breslau. He was a former bank employee. From 1881 to 1890 he lived in London, and he is one of the men who knows more about

English affairs than anybody else in the Reichstag group. He has written a great deal about English laws and the English constitution. He wrote a splendid history of the Berlin working people in three volumes, and he wrote that famous book against the orthodox Marxists-revised socialism. He believes that a country should be defended, but he was against this war. He said he was against it and he fought against it.

Q. Where do Haase and Dittman belong?

A. They belonged to the third group, to the group of Ledebour and Adolf Hoffman. Haase is very able. He is a lawyer, a little shortish kind of a fellow, bald-headed. He is a Jewish lawyer.

Q. He is Jewish, too?

A. Yes, like Bernstein

Q. What is Dittman like?

A. He is a working man. He is very tall. Dittman cross-examined Gompers once when Gompers was in Europe; he cross-examined him for an hour and a half and when he got through Gompers didn't know where he was. He said, " I think I have to go home.. I have other engagements. I would like to stay longer with you but I really have to go."

That is the left wing of the party. Now the right was also divided into groups, but they are not Socialists at all. You cannot compare the Menshevists of Russia with the majority Socialists in Germany. They are something abso-Iutely different.-they are so much more to the right. They are completely bourgeois.

Q. Is Liebknecht a Bolshevik?

A. Well, there is a difference. I think he is in a way. Yes, there is a difference between Germany and Russia. Russia is an agricultural country and Germany is an industrial country, and that is where comes the difference of principles too, and then Liebknecht did not exactly agree with Lenine's tactics as I remember. I don't know-he may have changed since the Bolsheviki revolution.

Q. Well, Lenine's tactics are really more for an industrial country than an agrarian country. That is, if there is any doubt about Bolshevism it is whether it can be applied to agrarian countries. Liebknecht would believe in the principle of proletarian dictatorship, don't you think so?

A. Yes, I think so.

Q. But it would be all done in order and decency under the Liebknecht regime, would it not?

A. It is not a question of order. It is a question of whether you accept the principle of the necessity of dictator-ship of the working class, or whether you think a revolution can be brought about within the forms of political democracy.

You see Haase is in favor of a constituent assembly. Q. And Liebknecht apparently is not.

Q. Well, now, tell us a little something if you can, that will illumine the strange despatches we get about Kurt Eisner?

A. Kurt Eisner is a brilliant journalist.

Q. Has he got a beard? (Laughter).

February, 1919   21

A. No, he has not a beard.

Q. \Veil, that's good so far.

A. Now Kurt Eisner does not belong-did not belong before this war to the very radical group. He belonged to the group called the Revisionists. Bernstein was his father in theory. In 1905 there were five editors on the Vorwdrts who were converted to the theories of Bernstein, and Kurt Eisner was among them and they were fired out of the Vorwiirts, and others were put in who agreed more with the Executive Committee, which is in Berlin.

Eisner is an elegant man. They called him the "silk shirt Socialist."

Q. He, too, is a Jew, is he not?

A. I don't know.

Q. They say he is a Galician Jew?

A. Yes, he is Jewish. I remember that now.

Q. Do you know about his subsequent career after the war?

A. Yes. After the war he wrote very strongly against the Government. He disclosed the conspiracy of the Pan-Germans. One article of his was reprinted in the Times here in 1916. He was working for a revolution in Bavaria and they put him in prison. That is one good thing about him, besides not having a beard. He went to prison.

Q. And was he just recently released?

A. Yes, he was released by the revolution and was immediately made Premier of Bavaria.

Q. From what I have seen of the despatches he does not seem to be objective and scientific, but a little personal and emotional. He gives me a feeling of uncertainty.

A. Yes, he is like Maximilian Harden, but he is more honest than Harden.

Q. Do you think Eisner is closer to the Liebknecht group or the Haase group?

A. The Haase group.

Q. He wants a constituent assembly?

A. Yes, Eisner does.

Q. Do you really think there is a fundamental difference between Bolshevism and the propaganda of the Spartacus group?

A. Let us discuss that another evening. Did you ever hear the story about the elder Liebknecht and Bebel? They went down to the Reichstag one day, and when they passed the door-keeper he bowed very politely and Liebknecht bowed back very politely, and Bebel said, " Why so polite? " " He is one of the subscribers of our paper," said Liebknecht. By and bye, they met a man colleting sewage on the streets. Liebknecht stopped and took his hat off to greet him. " Why do you do that? " said Bebel. " That is the other subscriber," said Liebknecht. (Laughter).

Q. You have something in your head about Bolshevism-go ahead and tell us.

A. No-that is such a long question.

Q. I think the real point is Mr. X is not a Bolshevik, and he still has a lingering hope that his friend, Liebknecht, isn't either.

A. I guess that's it. Well think of all the poor people in Russia who hope he is!

Summer Storm

WE lay together in the sultry night. A feeble light From some invisible street-lamp crept

Into the corner where you slept,

Fingered your cheeks, flew softly round your hair, Then dipped in the sweet valley of your breasts And fluttered, like a bird between two nests, Till it lay quiet there.

My eyes were closing and I may have dreamed-At least it seemed

That you and I

Had ceased to be but were somehow

As earth and sky. . . .

The night grew closer still, and now

Heat-lightnings played between us and warm thrills Ran through the cool sides of the trembling hills. Then darkness and a tension in the black Hush like a breath held back-

A rippling through the ground, a windless breeze That reached down to the sensitive roots of trees: A tremor like the pulse of muffled knocks Or like the silent opening of locks. . . . There was a rising of unfettered seas

With great tides pulling at the stars and rocks As though to draw them all together.

Then, in a burst of blinding weather,

The lightnings flung

Long, passionate arms about the earth that clung To her wild lover.

Suddenly above her

The whole sky tumbled in a sweeping blaze, Gathering earth in one tight-locked embrace, Drenching her in a flood of silver flame.

Hot thunders came;

And still the storm kept plunging, seeking ever The furthest cranny till the faraway

Streams felt each penetrating quiver

And the most hidden river

Rose and became released. .

At last the stabbings ceased,

The thunders died;

But still they lay

Now side by side

While moonbeams crept

Into the heavenly corner where earth slept, Dipping among her rosy hills, lighting above Her curved and sloping hollows till

She too was still.

Beloved and blest,

His cloudy head lay, seeking rest

In the sweet-smelling valley of her breast, And each was huddled in each other's love; Or so it seemed. . . .

My eyes were closing and I may have dreamed.

Louis Untermeyer.

22

MAKING-THE WORLD SAFE FOR

NOW that the world has been made safe for Democracy, it may not be seditious to ask what Democracy is. I wish somebody would tell me. All that I have been able to gather so far is that it is something a world has to be made safe for. It can't grow, I take it, amid hostile surroundings. It probably has to be taken in overnight. I shudder to think what might have happened to it if it had been left outdoors last year or the year before, when the world had not vet been " made safe " for its existence.

Take that new order over in Russia by way of contrast. The world never had to be made safe for that. The whole universe, including the Russian people, if we are to believe what all the papers have been telling us, has been dead against it. But it kept growing all the time. 'Whatever else it is, you've got to hand it to Bolshevism for being a rugged plant. But Democracy is delicate, fragile, something like a Mexican hairless pup or an aesthetic temperament, whose nerves can't stand any great amount of noise or excitement.

This is especially interesting just now because we are going to have a Democratic peace.

Let me say right here that I have no sympathy with Bolshevism. My sympathies are all the other way. Whenever I see a sick souse sitting on a railroad track, I find it impossible to sympathize with the locomotive.

But I will say this: If we had a Bolshevik peace we wouldn't have to sit up nights taking care of it. The kid is a holy terror, I admit, but nobody has had to walk the floor with him yet. He hasn't any following " except a handful of illiterate workingmen "; and yet he has governed the Russian millions for a year while the rest of the world has been conspiring to liberate them. I concede that a Bolshevik peace might not be a pretty peace, but it ought to have pep. 'We wouldn't have to fan it to keep it alive.

But a Democratic peace-the peace that passeth all understanding except the professor's? What if the professor should get the " flu " or something? What if the next man on guard should forget to lock the door or make some mistake winding up the formulas? What if the wind should change? Democracy might go up the flue too, and what would become of the Democratic peace?

Am I obscure? I am. No one who conceives of Democracy as something the world has to be made safe for can be anything but obscure.

I used to conceive of Democracy in those terms myself. I thought Democracy was the political expression of what the people think. I read that somewhere in a book and I was sure of it. Then I got acquainted with people and discovered that they didn't think. In religion they accepted the " Word of God " or the word of a priest. In politics they accepted the word of a politician. In school they accepted the word of the professor, and in morals they accepted the

word of the neighbors. And when the people were asked for an opinion, they threw all these words back and forth at each other and called the process reasoning. Then, if they were " Democratic," they settled the question by ballot.

Socialists were always good at this sort of Democracy. By referendum we were always able to decide anything we didn't understand. Give us a list of forty comrades, none of whom we knew, but five of whom had written articles in the Appeal to Reason, and we could pick a National Executive Committee out of the bunch-just like that.

To be frank, we were never inordinately proud of the results obtained through these Democratic tactics. But we were proud of the principle involved; and, inasmuch as no-body in America could question the principle, we had no trouble proving our superiority-to those who would "listen to reason." To be sure, we had considerable trouble getting adherents, but we couldn't be held responsible for that.

I remember sitting through a whole evening's session of Local Schenectady once, debating the question of whether Mayor Lunn had a " right " to do something he had just done. How we did wish the Mayor wouldn't be so insolent. The Local labored with him for years before unchurching him entirely, and I suppose he'll never know how much he grieved us. I was peeved myself. " Democracy " always seemed to be getting the worst of it, and there was nothing for Democracy to do but cry.

In the Socialist party and out of it American Democrats charged with responsibilities always seemed to lose their reverence for the opinion of the majority. We never questioned the formula of Democracy, for that would be blasphemy ; but we were forever questioning its application to practical affairs. One of the commonest observations in America at the outbreak of the world war was that " Democracies are free but autocracies are efficient."

There was an element of truth in this. Government by opinion is a precarious experiment. Getting the consensus of thought from those who do not think is not the most efficient method of meeting a practical problem. In spite of our Democratic convictions, no- Socialist newspaper was ever well edited by referendum. No city was ever efficiently governed by a debating society. If I wanted to get a house built in a hurry, I would rather trust the job to one carpenter who knew nothing about Democracy than to a dozen Democrats who knew nothing about carpentering.

Personally, I'm glad that Democracy never really won out. When I behold the people's choice in aldermen and mayors, I am always glad that I don't have to be shaved by an elected barber; at least not until whiskers are made safe for Democracy.

I said the people do not think. Now I have contradicted myself, for the people do use excellent judgment in the selection of barbers. They don't know that this selection is

23

A SICK IDEA BY CHARLES W. WOOD

thought, the dearest and most practical kind of thought; but it is. It is only when the people think they are thinking that they do not think. When they want some plumbing done, they marshal all the data at their command and refuse to have the selection balled up by irrelevant and immaterial considerations. They look for the man who does the neatest and quickest and most perfect plumbing; not for the plumber who makes the best speeches or kisses the most babies or is most faithful in his church attendance.

But in the selection of Senators or Governors or political leaders generally, can anyone call their processes thought? And when the speech-makers and the baby-kissers and the church attendants get together and form a government, is it any wonder that the world has to be made safe for the result?

In practical matters, the people have an excellent capacity for thinking. In abstract theories, they have an infinite capacity for expressing opinions. They never can agree on religion, but they have no difficulty at all in deciding when it's twelve o'clock. Workingmen have endless quarrels as to whether the Bible is inspired, but they show marked unanimity on the problem of whether wages are too high. Engineers may not agree at all on the value of cubist art, but it's wonderful how they get together in maintaining that water runs down hill. And, as one hard-headed member of the profession remarked to me, " If they didn't know which way water runs, it would never occur to them to take a vote. They'd find out instead."

It would seem, then, that there are two ways in which this human capacity for thought could be made to function effectively in government. One way is to educate every man, woman and child in the community to a point where they know everything and readily perceive the fallacy in every abstract theory. The other way is to make government a practical matter. The second way has not yet occurred to the intelligentsia of America, but there are things to be said for it just the same.

The people of Russia were of the opinion that they wanted a .Constituent Assembly, but they never got it. Fact is, they wouldn't let it convene. Somebody forgot to make Russia safe for this noble Democratic institution, and the delicate thing up and died a-borning. And now, instead of making an annual selection of good skates to think up new ways of restricting the people's liberties, they are simply running the industries in their own interest, utilizing the land for their own needs, organizing their lives so that they can have all the fun they want and telling every other kind of government to go to hell.

America is different. The opinion of the people is registered here in every election, and we haven't downed a single Constituent Assembly yet. We elected Wilson because we were of the opinion that he kept us out of war. We are still

behind him, because he has a scheme for a League of Nations which gives equal assurance of world peace hereafter. We don't pretend to understand the scheme, and consequently we can't think about it; but, thank God and Democracy, we can express opinions, and government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.

Oh, yes, we had a period of " autocracy " in America. That was during the last ten months of the war. A lot of people, at least, said it was " autocracy," and it surely wasn't anything that the world had to be made safe for. It was a government that could take care of itself. It was a government that sent an army of 2,000,000 men to France in quicker time than anyone ever imagined it could be done. It was a government that manufactured munitions instead of talking about it. It was a government that harnessed American energy generally so that it functioned effectively for a common aim. It was a government that worked such miracles of efficiency that it astonished the world. And it wasn't a political government at all. It was a government of altogether extra-legal war boards-a genuine industrial administration. .

Congress had declared war early in 1917, but it was a full year later before America really began to fight. Congress knew that the nation wasn't fighting and felt as peeved about it as Local Schenectady did about the insubordination of Mayor Lunn. But what could a poor government-byopinion do when the wind was blowing the wrong way? It cannot be said that Congress didn't try; and if opinions could only win wars, Germany would have surrendered to Congress in very short order. In order to win a war you've got to do something, and that's where Congress was shy.

Congress, being an institution for the declaration of opinions and not having much of anything to do with facts, naturally reached the conclusion that somebody's opinions must be to blame for this terrible clogging of our war ma-chine. So Congress passed a law providing that persons holding wrong opinions should go to jail for twenty years. And still the war machine wouldn't work. That's just like a war machine. The chances are it wouldn't have worked even if everybody had been sent to jail.

It began to work, however, just as soon as those extra-legal war boards got into action. Those boards didn't go in very strong for opinions. They dealt in facts instead. I interviewed Mr. Baruch at length and couldn't force an opinion out of him; but if I wanted facts, the whole War Industries Board was at my service.

And, strange to say, in the daily conferences of these boards there was almost no wrangling over the facts. Everybody knew when it was twelve o'clock. Everybody knew, like-wise, that there was a shortage of tin; and the various industries had no trouble in agreeing on a schedule in conformity with that shortage. If they had tried to meet the

24   THE LIBERATOR

problem by ascertaining how much tin an individual had a " right " to use, they would doubtless have wrangled just like any other Constituent Assembly. As it was, however, they got the war machine started. With less interference, with less coercion and fewer arbitrary rulings than American industry had customarily suffered from even in times of peace, the machinery of the whole nation began to co-operate for a common end. All because our so-called Democracy had been put to bed and an industrial administration was governing the country instead.

Now that the world has been made safe for it, I under-stand that the invalid is coming back to govern us. I hope

"\ not. I'd like to see our Peace Machine working as well as our War Machine did after our speech-makers and baby-kissers went to bed. I'd like to see the American workers actually running the nation's industries in some such extra-legal way as those war boards did. I'd like to see them dealing directly with their industrial problems in some such matter-of-fact way as they select a barber, rather than to see them praying for prosperity through the metaphysical ritual with which they elect a Senator.

I don't care what you call the thing-Industrial Democracy, Bolshevism, Direct Action, Socialism, or something else-I am simply trying to hint at the difference between this new concept of government and the sacred old formula which we have known as Political Democracy.

, Political Democracy, as we have known it, is a weak, in-efficient thing. jt can't make war.. It can't make peace. Even. with the best-intentioned executives in the saddle, it can't govern a single city so that the citizens as a whole get any great satisfaction out of it.

Time was when we " raised up a king " to rule over us. Later, when kings got to kinging it a little too kingishly, we raised up a committee instead. Doubtless that was an improvement, but it was only an improvement; and limiting the term of the committee's kinging is a dubious and indirect way of ascertaining the people's will. We don't " raise up " a barber to shave us, and if his razor scrapes we neither appoint a committee to hold our face in shape nor tell him that we'll elect another shaver two years from next November. I wonder if we couldn't make government as practical as that.

The City

H OW lonely under the rain I walk through the city-Weighed down by the city's pain, and heavy with pity; Oh, pale folk of the street, cold and sodden and wet, Why do I feel when we meet, disgust and regret?

No longer can I turn comradely to your sorrow, No longer eagerly burn with hope, nor borrow

Out of my passionate thought some memory of strength To give you-whom I sought, and fled from at length.

Oh, pale folk of the city, to learn of you I came, And your terrible need of pity put out my flame.

Lydia Gibson.

The Latest from Russia

W HEN Allied troops first landed on the Russian coasts, without any demands upon the Soviet Government, without a formal declaration of war, Trotsky asked the Governments of England, France and the United States to state their demands upon the Russian Government; promising that these demands would be complied with as far as possible. None of the Governments answered; the answer would have been cynical.

Meanwhile more and more troops were sent to Siberia and to Archangel. Against these forces, supported by the Tcheko-Slovaks, under the terms of the most shameful bargain by which any nation ever purchased its independence, a large and well-equipped Soviet army has been slowly growing.

The AIlied forces are now supporting three Governments of definitely monarchist tendencies in Russia; one at Arch-angel, one at Vladivostok, and a third at Omsk. At first the Tcheko-Slovaks and Allied armies put down the Soviets in the places under their control, thus violating the " solemn and public" promise of the American and Japanese Governments not to interfere in the internal affairs of Russia, politically or otherwise. Then they set up Governments composed largely of members of the Constituent Assembly, coalition Ministries representing " moderate " Socialists, Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries, and the bourgeoisie. Again and again these Governments fell, Monarchist dicta-tors taking their place. This happened in Archangel, when the Government of Tchaikovsky was overthrown, and in Vladivostok, when General Horvath executed his coup d'etat. The Allies were compelled to suppress the Monarchists and restore the " democratic" Governments. Finally they gave way. The last of the " constitutional " Governments was upset the other day at Omsk.   -

Admiral Kolchak, a reactionary of the worst type, seized the supreme power of the " Provisional Government " of the Russian " Republic," as it was called, and threw into prison the " liberal " 11%Iinisters lately so well advertised by the capitalist press-Zenzinov and Avksentiev. A Washington dispatch of November 22d said:

" News of the coup at Omsk, by which Admiral Kolchak virtually has become dictator of the All-Russian forces, is regarded at the State Department as another sign pointing to stabilization of the movement relied upon to regenerate Russia.

" The great weakness in the situation in Siberia, it has been believed for some time, is the lack of a powerful head of the Government, who cannot be swayed by popular demonstrations, and who will work toward the reconstruction of the Government with a firm hand. Admiral Kolchak is thought to be the man who will not misuse his authority, and whose hostility toward the Bolshevik elements which have led to the disruption of the country, is strong.

a

February, 1919   25

" The jurisdiction of the Omsk Government ex-tends to a large section of Russians to the west who have been affected by the Bolshevik doctrines that spread from the German intrigues with Lenin, Trotsky and their followers. The very fact that the members of the Omsk Government, which now has been overturned, were duly elected members of the Constituent Assembly, is said to have worked against the firm establishment of a stable Government. The officials were dependent upon the workmen of the cities and employees of the railroad largely, for their positions, and the spread of Bolshevism has ,been most pronounced among those very people. Accordingly it was difficult for the authorities to enforce their regulations to check Bolshevism. . . .

So. The State Department repudiates the Russian Constituent Assembly, as the Bolsheviki did. But with a difference; the Bolsheviki oppose the Constituent because it did not represent the people, the State Department because it does. A paraphrase of the above ; Russia must have a government strong enough to disregard the popular will. The Provisional Government was not strong enough, because in a limited way it was responsible to the people, and the people were turning Bolshevik!

What does this mean? It means, as I have often pointed out, that there are only two parties in Russia-pro-Soviet and Monarchist. The " moderate " Socialists, the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries, lost most of their following a year ago, and it has been dwindling ever since they championed foreign intervention in Russia. A Government composed of " moderate " Socialists could\only be supported by foreign bayonets, and then with difficulty. The Soviet parties were suppressed; that left only the Monarchists. That is why the Allies are supporting the party of the Tsar in Russia.

Worse than that. . . . It is all very well to support the party of the Tsar, led by a friend like Admiral Kolchak
   but what are you going to do when there suddenly arise two Tsarist Governments in the same territory, both led by friends? This is what appears to have happened in Siberia. Just when a delegation arrived in Washington to urge the recognition of Kolchak's Government, General Semionov, the well-known Cossack renegade who has been supported by part of our State Department, declared that he would not recognize Kolchak, and set 'up his own government at Chita. There was a long account in an Associated Press dispatch the other day of a correspondent's visit to the General, who seemed to be living the life of a president in a Central American Republic, shut up in his house in his capital city, guarded by hundreds of Cossacks, and recovering from a bomb somebody had tossed at him in a local theater---on behalf of what party we do not know.

A week ago from the time of this writing, January 7th, things looked black indeed for Soviet Russia. The forces of the Siberian Government (whatever that is) had taken

Perm; the French had landed at Odessa; the British fleet was operating along the Esthonian coast, shelling the Soviet troops, and British soldiers had landed at Riga; the British Government had taken under its protection the German-erected Governments of the Baltic Provinces, and according to the newspapers, was ordering the German troops to oppose the Russians ; the French troops at Odessa were killing Russians in the streets; in the North, the Allies were pushing forward down the Onega River; according to per-sons connected with the State Department, we were getting ready to ship an army to Siberia. The Ebert-Scheidemann government was threatening war against Soviet Russia.

Since then things have happened. The same day that Perm fell, Soviet troops captured Ufa and moved upon Tcheliabinsk, threatening General Gaida's flank. The Tcheko-Slovaks passed a resolution refusing to fight any more against Soviet Russia. The British fleet sailed south to Danzig, presumably to help the Poles to force a little self-determination on Northern Germany; the British troops got out of Riga, in a hurry, and the Russians came in. Japan, after a row with the Allies over who should get what in Siberia, withdrew 34,000 men; England announced that no more troops would be sent to Russia. My friend in the State Department says that the American Government is pledged to the same action. Only the French still seem to be hollering for war on a large scale, and there are things which make me believe that perhaps before long the French Government will get magnanimous rather suddenly. And last of all, but most important, the German Revolution seems at last to have broken out. . . .

The Liberals are raising once more their drooping voices in praise of President Wilson. It is to him, they say, that all this is due. In this we Socialists must beg to differ. In the first place, it would be premature to say that any change in the Allies' attitude toward Russia has taken place. In the second place, if it has, it is due to troubles, of which we have been getting a hint in the papers, at home in England and France. In the third place, if President Wilson has had anything to do with this reputed change of front, it is because he has a Machiavellian scheme-like the Mexico one-to get us out by getting us in, or to " check Bolshevism by making concessions," or some such childishness. In the fourth place, we call to the attention of the public the fact that Soviet Russia has now a volunteer Revolutionary Army of somewhat over a million men, which is doing very well on all fronts. . .

If Soviet Russia is winning, it is because Soviet Russia has the strength to win, not only in Russia, but in the ranks of the working-class of Europe.   J. R.

Mrs. F-

MAY raindrops bless you on your head, Old lady, walking with slow tread! Since you can smile and tell old tales. You have your dead when all else fails.

Elizabeth , Thomas.

Hold

27

'mg the Fort

28

The Treasure

By Inez Haynes Irwin

H E swung the great iron gate open and stepped into the ebony twilight of the allee. Ahead, the flat facade of the chateau broke the black tunnel of the trees with a dusty blanched glimmer. Above, in the arched web of the branches, the stars glittered so close that they looked like enormous dewdrops hanging from the leaf-tips. A quick swift breeze and they would come tumbling down in a shower of wet white fire. Drowsy twitterings sounded from the trees; a wing-flutter; a soft, low-piped bird-note.

In the first long cross-country race from the point where he had left the motor, his pack had grown steadily heavier and heavier. The intricate manceuvres that followed, during which he had doubled on his own tracks and in which he had finally sneaked through a line of Uhlan scouts, had turned it to lead. Now, having shifted it several times from hand to hand, he slung it across his shoulder. He was hot and tired. Sweat poured from his face. He had the feeling that if he stopped he would pant like a dog. He did not stop, however, for suddenly the night threatened him with a deep, long snarl at the north. He came up the allee at a swift pace.

There was a new moon in the sky and he noted with a sardonic sense of amusement at his own folly that he saw it for the first time over his Ieft shoulder. It was rocking low now. It had been a crimson sunset and the crescent was like a sliver of red copper set deep in the green blue of the sky. About it were a few scattered points of white star-flame. In front of the chateau his path was broken by another allee running from east to west. At the point of intersection a fountain, casting on high a long, slim jet into a basin of moss-covered marble, played delicately. Its graceful thin tinkle, as of glass musically shattered, in contrast with that brutal growl at the north, suddenly made the night melancholy. Here, without pausing, his eye sped east to where the Belvedere made a :round black spot of close-grown trees ; then to where the little Temple of Love stood chaste and white, on its rocky height in the centre of the pond. Between the marble pillars hung strips of the peacock-colored sky. A coppery blur bobbed in the sedgy waters-the reflection of the new moon. And as he watched, his accustomed eye caught three silvery puffs as the swans sailed past. He hastened up to the chateau en-trance. There, he stopped and listened.

That menacing unease in the air that he was gradually growing accustomed to was coming steadily nearer and nearer, was now spreading into occasional long, dull reverberations. And this was broken, as though in gigantic punctuation, with short fitful noises. It was as though the silence were being attacked by roaring giants and by crying children; and yet all came muffled through the thick, soft hazy air of August.

Following his orders, the door had been left unlocked. It gave to his touch. He went inside. It was very dark. Not a sound greeted his leisurely, accustomed footfall in the quiet rooms. He had feared a zealously affectionate disobedience of his orders, but the servants had gone as he commanded. This relieved one anxiety. Their absence made a complicated situation simpler. His face lightened.

He proceeded, still leisurely. Extracting a pocket-light from his bag, he opened doors everywhere, casting its pale watery cone of illumination into halls and closets as a pre-caution against he did not himself quite understand what. The light revealed everywhere only the emptiness that his echoing footsteps predicted; but it touched everywhere also old beauty; pictures few and faded but even in that faint light of a compelling authenticity; tapestries fewer still and more faded, but of a subtle connotative vividness; furniture of a carefully-culled rare sort; rows of books, dull, dun; touched to lustre by dimmed gold that had been put on by a master's hand. Last, he came to the room, half niche, half alcove, which led off the spacious library, closed him-self in there. His finger, going straight to its mark, touched a tiny ivory knob on the wall, and the room sprang into brilliant light. Tiny, octagonal, it was without windows, without furniture, without pictures, without ornamentation of any kind. It contained nothing but a little iron lever that protruded from one wall. And yet the carpet of a heavy black velvet and the walls of a delicate lustrous blue predicated a background preparation for something extra-ordinary.

The man looked about him with changing expressions-as though ,he expected something, as though he expected nothing. He started to move across the room, his hand outstretched towards the little iron lever; apparently thought better of it; stopped midway. He seized the bag which he had carried for the last part of his journey over his shoulder, hooked by its two handles through the end of his stick; placed it very gently on the floor. Then suddenly he opened the door, pulled a chair from the library; sat himself in it.

Any collector of old things, seeing that chair, would have experienced a spasm of joy. Fashioned in the manner of the most precious Louis, it was a thing of exquisite slenderness of shape and of dazzling delicacy of detail. The wood-work, carved with ribbons, garlands, a diversity of musical instruments, was painted white; it was upholstered in a brocade, alternately striped in silk and satin, of a noble, subtly-faded old-rose. The man rested his hand on its arm for a moment; fitted his chin to his palm; then with an im; patient sigh, he drew a cigarette-case from his pocket. In a moment the smoke was weaving a pale lilac flutter through the atmosphere of the little blue room. The soothing rip-

February, 1919   29

ple of that smoke across hungry membranes had its inevitable effect. He relaxed, leaned his head back in his chair and meditated.

He was a striking figure; big, powerful, authoritative. From the neck down he was far from an old man. Every contour of his erect, heavily-muscled body that so subtly filled the correct lines of his blue serge suit seemed to prove the contrary. But from the neck up-. Yet some of the evidence there struggled to put him into a young, still-robust middle age. His clear skin was normally a warm egg-shell brown, although his haste had turned it mahogany; his clear eyes were ordinarily a warm hazel-green-although now his exertions had made them blood-shot. His beard, carved to a stiff silver peak, and his hair, clipped to a round silver cap, showed a wiry virility. The blood pounded power-fully in the veins that followed the high forehead up into the angles where the hair had worn away. Nevertheless, deep lines that were the results of the years radiated spoke-like from his eyes; had cut deep parallel trenches between his brows. To these, hollows, that came from an immediate anxiety, of sleeplessness and of an unwonted physical exertion, had added their quota.

His cigarette vanished slowly as that Iilac ribbon unvound itself from the end. He fixed his eyes on it with a fierce intent questioning, as though it were a live thing and would settle the problem that intrigued him. And while he stared, as though waiting for some power outside himself to answer that question, once more a long dull boom pressed noise and confusion on the quiet night.

He had not meant to look at her again. Perhaps he had a feeling that the sight would stay his hand; but now an overwhelming desire for one glimpse began to tear him. He did not need that last glimpse of course. Every line of her, every curve of, her, every tint of her, every perfection, every imperfection, was graved deep on his memory. And, indeed, if his skilled critical observation had not stored all this, there were the long sessions of Rollin's technical investigations.

He had never forgotten the first time he had shown her to Rollin. After Rollin's. first whispered, " Mon Dieu!" had come a long quiet. He had not supposed that he would ever break into an examining silence of Rollin's; but he simply had to break into this one.

" Well," he asked after an indefinite interval, and there was in his tone a calmness almost cynical, " and what about it? Has one exaggerated? "

Rollin sighed.

" No, my friend," he replied. " You have not exaggerated. It would be impossible to exaggerate that."

There followed Rollin's first period of close scrutiny and study. He prowled about the little room, surveying her from every angle. Up and down, back and forth, his stabbing, steely glance played. It was more like the attack of a rapier on the body of a hated enemy than the gaze of the human eye on adored beauty. After that, as though she were a client and he 'a dressmaker, came the period of measurements. Rollin went over every dimension of her with

his pocket-tape. He made numberless notes in his little worn, black, dog-eared note-book. He stayed at Chateau Fleury a week longer than he expected; and every day this study went on. Coming in upon the master unexpectedly, his host would sometimes find him on his knees, glancing sideways along the polished flank, or on .his back, looking up at her as though she were the facade of a building. His great flat, wide hands with their broad-ended, spatulate fingers, so short and stumpy, that it looked as though his work had worn them down, moved again and again over all her surfaces; moved with the delicacy of a blind man learning his letters, of a master counterfeiter achieving an exquisite feat in engraving, of a diamond-cutter performing his Liliputian sculpture.

" Ah," Rollin would say. " There it is, my friend ! " And he would give the long Latin name of the muscle he had discovered under the lustrous surface. " He knew what the body was like--that fellow! He worked from the bones out. It's all there, muscles under the flesh and skeleton under the muscles. Some day, you see, I'll find a nerve centre."

Once he glanced up with a look of violent rage blackening his locked-browed, squat-featured hairy face. " Do you realize," he demanded stormily, " that had I seen this in my youth--my art-yes, the art of Rollin-would have been a better thing? "

Of the elect who had seen her-and only the elect sworn to secrecy had seen her-Rollin, as was to be expected, was the most satisfactory admirer. He came to the chateau again and again. When Rollin was a guest there occurred between the two men in the little blue octagonal room, long critical argumentative seances which nobody else dared interrupt.

What would Rollin say now, he wondered. If he had only had a chance to talk with him! But it had all been so hurried. And Rollin was in Rome-

His mind went back to the first glimpse of her. And then, his thoughts veering inevitably off on another tangent, he thrilled again with the triumph of beating Schultz. It was extraordinary how that thrill maintained its tingle. It was one of those wonderful chances in which you win from your rival by a nose. He had happened to be in Paris, come down suddenly from Norway, to attend an important but unexpected sale. Schultz was in Rome. There had been double doings somewhere. Because apparently Schultz got news of the discovery within a few hours of his own receipt of it. But he reached the Sahara first. It was all an accident. A miraculous accident. And to have come to him of all people through Henri Dubois. Henry Dubois! That jackass! Probably nobody in all his life had ever bored him so much as Henri. And yet Henri had been the dull means by which divine chance had worked. It was a group of Henri's men digging a ditch who had come upon the thing. Henri had bribed them to silence ; had telegraphed him. At the moment-Henri was such a donkey -he had had an idea of not going. But something-that mysterious, inexplicable something-that intuitive inner in-

30   THE LIBERATOR

dicator which, just as surely as the compass apprises the mariner of the North Star, warns the collector that treasure is near, had started its faint perturbing tattoo. How the news got out, neither he nor Henri could ever guess. But Schultz had arrived there, just five hours too late.

He had always wondered why Schultz had not at once reported the discovery to the French Government. He decided that Schultz had hoped some day to buy her from him or trade her for something else, since among other activities, Schultz was an art-agent for the German Government. Of. course, once in the Louvre where she belonged, buying or trading would be impossible. So Schultz had kept his mouth shut. Now he understood perfectly Schultz's silence. Nothing, indeed, could have fallen in better with SchuItz's plans than for him to keep her way up here to the north in a lonely chateau. Schultz had known all along, of course, that this bloody business was coming. He was just waiting. And then his own movements had helped Schultz so devilishly well. Of all malign chances to be in America when the war broke! And to lose the first steamer in the mad torrential rush Europe-wards. He had not dared to cable for fear of a govern-mental investigation. That would have meant serious difficulties. Besides mobilization-initial war activities of various sorts-had scattered the most responsible of his world. He had thought of burying her. He had thought of everything in the sleepless nights on the Atlantic. But Schultz would guess that. He would plough up every inch of ground in his few acres, if necessary. And what else was there that one could do ? Outside a long reverberation gave sinister answer to his question.

Well he had paid high for not playing square. But so many had done this same thing in one way or another. The tomb that De Courcy had smuggled out of Italy! Archaic, of the best period! Flayosc's Spanish madonna! An unknown painter, it was true; but what a marvel. Others had . Of course he had had every intention of leaving her to the government on his death; but equally he had

determined to enjoy her during his life-time. And now   
Outside, another long deafening roar finished his thought for him.

It was curious about his relations with Schultz. He had a- great respect for Schultz asa connoisseur, partly because their careers had so curiously paralleled each other, partly because their tastes were almost identical. Schultz had specialized on French Gothic as he himself had on Italian Gothic. Schultz had written books on gargoyles, while he himself had turned out a volume or two on tomb sculpture. In addition-he was an indefatigable beggar-Schultz had got out for popular sale, his mammoth catalogue, " The Art of France." He had always wondered why Schultz had done that. But, of course, there had been an ulterior motive back of it. How many times in auction-rooms had he and Schultz rubbed shoulders! How many times at the Salon on varnishing day and at private exhibitions had they exchanged views! He had rather liked Schultz, as you must. like an able rival. Schultz knew beauty-knew

what was ancient; he had very few times been fooled. But all the time-no doubt of that now-Schultz had been a spy. His job had been to locate all the secret art treasures of France, so that at the end of the great world-struggle, a victorious Germany would lead the world with her store of pictures and sculpture.

Well, there was one treasue which Berlin would lack!

The vision of her on his first sight recurred. His mind lingered on it tenderly. They had dug away from her with the utmost care. The earth dried and they brushed it off with soft cloths . . . very gently as though they were bringing her to life . . . she was very little discolored. When he gazed down at her, she seemed just to have lifted an arm as though in entreaty-God!

Yes, that was the answer. Schultz had let him keep her because it would be easier to get her away from Chateau Fleury. And he, like a fool, had played into Schultz's hand. If he had only put her in his Paris rooms! But he had not dared   . Yet here in Champagne-.it might
just as well be across the border. How Schultz must be laughing now ! The thought stung him. He picked the bag from the floor, opened it. At the bottom, each one wrapped in a towel, were things-slender, cylindrical-four of them. Still holding the bag, he listened.

Louder boom on sharper roar!

It was getting nearer, He sighed. He rose, lifting the bag with him. And then, as though not quite ready yet, he placed the bag gently on the floor; sat down.

He must see her again. He must see her. For the second time he sighed-and heavily this time. Then, half-certainly, he arose; sat down; threw his arms sideways in a wide gesture of despair; arose for the third time. He advanced to the middle panel in the back wall of the hexagonal room, pressed the steel lever that protruded from the wall . . .

The pale-blue back panel lifted slowly and disappeared into the ceiling. A statue on a pedestal rose smoothly from below into a blue-lined recess which that panel revealed; moved forward into the centre of the room ; stopped. The man sat down again with a long sigh.

She was of heroic size-the little virgin Venus-archaic. Her head was gone. Her whole figure was a gesture of appeal. One arm was broken off below the shoulder. The other arm reached out. She stood flat on one foot, the other just touching the ground at the toes. Immeasurably this attitude supplemented the appeal in her figure. At her side stood a pillar with a fringed robe which she had apparently just discarded. From the top of her neckless torso to the tip of her littlest toe, she was perfect. She dripped beaute de diable. She radiated innocence. She exuded virginity. Yet she showed none of the transparent physical frailty conventionally demanded of art for maidenhood. Her shoulders, owing to her attitude, were at a slant; .they were a girl's shoulders. Her little firm breasts, round as though turned out by some god-wrought cup of the gods, were a girl's breasts. Her arm, swelling with a touch of awkwardness at the elbow, was a girl's arm.   Her hand, long-

February, 1919   31

fingered, muscle-hardened, was a girl's hand. These showed youth. But her slim, thinly-convex torso, her flat, closely packed abdomen, her straight, faintly-dimpled back, her lithe, warmly-curved flanks, her springy legs, her robust ankles, her straight-toed virile feet   all proved strength. Yet
something-it was no one of these, nor their sum, but a separate quality that emanated from their union-had crystallized in her that fleeting instant when girlhood ceases to be childhood and has not yet started to become woman-hood. In addition-was it an exquisite accident or a divine

inspiration which chose that marble   the surface, touched
by smudgy time neither in shadow stain nor scratched disfigurement, was shot by a mere breath of flesh color, was polished by a faint film of flesh lustre. It might-that color -have been the reflection of a peach warmed to a velvet-textured, amber-crimson by a midsummer sun. It might-that lustre-have been the mimicry of a pink pearl, fresh-raised from deep waters with all its sea-lucence still drip-ping from it. Rose? Gold? Or both? Or neither? It seemed at first but the warmth of young flesh; hard and smooth and luscious at once. It seemed at last faintly to foreshadow in that white virginity the dawn of sex. Coming upon her suddenly, thus softly glowing in that blue-lined lustrous room, she seemed to breathe, as though life claimed her. It was significant that nobody, after the first avid conjectures,' regretted her Iost members. Indeed, headless as she was and with one arm gone, she was so saturated with youth, in its inevitable fresh gaiety, its eternal frail poignancy, that men gazed through her back into their own past.

Tears came into the eyes of the man who stood before her now. And those tears remained during the interval while he stayed there. For as he stared all the scenes of his brief knowledge of' her re-lived themselves. Of her lying in the sand as they had first shown her to him--the arm outstretched in appeal. She seemed to say, the lovely, white virgin thing, waiting patiently there, divinely serene, until life should find her again : " Ah; you have come to me at last, my lover of all the world! You have found me. Now keep me forever. You have rescued me from death. Oh, let me not die again!"

He saw her when, moving slowly forward from the iron cage, she had appeared suddenly like a symbol of beauty. before the first group-carefully selected; discreet; loyal-painters, sculptors, critic or two, whom he had invited to inspect her. It had seemed almost a prostitution to show her to anybody. Yet he had done it.

And now he arose with the longest sigh he had yet breathed; reached into the bag and took out a stick of dynamite. His eyes fixed on the lever. Should he fasten her up in the iron cage again before the shattering explosion which would turn her to marble rubble? No. He must make her destruction as complete as possible. His eyes left the lever. He fixed the cap in the end of a piece of the giant powder; fitted the fuse to the cap; scratched a match; leaned down to light the fuse.

Over his shoulder, he cast one last glance at her.

Her hand out, dumbly she besought him.   " Oh, you

have come at last, my lover of all the world. You have found me. Now keep me forever. You have rescued me from death. Oh, let me not die again !"

Slowly he blew the match out; threw the cap aside.

Suddenly outside sounded noise-voices. He started, roused himself. Two pairs of footsteps came clattering down the hall, through the library, following the light apparently. Two men appeared in the doorway. One blonde, fat, red-faced sweating profusely, was in German grey; a spiked helmet. He held a revolver. The second-little, agile, dark; and quite cool, wore the Jaeger green uniform, the Norfolk jacket, the soft pointed hat of the German Secret Service.

The man in the chair looked up as from a dream. The fatigue had melted out of his face, some of the lines had gone.

" Ah, there you are, Schultz," he said. " I've been expecting you. I thought I'could dynamite her, but I couldn't. I find I don't own her. She belongs to the world. Take her to Berlin!"

THE PAGAN

GOD, do you hear The voice the high priests fear, UnstilIed by chanted prayer And dim sweet air,

The silent sobbing of a long desire-

The beating fire

Of wild and nameless agony Scorching the heads that bow Before thee now,

To murmur " mea culpa," " intercede for me "-?.

God, do you feel,

Here, where the people kneel, Hot, vagrant things that cry Unto the sky

Their ancient, untaught word? And all unheard,

Beat their strong, golden wings And laugh, and dare not still Their flaming will,

And sing as some bold fallen angel sings?

God, could you tame with old humility

These Ieaping things in me?

They taunt the silence with their ecstasy!

Beulah Amidon.

MIMI

SHE is so thin and straight and light (More sweet than I can say), I think the folk who loved her Have kissed her flesh away.

F. Normile.

32   THE LIBERATOR

Great Bolshevik Conspiracy!

C [~ ECRET Bolshevik Organization Has Net-Work of

7 Agents All Over Country," screams our morning newspaper. "Lenin Sends Four Hundred Thousand Dollars to Spread Bolshevik Propaganda in the U. S.," bellows our evening newspaper. " Large Quantities of Dynamite Concealed in This City, Department of Justice Says," howls the 23d Edition of the Evening Cablegram, which is published at 8 o'clock in the morning.

Honest to God, everybody's scared to death of us Bolsheviki!

The papers of to-day, January 7th, are full of menaces from Special Attorney-General Alfred L. Becker and the Department of Justice, to the general effect that there is going to be a "clean-up " of Bolsheviki and "sympathizers" in this country. Those of us who happen to have been born abroad are going to be deported; and the rest of us are going to jail.

" The propaganda," says the Evening Sun, evidently on the authority of the Department of Justice, " is directed against the use of American soldiers in Russia" `(Oswald Garrison Villard, twenty years for you; how about deporting Senator Hiram Johnson?). " It also attacks the Mooney prosecution-" (What shall we do to Bourke Cochran and the Commission appointed by President Wilson, both of whom are guilty of the same offense?) "-and demands the release of political prisoners." (Good gracious, are Jane Addams and Lillian Wald criminals too?)

" The Soviet," says the Evening Sun, " is known to have a representative organization in New York, with headquarters in Fifteenth street, west of Third avenue." This is frightful! Why don't the police do something?

Then they have discovered that " Russian newspaper," the " official organ of the Bolsheviki," the Revolutionary Age-which happens to be published in English (camouflage, of course), and is edited by two Americans and an Irishman -myself being one of them. .

Even yet, New York newspaper editors and Department of Justice officials haven't taken the trouble to read up and find out what " Bolshevism " is. Let me tell them. It is not Anarchism, it is not Vegetarianism, it has no connection either with Free Love or the New Republic; in a word, it is Applied Socialism, and that is all there is to it. It is therefore a useless waste of time to send operatives to cover the Russian Workers' Convention, they not being Bolsheviki-or to send operatives to me, as one was sent recently, to ask, " Say, what is this here Non-Partisan League? Where's their New York office at?"

" Immediate action will be taken," says the Evening Sun, " to efface these rascals."

I understand the Department of Justice. The armistice and the coming Peace will reduce the staff, and a lot of perfectly good detectives will have to go back to the ribbon-counter. But the Evening Sun puzzles me. Why print that stuff when there is such a wealth of good lies to print about Russia?

JOHN REED.

Our Own Black Hundred

O UR own Black Hundred, the National Security League, is reorganizing for the class struggle, and has adopted a new set of principles. (The parentheses are ours.)

" Urging a just and careful peace treaty." (Abandonment of Wilson's Fourteen Points, economic destruction of Germany, a Strike-Breaking League of Nations.)

2. " Steadying the nation by a great propaganda for the maintenance of the principle of freedom, justice, law and liberty." (Breaking dawn of labor organizations, strengthening the authority of the Supreme Court, permanent Sedition laws. We know what " freedom " means, but are not so sure about " liberty.")

3. " Following up the post-bellum needs of sympathy and recognition for the soldier wounded." (Employment of crippled soldiers as night-watchmen in factory-buildings, at ten dollars per week-preferably in Republican election districts.)

4. " Creating a just administration of the law regarding naturalization." (Ignorant foreigners who work for low wages can become citizens of the United States, with all the advantages accruing therefrom. Those who use their minds are barred.)

5. " Teaching the meaning and value of our Constitution and the maintenance of our national integrity." (The first explains itself. The second means universal military service for the protection of American investments in foreign countries.)

6. " Creating a greater regard for representative Government as distinguished from mass administration. Protecting our national legislators from dangerous proletarians." (An oligarchy composed of Root, Senator Lodge, General Leonard Wood and their friends, instead of a system of Government voted for by all the people. Not allowing access to members of the House of Representatives by their constituents, for fear that law-makers might be unduly prejudiced against corporation rule.)

7. " Maintaining a campaign for the use of the English language by all citizens and permanent residents." (To quote " Little Red Riding Hood," " The better to eat you with, my dear! ")

The Community Councils of National Defense, those White Guard organizations which terrorized the country so effectively during the war, have embarked on a campaign of " reconstruction and readjustment." They met in convention in New York two weeks ago, and drafted a program which would have gladdened the hearts of Stolypin, Stiirmer and Protopoppov. And Organized Labor? The Central Federated Unions of New York are said to have appointed a committee to co-operate with the Councils of National Defense.   J. R.

February, 1919   33

Drawn by Art Young

i1+rrl   ~~   A   l

A MERrCAP! RADICA~   Ar\rD   E'UROpEAN RADICALS

Labor Parties

N view of the rapid formation of Labor Parties in this

country, opposing the bourgeois rule of Samuel Gompers, it may be well for us Socialists to recall these words of the Communist Manifesto:

" In what relation do the Communists [that is, Socialists] stand to the proletarians as a whole?

" The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to other working-class parties.

" They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.

" They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.

" The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: i. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the en-tire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.

" The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand practically the most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of every country, that section which pushes

forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement."

DURING DARKNESS

T AKE me under thy wing, 0 Death. I am tired, I am cold. Take me under thy wing, 0 great, impartial bird; Take me, carry me hence

And let me sleep.

For the soil that was once so sweet is sour with rotting dead;

The air is acrid with battle fumes;

And even the sky is obscured by the cannon's smoke. Beauty and Peace-where are they?

They have gone, and to what avail?

The mountains stand where the mountains stood, And the polluted seas boil in the selfsame basin, Unconcerned.

The beast in man is again on the trail,

Swinging his arms and sniffing the air for blood. And what was gentle,

What bore fruit with patient pain, is gone.

Take me under thy wing, 0 Death.

Jean Starr Untermeyer.

34

International Labor and

Socialist News

By Alexander Trachtenberg

Cuba

An economic strike of a local character has recently developed into a general political strike throughout the Island of Cuba. The strike of the railway workers came first, bringing in its train several sympathetic strikes. About the middle of December every important industry was tied up and the economic life of the Island, especially that of the Capital, was paralyzed. The government has resorted to the use of convicts in an attempt to break the strike.

The strikers declare that they will not resume work until their grievances are adjusted. They demand specifically the repeal of the compulsory military service law; the law of 187o providing for the expulsion of " alien agitators," the provision of the Penal Code prohibiting strikes, and the law providing for food control.

The authorities are alarmed over the situation and extraordinary measures are promised in dealing with the situation.

The local newspapers are agreed that the native 'Cuban workers have embraced Bolshevism, and while it may play havoc with them for a while, they will soon return to their normal behavior. La Noche, Havana's most influential paper, remarks editorially: " The anarchistic Russian ideas, which must be very hot to inflame a Russian-cold man of cold clime--in the super-heated tropical imagination pro-duce disastrous results. Just listen to them: ' Down with property ! Property is robbery. The rich are thieves. We must rob the rich and despoil them of all they have. We will divide among ourselves the chalets of Vedado ' (Havana's fashionable suburb), `the business houses of Murralla' (Havana's Wall street), the automobiles of the municipality,' etc. Down with the bourgeoisie!' they shout, as though on this little island of the Caribbean we weren't all of us bourgeoisie more or less."

Australia

The New South Wales, One Big Union Conference held November 16th-18th at The Sydney Trades Hall, adopted by a unanimous vote of the delegates, amid the singing of the " Red Flag," the following resolution:

"That this conference of the One Big Union of Australia, sends to their fellow-workers in Russia, Germany, Austria, and other countries, their warm and whole-hearted congratulations on the magnificent achievement of political liberty, after a long struggle against official tyranny, persecution, and despotic monarchism, and expresses

the hope that the spread of revolutionary propaganda among the peoples of all countries in Europe will everywhere help forward the cause of the people towards complete emancipation from Capitalism."

Canada

Central labor bodies throughout the dominion are adopting strong resolutions calling upon the government to with-draw troops from Russia. Reference to the leaders of the Soviet Government always calls out enthusiastic applause at labor meetings.

The sympathetic attitude to the workers' government of Russia has now spread to a great number of Canadian soldiers. A Canadian expeditionary force stationed at Vancouver, on December 22nd, refused to proceed to Siberia. It is reported from Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, situated on the Island of Vancouver, one of the last ports of call for Canadian soldiers bound for asiatic Russia, that about 700 khaki-clad Canadian soldiers attended a mass-meeting of the B. C. section of the Federated Labor Party, and cheered J. H. Hawthornthwaite, labor member of the British Columbia Legislature, when he declared that " the Bolsheviki are the hope of the world."

A resolution was adopted at a mass meeting called by the Winnipeg Trades and Labor Council, a federated body of unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, demanding the withdrawal of troops from Russia and declaring that " This meeting sends greetings to the Russian Soviet Republic and wishes it success." The concluding remarks of the chairman of the meeting, Alderman John Queen, of the Manitoba section of the Federated Labor Party, " Long live the Russian Soviet Republic, Karl Liebknecht, and the working class," was acclaimed by the audience with great enthusiasm.

The labor forces of Winnipeg made a clean sweep in the municipal elections last December. The city government will now be run by a mayor who is a machinist and councillors and aldermen who belong to the Sheet Metal Workers', Blacksmiths', Carpenters', Painters' and Paperhangers', Typographical, and Teamsters' and other labor organizations.

United States

Adolph Germer, National Secretary of the Socialist Party, has recently received a letter from Ramsay MacDonold, treasurer of the British Labor Party, commenting upon the statements about the British Labor Movement which

February, 1919   35

Samuel Gompers has been making since his return from Europe. The letter reads:

" I read some of his (Gompers') choicest things to some colleagues of the Labor party executive, and they roared with laughter. The real fact is that Mr. Gompers was never taken very seriously here. We felt him hopelessly behind the times; his speeches were interminably long, and abounded in high-falutin phrases. We were anxious, how-ever, to get the American labor movement to cease playing the dog-in-the-manger policy, and were really very glad to see Gompers here, in order that he might learn some things. I really believe he did so, and, however he may talk in America, I hope his stay with us was far more beneficial to him than he is willing to admit in his speeches."

The National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party has selected Algernon Lee, Educational Director of the Rand School and New York City Alderman; James Maurer, president of the Pennsylvania State Federation of Labor, and James Oneal, of the editorial staff of the New York Call, as delegates to the proposed International Socialist Congress at Lausanne, Switzerland.

Mr. Maurer has notified the National Office that he will be unable to make the trip, and John M. Work, member of the National Executive Committee, was chosen in his place. These delegates go as substitutes for the regularly elected delegates who are unable to attend. Those who were elected last year by a referendum of the party were: Morris Hillquit, Victor L. Berger and George R. -Kirkpatrick.

France

Two fraternal messages of greeting have been sent from France to the victorious workers of Germany    from the

Socialists and from the trades .unionists. Both groups take occasion to condemn the Allied Intervention policy. The declaration of the Socialist Executive reads:

" We welcome the German Republic and the seizure of power in Prussia and the Federal States by the working class. As in Soviet Russia, Social-ism has appeared in Central Europe and elsewhere as the only qualified liquidator of the political and social situation left by the war. The Socialist Party sees in this the justification throughout the war of its confidence in action by the peoples. In consideration of the fact that some of the armistice conditions justify the distinct fear that the Allied Governments intend to extend their criminal military intervention against Revolutionary Russia on a wider scale, the Party declares that it will appeal to all the forces of the French proletariat to prevent the crushing by coalitions of foreign capitalism of the Socialism which is being born in Russia, and as well in Germany and Austria."

The General Confederation of Labor (C. G. T.) sent the following manifesto:

" The Executive Committee of the General Confederation of Labor welcomes the advent of the German Republic. This historic event must mark the end of the reign of force, and must be-gin the era of the reconciliation of peoples. . . . It is now the duty of the proletariat of the countries of the Entente to oppose all jingo tendencies, and to refuse to allow the Allied Military forces, under the pretext of ` maintaining order ' to be used against the new systems which the peoples of Russia, Austria-Hungary and Germany, at the cost of heavy sacrifices, have established by their own free will. We are certain that the power of the international working class, once again established, will be able to ensure this. . . . The end of imperialism and military oppression in the world, with the advent of republics replacing autocratic governments, must bring us back complete victory of thought, of writing, and of speech-and without this liberty, social democracy cannot really exist."

Scotland

The following letter in regard to American political prisoners was received by President Wilson on his arrival in Europe :

" Woodrow Wilson, President, U. S. A.

Sir:

You are here in Europe to negotiate a ' Democratic Peace ' as a Democrat. If so, I wish you to prove your sincerity by releasing Tom Mooney, Billings, Debs, Haywood, and all the others at present in prison as a consequence of their fight for Working Class Democracy since the United States participated in the War.

The Working Class Democracy of Britain forced the Cabinet to release me from Peterhead Prison, where I was undergoing a five years' sentence under D. O. R. A.

I 'therefore write you as an ease to my con-science and a repayment to the World's Working Class Democracy to release my above-mentioned friends and comrades.

The Clyde Workers will send me as one of their Delegates to the coming Peace Conference, and there, inside or outside the Conference Hall, I shall challenge your U. S. A. Delegates if my friends are not released.

After that I shall tour America until you do justice to the real American champions of Democracy.   Yours in deadly earliest,

(Signed) JOHN 11MICLEAN,

42 Auldhouse Road, Newlands, Glasgow, Scotland."

•

35   THE LIBERATOR

N

John McLean is the Scottish school teacher mentioned here last month, who led a munitions strike, was appointed Bolshevik Consul to Glasgow, was imprisoned for his activities against the government and recently released after receiving the Labor Party nomination for Parliament.

On December 11, the Glasgow Trades and Labor Council, representing one hundred thousand workers, passed a resolution demanding the retrial or immediate release of Mooney.

At Edinburgh on December 6th the following resolution, moved by Robert Smillie, president of the British Miners' Federation; was passed :

" Resolved that this meeting in the St. Andrew's Halls, numbering, with the overflow meeting, ten thousand workers, protest against the life sentence on Tom Mooney, and desire to associate ourselves with the American Federation of Labour in respect to a compromise of Penal Servitude, and further declare that Tom Mooney is either guilty or he is innocent; and be it therefore resolved that the workers of Scotland demand the release of Tom Mooney, for we shall judge the American Democracy by the final outcome of the fate of Tom Mooney."

Switzerland

A general strike was declared by the Workmen's Council on November 11 th. In the manifesto calling upon the Swiss workers to join the general walkout, the Council declared :

" At a time when thrones are tumbling, at a moment when the nations of Europe are awakening from a terrible nightmare of horror, the government of the oldest democratic state in Europe is attempting to deprive us of the liberty we still have, and to put the entire nation under the heel of bayonets and machine guns. . . . Such a government shows itself incompetent and unreliable to adjust itself to the great times."

The following were announced as minimum demands, " which admit of no revision and which the people demand as their right ": "An immediate new election; woman suffrage; a 46-hour week for all workers; a reorganization of the army as an army of the people; a better distribution of food; a system of insurance for invalids and the aged, and state control of imports and exports,"

Belgium

At the Belgian Socialist Congress, held for the first time since the beginning of the European War, Emile Vandervelde gave assurances that he would never have consented to become a member of the government had it entertained any annexationist designs.

BOOKS

Irish Freedom

Ireland: A Study in Nationalism, by Francis Hackett. $2 net. B. W. Huebsch.

T HE Irish question has long seemed to many of us a special and peculiar one, so simple and so poignant as to demand solution first and foremost among all the problems of oppressed nationalities. To others it has also seemed a special and peculiar problem requiring postponement into an indefinite future.

The cause of Ireland, as of any oppressed nationality, is harmed by such isolation. What Ireland needs, and what we must achieve if our sympathies are to help her, is an under-standing of her problem as one among the other problems of nationality.

In the task of presenting such a view of the Irish question Mr. Hackett's book succeeds notably. It is particularly successful in clearing away the confusions which have hedged it about. These confusions are chiefly religious and economic.' Mr. Hackett makes it sufficiently clear that no religious issue is at stake. The movement for Irish freedom is not Catholic, nor the resistance to it Protestant. " No Protest-ant government is incapable of practical arrangements with the Catholic Church "; and " the efforts of the English government to do business with the Catholic hierarchy, irrespective of the desires and needs of the radical Irishman, have been attended with considerable, even remarkable, success.

. . . The hierarchy, as is well known, favored the union between Ireland and England, with the promise of Catholic emancipation to soothe them. . . . The hierarchy condemned Fenianism, stood by the landlords and rent-collecting at the time of the great famine, and obeyed the landlord embassy at Rome in taking an early stand against Parnell," etc., etc. " Individual Catholic prelates have shown strong patriotic spirit on occasion. Individual priests have died with weapons in their hands, rebel leaders and inciters to rebellion. But the main record of the Catholic hierarchy is a record of smooth self-seeking, with the interests of Ireland discreetly subordinated."

The religious aspect of the Irish question may, in a word, be dismissed as a bugaboo raised by those who desire to maintain the status quo. The economic difficulties in the situation turn out when examined to be of the same texture. Both the religious and the economic troubles center in the Ulster protest. Not only does Protestant Ulster fear a Romanist reign of terror, but Industrial Ulster fears the " ignorance and incapacity " of Peasant Ireland. So far as these charges are true-and Mr. Hackett admits that " the economic imagination of nationalist Irishmen is untrained "-there may be some grounds for Ulster's reluctance, and some necessity for special adjustment to prevent injury. But the injuries that Ulster fears are egregiously out of proportion to the direst possibilities of the situation. Ulster's alarm over

February, 1919   37

Home Rule has been as preposterous as Wall Street's during the Bryan campaigns. Ulster, says Mr. Hackett, quoting Professor Veblen's remark about Germany, wants to " take war by the forelock and retaliate on presumptive enemies for prospective grievances! "

Another difficulty, intangible but pervasive, is to be found in the view of Irish character which has been current in England ever since the conquest of Ireland-the idea that the Irish are unstable, unscrupulous, etc., and hence not to be trusted with political power ! I think Mr. Hackett remarks that women in their attempt to secure the vote have met with the same objection from men; and he shows that this opinion is the one invariably held by the oppressor concerning the oppressed. It may seem too slight a thing to be worthy of serious consideration, but it is precisely indicative of the source and the remedy of all the ills which constitute the Irish question. For it points straight at the relation between •oppressor and oppressed, which is indeed the crux of the problem.

Ireland was conquered; and it has had throughout its history, and has still, the status of a conquered country. It has suffered every injury which conquest can inflict, from the early attempts at the complete extermination of its original inhabitants to the later and hardly less ferocious injuries of colonization. The most terrible of these injuries are now ancient history, and need not for our purposes be rehearsed; but the spirit of colonial exploitation still survives in the ruthless determination of English capitalists to keep Ireland .as a dumping ground for their surplus products. Nothing ,can change that state of affairs except an effective possession by the Irish people themselves of the political instruments by which their economic destinies can be controlled. It is for this reason, and not because of any magic inherent in

freedom," that Ireland must be free.

For the prime result of imperial exploitation has been poverty. Mr. Hackett's discussion leads through every by-way of the Irish political and social maze to this central fact. " For a hundred years Ireland has been rotting with poverty. It has every vice, every cowardice, every insularity that poverty favors and condones. They talk about ` the happy Irish.' Ireland has been insane with poverty. From the slums of Belfast to the agrarian slums of Kerry, from the inhospitable rocks of Donegal to the treeless forelands of Wexford, it has been calm with the heavy calmness of a sick-room and dreamy with the dreaminess of privation and decay. . . . There is scarcely a farm house, and not one solitary southern or northern town, that has not` known poverty as its silent voracious guest for a hundred years. Poverty has been quartered on the people like a foreign soldiery. It has had the first claim on ambition, the first claim on income. Day by day it has conducted the finest sons to the emigration port. Day by day it has escorted the old to the poorhouse. The people fear it as they fear the plague. They starve themselves to keep from starving. They stint their growth, their comfort, their necessity. They contract loveless marriages, they endure tyrannical relatives,

they accept and inflict indignities, to escape its skeleton em-brace. Poverty has sat in sardonic censorship on art and literature and science. It has dwarfed art. It has thinned literature. It has precluded science. It has Iocked the nineteenth century out of Ireland. It has kept a beautiful country in wet and squalid rags. It has imprisoned Catholic Ireland in ugly and joyless homes. It has deprived humanity of a brilliant national contribution. . . . Today Ireland is scarred with poverty, pitted and scarred with it, repulsive with it, unclean with it, and, until poverty is abolished, that beautiful country will be peopled with the victims of poverty -scarred, repulsive and unclean."

Mr. Hackett is a realist. It is the facts of poverty, and not any romantic or sentimental considerations, which control his views. It is not true to suggest, as Mr. Shaw has done, that the Irish are making a fuss over wrongs which are shared by all the rest of the world. Ireland's poverty comes from Ireland's oppression, and only freedom can heal its blight. Yet, being a realist, Mr. Hackett is mistrustful of political expedients which divert attention from the real issue. " Except for James Connolly's contingent, the rebels of 1916 had little economic preoccupation. There was nothing in the lofty nationalism of the insurrection to show that poverty was regarded as a corroding national evil, or that a new attitude toward poverty is essential to national welfare." His conception of freedom is one which stays close to the necessities of the case : " fiscal autonomy, the raising of Irish revenue by Ireland, without interference from outside." In-deed, when this book was written, Mr. Hackett was of the opinion that " the Irish are eventually obliged to take Home Rule as their goal and to formulate the terms on which they can accept it." Nevertheless-and the phrase aligns him with the events which have since taken place-" the history of Irish freedom now dates from 1916, because, by the insurrection of 1916, a new norm of conduct was created for the Irish people."

We are now in the midst of that new phase of the struggle for freedom. Already the old antithesis between Home Rule and Separation has gone by the board, and moderates and extremists alike are united in a demand for international recognition of the Republic for which the Irish people overwhelmingly voted in the recent election. The " new norm of conduct " is a definite repudiation of the status of a conquered people. It is defiant; but not, as yet, bellicose. It inherits from the past a patience which will wait to see justice done, a patience which has only put on a new dignity and manliness; and it has inherited also the capacity for making desperate and even hopeless resistance against injustice. It remains to be seen whether the patience or the desperation will be encouraged by events. " God forbid," said Burke-I find the quotation in Mr. Hackett's pages-" that our con-duct should demonstrate to the world that Great Britain can in no instance whatsoever he brought to a sense of national and equitable policy but by coercion and the force of arms."

If the Irish will to self-determination must come to such a final conflict with the British will to imperial dominion,

38   THE LIBERATOR

there is no question upon which side our Socialist sympathies will lie. And yet war does not solve problems; it only creates new ones. And there are some aspects of nationalism not touched on by Mr. Hackett which I wish to discuss from what I conceive to be the Socialist point of view.

First of all, I want to say that the Socialist is dubious as to the importance and even the validity of " nationalist aspirations." And not without good reason. So long as those aspirations are tyrannically repressed, they seem utterly amiable. But when, as with the Balkan States, and more recently with the Poles and the Czecho-Slovak peoples, the oppressed nationalities achieve their freedom only to exhibit a penchant for oppressing each other; when their nationalist aspirations turn or are turned into grandiose dreams of empire, or are used by reactionary politicians to thwart the aspirations of the oppressed proletariat-then the Socialist re-members his Socialism. And Socialism has no tenderness for nationalism. It is not necessary for the Socialist to have read the latest news of Polish and Czecho-Slovak activities in order to know to what use the " aspirations " of these unfortunate people would be put by the forces which dominate the political affairs of the world.

The Socialist does not, in fact, believe in " nationalism." If I may condense into a few sentences my own impression of the Socialist theory of nationalism, it is that the psychology which we call nationalistic is the product of oppression. At-tempt by force to impose a foreign language, foreign customs, foreign political forms upon another people, and in exact proportion to the ruthlessness• used there is created the spirit of nationality. It has been said that certain nations were created by wars in which they won their independence. It would be truer to say that those wars of liberation celebrated the fact of nationality already created by oppression. The spiritual tension effected by tyranny is released in war-and not always merely in wars of liberation; the national self-consciousness which the Italians learned under Austrian oppression has flowered in the " sacred egotism " of her African war and her present claims to dominion over alien populations. It is, I believe, not merely an ironic accident that the nationalist aspirations of the oppressed so readily blossom into dreams of empire. The two facts are halves of the same psychologic whole. It is the relation of oppressor and oppressed which explains the nationalism of both; it is self-consciousness as oppressor and as oppressed that makes them nations. Nationality-I offer the definition to the League of Nations-is the social and political aspect of the economic relation of an exploited and an exploiting people.

It seems to me, in fact, unfortunate that Ireland should have had to make this stand for freedom under the aegis of nationalism. It is necessary that the Irish should achieve the freedom for which they haye fully paid-the freedom to be a peoplq. But from the freedom to have a flag and a standing army and wavy and the right to declare war-for these are of the essence of nationalism-I could hope that a fortunate destiny might deliver them.

It is not that the world need fear the new Irish Republic.

Ireland has no imperialistic sword concealed beneath the cloak of her desolation; and, though Ulster and religion have confused the issue, there is no reasonable prospect of free Ireland turning oppressor. . . . But Ireland herself, as a beginning nation, has much to fear from the world.

The bourgeois world stands now on the verge of a choice between great policies. It must remain split up in jealous national entities or become an effective international organization. What seems likely is that a compromise will be reached in which the. " great " nations will attempt to do both things at once. There will be powerful interests in these great nations which will seek to retard internationalism by retaining their exclusive national possession of the powers and means of making war. They will need an excuse for their conduct, and they will find it in their alleged sympathies for oppressed nationalities. " Self-determination " has ever had, in the mouths of its utterers, a Iimited meaning; but that meaning will be presently extended. Whereas during the war it referred to the nationalities oppressed by an actual enemy, it will soon be applied to those nationalities oppressed by a potential enemy. During the war Germany was indignant over the subjugation of Ireland by England, of Russian Poland by Russia-as a war measure. What pretended friend of Ireland will come weeping crocodile tears over her wrongs-as a potential war measure? Happy the nation whose powerful neighbor is oppressing somebody! The question among old-line nationalist politicians will be: " To what uses of our own can Ireland's grievances be put?" Does anyone suppose that the phrase " a League of Nations" will instantly dissolve long-standing national fears and jealousies? Does anyone doubt that the British Empire is secretly feared and hated by strong interests in the camp of its present allies? Does anyone believe those interests will hesitate, in an emergency, to use the national wrongs of Ire-land to advance their own national " rights "? And is .it likely that the Irish people will profit by such transactions?

Ireland and the other aspiring nationalities of Europe will do well to distrust at the present juncture the sympathies of the Great Powers. The newly-free and half-free nations are in the unhappy position of having nothing to offer the framers of the League of Nations except their capacity for disturbing the peace-a gift which may be all too eagerly welcomed by some of the participants of the Conference. And, insofar as .these small nations proceed along nationalistic lines, they will be subject to the temptation to intrigue for dangerous favors.

Nevertheless, there are throughout the Great Nations scattered forces, less strong politically than might be wished, which do desire a genuine internationalism. It is by aligning themselves with these forces, rather than by following the temptations of nationalist opportunism, that the newly and not yet liberated peoples will find their real strength. These forces are the more or less class-conscious organizations, political and industrial, of the workers. To this kind of inter-nationalism the small nations can make a valuable contribution, and from it they can receive honest assistance. It is

February, 7919   3g

Bolshevism Hits America

It is reported:that Trinity Church is considering the possibility of free pews!

40   THE LIBERATOR

less spectacular than playing for the smiles of a prime minister, but the friendship of labor does not have to be paid for with national dishonor. It is less immediate in its results than backstairs politics, but the results are less pre-carious. To have as allies the workers of all lands is to have laid the basis not merely of freedom, but of a new internationalism more stable than any the diplomats can piece together out of their traditional rag-bag. It rests, in fact, with the young nationalities whether they shall allow themselves to be used by the forces of nationalist reaction or whether they shall give their strength to international progress.

Between these two programs they must choose. And Ire-land, if I interpret the signs rightly, has already chosen.

The representative in America of the new Irish Republic, in his statement to the press, offers the hand of brotherhood to the English Labor Party. At a meeting the other night in New York City under the auspices of the Irish Progressive League the speeches breathed an identity of Irish aims with those of labor the world over; the old hell-for-England spirit had been displaced by a forward-looking international-ism; and, most significant of all, handbills were distributed, which read as follows :

There are 1,500 Irish political prisoners in English jails; there are 1,500 political prisoners in American jails.

There is an army of occupation in Ireland; there is an army of occupation in Russia.

Write to your Congressman about it.

-Irish Progressive League.

This in America; in Ireland, we hear, the Republic is to await, with calmness and with confidence in the friendship of the workers of all lands, the day of its recognition, offering the fearless front of unarmed and passive resistance to What-ever coercion may be applied. Of all Ireland's heroic stands for freedom, this promises to be the most splendid. And in this spirit, in such an alliance with the workers of the world, they cannot but achieve a magnificent, if long waited and suffered-for, success.

The spirit is new; it may prove a flame that flickers and goes out. Yet the day Ireland discovers that its cause is the same as Russia's is significant for the future. Indeed, the Irish and the Russians have ever been united in the sympathies of American lovers of freedom. Both peoples have for centuries suffered the worst ills of autocratic misrule. Both peoples have been, and still remain, the victims of the imperialistic greed and the insane fear which together have dominated international relations. Now finally both peoples have set up governments of their own; and in both cases the aims of these governments are wantonly lied about. Even Ulster has its parallel in the counter-revolutionary government of Omsk, financed by the imperialist enemies of free-dom. Both peoples have appealed to the world for justice. Both ask if " self-determination " is an empty phrase. Free Russia, like Free Ireland, is hemmed in with bayonets---friendless except for those who love freedom in all lands, and desire a true internationalism-the workers.

FLQYD DELL.

Two American Novels

The Glorious Hope, by Jane Burr. $1.50 net.
Published by the author, Croton-on-Hudson, N. Y.
In the Heart of a Fool, by William .elllen

White. $1.bo net. The Macmillan Co. I WOULD like to think that these two books represent

the passing of an old tradition in American fiction and the beginning of a new.

Ten years ago we hoped great things from William Allen White; he knew .middle western America in all its social and economic phases since the Civil War; he had a point of view which detached him from the current vulgar worship of success; he was interested in the homely and intimate details of behavior by which men and women re-veal their souls. It seemed that he might become a great novelist. But as one book after another came from his pen it became clear that no such thing was to happen. The trouble was with his point of view. His detachment from middle-class psychology was apparent rather than real. He deprecated material success and exalted the spiritual virtues of truthfulness, self-abnegation, faithfulness to duty, etc. And this is precisely what the middle-class likes to have preached to it on Sunday and in its high-class fiction. It finds no difficulty in identifying Mr. White's preachments with its own higher aspirations. So Mr. White became the evangelist of bourgeois pieties, and the bourgeoisie just loved him for it. Book by book he lost touch with reality, grew more sentimentally and melodramatically moralistic, more attuned to the favorite hypocrisies of his audience. With all due respect to the undoubted sincerity of Mr. White's intentions, it must be said that his writings have taken on the tone of what used to be called Cant. The pious sniffle was audible in his recent war-book; this novel is a welter of sobs and tears. I hope no one will cross-question me about the story; one ought, of course, to read a book before reviewing it. But I have not the bourgeois virtues, neither self-abnegation nor faithfulness to duty. I lacked even the curiosity to find out what happened to the alleged Labor leader whom the book is supposed to be about. I believe he gets shot or crucified or something. . . .

It is a pleasure to turn from this solemn sick-bed of sentimental morality to hear the lusty if somewhat ear-piercing wail which betokens (perhaps) the birth of a more real and candid fiction. I want to recommend Jane Burr's novel, " The Glorious Hope," to the forty thousand readers of THE LIBERATOR; but I want to do so under no false pre-tenses. I had picked it up, and put it aside again because its crudity offended me. I only turned to it again because I saw it enthusiastically praised by H. G. Wells. It is crude; so if you buy it and it offends your artistic sensibilities, don't complain to me-I fully agree with everything you will say. But it is essentially real, even in the last chapters where it deserts realism for romantic fantasy. On second thought, I realize that this novel will not interest

February, 1919   41

everybody, and I recommend it only to the following classes of readers: those men and women who have been married to or in love with neurotic, unstable, undependable, cantankerous, babyish, egotistic, lazy, lovable artists or literary persons; those artists and literary persons who have been in love with or married to kind, sweet, practical, motherly, fatherly, industrious, ambitious and damnably self-sacrificing persons ; and to all who want to read a piece of psycho-analytic fiction which does not mention the mother-complex. The story of the book is one which has been related all too often by and from the point of view of the neurotic artist, generally a man; here it is told from the point of view of the other, in this case the wife. The book sheds a new and vivid Iight on the true nature and difficulties of that relationship. If people will fall in love with artists, it should do them no harm to gain a suspicion of the motives and pit-falls of that attraction. Sensitive people for the last hundred years have been blaming upon marriage a whole cycle of psychologic mishaps for which that on-the-whole admirable institution is not in the least responsible. This novel, in a hasty, sometimes tasteless, not always convincing, but still superbly interesting fashion, tells more about this human relationship as complicated by one of many common psychic maladies, than any other ten novels I know. I hope this is in truth the beginning of a new fiction which will, however crudely at first, enter boldly into the new realm of story-telling which awaits those who have the hardy enterprise to explore it and the hardier courage to report truly what they have found there. For I ought to say that this novel is one which no writer who stood in awe of the promulgations of radicalism upon the subject of love and marriage would ever have dared to publish ; and I half expect to lose my own quondam standing. as a feminist by venturing to suggest that I agree to any extent with the view of the relationship of men and women which it finally presents. But truth is perishable goods; and, however efficiently cold-storaged in theory, it deteriorates with the pas-sage of time. Green truth may give us a stomachache, but it is better than rotten-ripe. The relation of these perhaps none too illuminating aphorisms to Miss Burr's novel the reader may be left to discover for himself. But it is a brave book.   F, D.

Beating the Bolsheviki

The Great Change: New America, as seen by Leaders in American Government, Industry and Education who are remaking our Civilization. By Charles W. Wood. $r.5o net. Boni c~2 Liveright.

D EAR CHARLEY,, WOOD: It would be easy to call your book a monument to capitalism's lost opportunity; but I am not sure that it would be quite true. I am not sure the opportunity has passed.

As they are saying in Washington now, " Peace also is hell." They mean, of course, that the magnificent program

The Liberator a Best Seller!

The News-stand sales of the LIBERATOR have doubled in the last four months. The return of unsold copies has been reduced to 8%. If your newsdealer doesn't carry the LIBERATOR, read him the foI-lowing letter and tell him that he is underrating the intelligence of his public:

" LIBERATOR PUBLISHING COMPANY:

" Kindly double our order, beginning with the February- number. The LIBERATOR is now THE BEST SELLER ON OUR NEWSSTANDS."

From a newsdealer in a Middle West town of 37,000.

(Advertisers please notice.)

The TRUTH

Has remained true to the cause of Socialism throughout the war. Its editorials have commanded the attention of many leading Socialists and have been widely quoted throughout Ireland and Great Britain.

Truth does not know the meaning of the word camouflage. If a thing is true, then Truth publishes it. Even though it is printed in the heart of the Steel Trust.

Read what others say of Truth:-

" Your paper Is the best rebel paper in America."

MARY E. MARCY. "'Your _ editorials are inspiring." EUGENE V. DEBS.

" A week without Truth is like potatoes without salt." P. GALLAGRER.

" Your editorials take me back to 1905 in Russia." RUSSIAN COMRADE.

" Truth stands for International Socialism. 'Null sod." 'VOICE OF LABOR DUBLIN.

You will never regret subscribing to Truth. It is $1.50 per year and 85c for six months.

Edited by JACK CARNEY, Late Associate Editor Irish Worker.

THE TRUTH,
101 Stack Building, Duluth, Minn.

42   THE LIBERATOR

of industrial revolution which you describe in your book has been hastily abandoned, and that we are plunged in the wild confusion of reckless restoration to the status quo ante. I could laugh a little maliciously in these Thermidorian days at your confidence that the industrial co-operation, compelled by the grim necessities of war, have any significance for us now that peace has come. We know that those revolutionary forms, the War Labor Board, the War Industries Board, the Food Administration, the Emergency Fleet Corporation, the Priorities Board, etc.-the capitalist counterpart in a sense to the new creations of the proletariat in Russia-have been or are being knocked to pieces, swept up and thrown in the dustbin, and none so poor to do them reverence. But we know, too, that Peace (if you want to call it Peace) hath her necessities no less grim than War's. Lenine has told the Soviets that Socialism can be maintained in Russia only by the achievement of a terrifically high productivity in industry. It must presently dawn even upon the business world that a similar thing is true of capitalism.

It is a lesson which the business world is not ready or willing to learn, and it will be learned only when chaos impends as the only alternative. It may be indeed that capitalism is going to commit suicide out of hand. But it would be rash to suppose so. What is much more likely is that Opportunity, having been thrown `down the back stairs after a brief visit during the late war, will be called back, given first aid treatment and invited to make itself at home.

It is for this reason that your book seems to me one of singular and tremendous importance. During the war we all knew vaguely that political government had to a large ex-tent been supplanted by a number of boards representing the co-operative effort of the business world. But the real nature of the industrial revolution which had been temporarily effected, it was difficult to discover. I never did discover except from you, in the articles and interviews which you have moulded into the present book. The book as a whole reveals what the articles severally only suggested -the immense transformation of our industrial scheme implicit in the operation of these war-boards. Even if nothing more were to come of it all, this book would have a vast interest as the only candid story of that amazing interlude. But I think it has a greater and more practical significance. Exactly as I think the business world of America ought to study the aims and achievements of proletarian revolution, so I think it is our business to study the aims and achievements of this war-time capitalist revolution.

" Business as usual," with the immediate breakdown which it threatens, is no rival to Bolshevism-but rather its best friend. The New Capitalism is a real rival ; and these war-time changes, extended and developed in peace-times, offer the most serious obstacle to the success in any near future of the worldwide proletarian revolution. It is our menace, and we shall be as foolish as the middle-class is about Bolshevism if we turn up our noses at its possibilities. It is easy for us to say that the New Capitalism will not work. That's just what the middle class says about Socialism.

At all events, the New Capitalism did work, to a far greater extent than most of us realized, during the war. We know something of the results, if not fully the significance, of the activities of the War Labor Board. But you have a happy faculty of selecting and setting forth striking and ironic instances; and when you present us with the spectacle of " 'William Howard Taft settling a strike by awarding the workers more than they had asked," you make us realize the actuality of the repudiation, for however brief a time, of the political economy upon which the Old Capital-ism was founded. You show us the Labor Policies Board serenely at work conserving labor power and the lives in which that power is bound up, in complete defiance of the age-old capitalist tradition of the scrap-heap. You make us listen to engineers like H. L. Gantt, who estimate that the old capitalism has only a 15 per cent effectiveness in production and who propose to achieve too per cent effectiveness by eliminating the competitive effort to sell and concentrating on a co-operative effort to produce; and you let us see the Conservation Division of the War Industries Board literally carrying out this policy within certain fields. You show us the Priorities Board quietly arranging voluntary agreements among manufacturers which meant the surrender of every competitive right they ever possessed. We see the housing problem being solved, where war made it necessary, on a basis which would throw the old-fashioned landlord into an epileptic fit. You quote a Shipping Board power expert who, merely to increase production, proposes to cut the working-day down to six hours.

" However," he adds, " if America seriously sets out to eliminate all the friction in her industrial system, we may expect a four, or perhaps a two-hour day. With production simplified and power utilized to its fullest capacity, we could probably produce all we want in much less than six hours; and with distribution simplified, we would have no trouble in securing the product for our own enjoyment."

" Socialism? " you asked him.

" Engineering," he corrected.

It was, in fact, the engineers, the engineering spirit, which controlled our brief experiment in the new capitalism. Engineers are not interested in old-fashioned politics. They ask what has to be done, and they set about finding the best way to do it-a method singularly identical with the workings of the Soviet system at its best! And there is a singular unanimity of intention in this respect among all those with whom you talked-Schwab, Baruch, Dewey, Veblen, the business men and professors and officials and engineers. They sometimes remind you that it is just to win the wear; and in that phrase there is a sop for those who want to see the old order restored. But what is significant is the possibility not only of a new conception of industry but of the practical execution of such a conception, by men of all sorts, under the pressure of a grave necessity. We have here in your book the sketch of a new society which, under pressure of the threat of Bolshevism, may become more than a war-time interlude.

43

COMRADES AND FRIENDS: One last word about the $60,000 Liberator Fund. In the January number we reported that the. Fund had reached $23,528.00

(paid-up stock and pledges). Since then $4,313.50 has come in in cash, and $I2,898 in pledges. So the Fund stands today, January 12, as follows:

$8,247.00-in paid-up shares of stock or in straight gifts 32,492.50-in pledges to be paid up before October 1st, 1921

$40,739,50-Total.

$40,739.50 in three months! We only set out to raise $6o,ooo,-and we have one month left. For new LIBERATOR readers, or old ones who have not yet come in--on the Fund, we offer this last chance. Sign one of the blanks and send it in before Lincoln's Birthday, February 12th, if you can.

Meanwhile read this letter from an aviator:

Aero Squadron, Amer. E. F., France,

December •18, 1918.

DEAR LIBERATOR :

I wish to accept your offer to the extent of my means. Just now my pay is in a serious tangle. But beginning February 15 I will be able to pay $5 a month, and I wish to take 20 shares at this rate of payment.

With very best wishes for your entire success, and with admiration for your courageous perseverance, I remain,

Faithfully yours,

R. D. T.

NOW

I hereby subscribe for    shares of Preferred Stock in the Liberator Publishing Company' and enclose

$    in full payment.

Within the Year

I hereby subscribe for    shares
of Preferred Stock in the Liberator

Publishing Company.   1 enclose

.... now in part payment, and promise to send $    in full pay-
ment on or before October 1st, 1919.

1 Share

$IO■

Within Three Years

1-hereby subscribe for shares of Preferred Stock in the Liberator Publishing Company, and promise to

send $   in full payment on or
before October 1st, 1921.

Name    

Addmen    

Name    

Address    

You never can tell where you're going to find a Bolshevik!

Yours for $60,000 on February 12, THE EDITORS.

1 Share

$10.

Name    

.Address    

To inc it is simply a question of the organizing capacity of the middle-class; and, frankly, I do not believe the middle-class is equal to such a task, sustained over a long period of years. That phrase, " just to win the war," seems to me to reveal the fatal weakness of this middle-class idealism. The threat of Bolshevism may, and I think certainly will, make necessary the revival of the program you describe. But it will be carried out amid the active hostility and the silent sabotage of so large a proportion of the bourgeoisie, it will become so increasingly half-hearted, it will have involved itself in so much compromise and pretense, that it will not avail to save capitalism from the disruption which it faces and which is the sure prelude to a proletarian revolution. Such is my own opinion. But against that I wish to set the following considerations.

Revolution, as Lincoln Steffens has remarked, is first of all, war; and, as he further points out, war is not the ideal condition under which to attempt to create a new society. It is merely because war seems necessary to break down the resistance to the work of creation, that we tolerate the notion of violent revolution. All decent minds revolt against the cruelty, the waste, the appalling loss of so much that has been gained, in the revolutionary violence by which new• conditions are brought about. It may well be that these things are inevitable-and they are a cheap price to pay for any permanent gain to human society. But-they may be unnecessary. It is possible that history has surprises in store for us. And even though I cannot believe this, I am

RUSSIAN REPRINTS

from.

The Nation

In response to the extraordinary demand created for the articles and documents dealing with Russia which have appeared in recent issues of The Nation, these reprints have been made.

No one in search of an unbiased presentation of events taking place in that country, can afford to overlook these Reprints.

The Nation has also published the largest number of Decrees of the Soviet Government that have appeared outside of Russia, as well as the Constitution of the Russian Soviet Republic.

The Russian Reprints are on sale at `newsstands, book stores, or may be obtained by sending ten cents to

The Nation

20 Vesey Street   New YorK

THE LIBERATOR

glad to discipline my imagination to traverse the path which your book suggests-the path of a peaceful and orderly progress brought about by capitalist forces toward the goal which we desire. It is obvious that capitalism could not go very far along this path without ceasing to be capitalism, But even this is a theoretically credible proposition. It is the alternative to class-war. And we do not believe in class war because we like war, hut only because we see no way of avoiding it.

" Nobody," you say at the end of your book, " wants a class war. American Iabor does not want it. The great managers of American industry do not want it. Even the I. W. W. members do not want it; and it would be hard to prove that those business aristocrats who are now planning to resume the sad old system of production for profits, actually want the horrors of a class war to rend America apart. But have we the collective intelligence to accept and perfect this well demonstrated system of production for the common good, instead of resorting to those conditions which make class war inevitable?"

You say you do not know, and leave the question to your readers. Almost, if I were one of that middle-class in whose hands this decision rests, you would tempt me to become an Industrial Pacifist.

FLOYD DELL.

" Easy Prey '

TO the editor of THE LIBERATOR: I have read with much interest Mr. William Lloyd's letter about the article in the New Republic concerning the Pro-German element in the S. P. which appeared in the New Republic. I believe that Mr. Lloyd has misunderstood the purport of the article. No one claims that the leaders of the S. P. are pro-German but what this article means is that German agents have used the socialist propaganda. A friend of mine who works in the Secret Service Department told me that there is a network of German agents over this whole country and that they have systematically exploited the socialist and pacifist movements. No liberal, least of all the much maligned New Republic, doubts the fact that the leaders of the Socialist Party are sincere and actuated by the highest motives, but their very sincerity and idealism make them an easy prey to German agents because they are apt to imagine that all those who oppose the war are as sincere as they are.

Yours very truly,

LUCY P. EASTMAN. 4 E. both St., New York City.   _as

Unfinished Business Presidential

forget some more of his Fourteen Points.

" Read your suffrage history," said Miss Paul, " and note how women have always given way to other issues and lost their battle again and again through consideration of the opposition's feelings."

The third group was composed of simple folk like me who wanted the Federal Amendment passed right away and felt that Miss Paul and the Committee knew the best way to go about it.

All this was at noon.

At four-thirty everybody was in line for the Lafayette statue except one brown-eyed young statistician from Kansas. I found her in the cloak-room wringing her hands. " What can I do? " she said. " My mother and grandmother spent their lives for suffrage, but our poor President-I cannot embarrass him."

I didn't do anything about it. It was obvious that she was too tender-hearted for this cruel campaign-that she would never be able to bring herself to embarrass a fly.

But the rest of us marched to the Lafayette statute across from the heavily-guarded empty White House. And there were speeches and songs about self-determination for subject America's women. And it was all very beautiful and very moving.

And whether the President was embarrassed to the point of finishing his unfinished business at home-cabling the Senate, I do not know. I hope so.

But, anyhow, his " New Freedom " and all his other recent graceful utterances about democracy and liberty are ashes. I saw them the next morning as I came by----an ugly, blackened mass.

ANNE HERENDEEN.

P. S.-Since' I noted the above impressions of the early December demonstration, which seemed to me noble and gentle and somewhat useless, the Woman's Party has once more flung down the gauntlet to the Administration with a far more imperious gesture. On January 1st the Party lighted watch-fires in front of the White House, and announced its intention of feeding them with each " forward-Iooking " speech of the President until the suffrage amendment should have gone through the Senate. Eleven women have been arrested, and al-together have served 40 days-hungerstriking meanwhile for the rights of political prisoners. The arrests are said to have been made by order of one Col. Rid-ley, aide to the President, so it is possible that the beacon, modest as it may be, is visible across the Atlantic.   A. H.

F IFTY years hence will our daughters be saying to guests from France, Russia, Germany, Siam and other European Republics: " 1VIy dear, before you go I simply must take you down to Washington for one of our fascinating Woman's Party demonstrations. Dear Miss Paul, aged and infirm as she is, is to lead this next one in her purple and gold wheeled chair."

We hope not. But this is later, and we are a bit let down.

December was different. The air around Headquarters was electric with the confident enthusiasm of two hundred and fifty women, eager pilgrims from nearly every state in the Union. They had come, many of them, tiresome and inconvenient distances at the summons for a last drive on the recalcitrant Senate. In their suitcases were warm underclothes suitable for prison wear.

Then Miss Paul told us that in subsequent conferences it had been decided that our objective should again be our wandering President across the sea. Though he had ably " saved face " by his two last allusions to woman suffrage, he had not actually brought the pressure to bear upon Democratic Senators that would clinch matters.

" A cable from the President would get us the needful vote in the Senate," said Miss Paul. " Political common sense directs us to make one more appeal to him rather than to the Democratic Senators, who, after all, are only waiting for final orders."

At this news the gallant two hundred and fifty dissolved into three camps.

At the far end of the drawing room were those who had wanted to live dangerously. At home they were housekeepers, writers, aviatrixes, real estate salesmen. Theirs had been dull, gray existences. Storming the Senate was to have heed their great moment.

" To take paht in a pageant, livin' pictures! " exclaimed a sweet-faced little woman from Georgia, " when ah came to battle fo' Liberty! "

" To build a bonfire in front of an empty White House," scolded a cynical New York lawyer. " It is like a college stunt party ! "

In Miss Paul's own study was another group with other feelings. They were ready to tear the Senate limb from Iimb, to go to prison, to hunger-strike, but they quivered with horror at the thought of bringing a blush to the cheeks of the President while the eyes of Europe are upon him. It might upset him so that he would

February, 1919   45

Examples of American Justice

In Kansas

GOD bless me so that I shall be able to write this letter to my dear family, to my dear wife, Mary, and our sweet children, Vasia and Nura. I wish you the best in this world, and in the future world in heaven.

Now I will describe to you what we have lived through.

August 2, 1918, an officer came to us at Fort Chackuky and said "you must become soldiers." We answered that we should not become soldiers. Then he said " we will force you to." We answered, " Force is with you."

The next day as usual the horn blew to go out to drill. We did not go out. Suddenly the officer with a few others rushed in and roughly ordered us to go out to drill. We said that we would not go out because our religion forbids it. After a long argument the officer left us and we went to prepare our breakfast. After breakfast they did not let us go back.

They took us over to the soldiers, who were ordered by the officers to force us to drill. Every four soldiers got a hold of every one of us. First they took F. V. K. and put him in the row, but he would not stand in the row. Then they took me in the same way, and as I resisted they took me on their arms, and put me in the row. I lifted my arms to God and prayed him to help me, and then I fell to the ground. They lifted me up again.

There were more than 400 soldiers, and also many officers. I told them: " Listen, citizens! If you want to do something to us, do it right here. Don't torture us. And I prayed to God again.

Then they took Moisy the same way. He also resisted, fell on his knees and prayed.

Then they did the same with Fedor, who fell on the ground as a dead man, and the same they (lid with Jacob.

The officer ordered them to lift us up, but the soldiers could not.

Then the officer sent for the colonel. The colonel appeared soon and asked which one of us spoke English best. They pointed at Kulikov, who was lying near me. When Kulinov was ordered to get up he did not move, and the colonel ordered me to lift him up.

" You have hands, do it yourself."

They started to threaten us that they would not give us any bread, but we did not care and said that we would not eat their bread.

Then the colonel ordered to bring a fire hose.

The spirit of God supported us, and we were ready even to be shot down.

Finally the Colonel ordered us to go back to prison.

" We did not come here, and we will not go anywhere," we said.

When they found out that none of us would obey their orders, they commanded to turn on the water and put the fire hose against our faces.

After being tortured like that for two hours, half dead we were dragged back to prison, where we thanked God for His mercy.

Shortly after that a soldier came back and told us to prepare our meal, but we refused to eat, and did not eat for eight days.

At last the doctors came and told us that we were going to Fort Riley.

As we could not move, many soldiers packed up our things and put us on wagons which carried us to the station.

Now I am in the hospital and the others are in prison. They are forbidden to write in Russian. You write in English so that we will get your letters.

Goodbye, my dears, pray God to give me strength to stand all the pains of my soul and body.

I have no more paper, so I will finish my writing when I have more paper. I will write more about what happened on the way.

When we got here they began to torture us again. They dragged me like an animal with rope around my neck. They pealed the skin off my neck. They shaved my head. They cut my ears. They put a sabre to my neck. They tore my shirt in pieces and wanted me to put on a uniform. They threw me into an ice cold bath. I did not count how many times they beat me. Once in one of those icy cold baths I fainted away and they took me out and tortured me again. They pulled the hairs off . my feet like feathers. I was motionless. I only prayed to God to take me away from this world full of horrors.

My hope and belief in God saved me. Now I am preparing my meals, but I feel very ill.

IVAN SUSSEFF.

Fort Riley, Kansas.

This is not fiction-or journalism; it is an authentic letter from a conscientious objector, written to his wife.

In Alaska

DEAR Crystal Eastman: I am reminded that in the spring some inquiry came from the Civil Liberties Bureau regarding the Federal prosecution of me, and I wish you to do me the kindness to convey to them assurances of my grateful appreciation.

I was convicted in the Federal Commissioner's Court for violating a Territorial statute against the publication of matter " tending to incite sedition or ill will toward the President or any of ' his officers,' etc. "; the particular. language cited being a capsuled paragraph:

" To be an American patriot, be

willing to die in defense of the trade

supremacy of the British Empire and

her subjugation of India and Ireland."

The Bureau would find nothing new to it in any detailed account of the farcical trial and would only make its records tedious and cumulative, juries selected for prejudice and conviction, etc. The local population is preponderantly Scandinavian in origin, but .it happened that none such were on the venire. On the contrary, practically all of the British born residents were drawn, and the final trial jury comprised of seven such Englishmen. I am not at all proud of it but confess that my family are American back so far that records and memory dims 'in the period be-fore the establishment of the Arc of the Capitalist Covenant in America.

It might amuse your group for a moment to know that the Prosecutor's peroration concluded with,

" And now, gentlemen, when you go into the jury room for your deliberations, I would have you bear well in mind that im-m-o-r-tal admonition of Britain's greatest Admiral, Lord Nelson, before - the battle of Trafalgar; lined up his men on the deck of his ship, and said to them : ' England expects every man to do his duty.' "

Now that the mails have come in, my fine and imprisonment term, $300 and six months in jail, seem light and trifling, by comparison with the troubles of comrades outside, especially in view of the fact that I am not unacquainted with the jail for opinion's sake, upon occasion, and that I have much more of health and strength for the job than most of them now serving and about to serve vastly longer terms.

The " Miner's Union," which with us is more in the nature of a " Disappointed Gold Seekers' Society " than a union of

workingmen such as you know, sought to pay my fine outright and to have the sentence suspended. I felt that as the matter concerned me so personally I could refuse to allow that course, and urged them that it meant the early conclusion of their usefulness if labor organizations once opened their meagre treasuries to the payment of court fines. Upon this matter of principle we came into sharp and sudden disagreement; I appealed the case to the District Court in my own behalf. It will come up at the January term. Local Counsel cannot be had and it is out of the question for your Bureau to send a lawyer two thousand miles over the ice to me here. Frankly, I think that our reliance upon this shady profession is a bad practice anyhow.

Please do understand that it is simply that I do not believe there is in my situation sufficient to invite concern of the Bureau or of friends outside.' Meantime, let me wish that such energies and re-sources as are so kindly held in store for me be deflected to the relief of Louise Olivereau, Canyon City (Colorado) Penitentiary, to years; Emil Herman, Mc-Neil's Island (Washington) Penitentiary, t o years ; Hulet M. Wells, Joseph and Morris Pass, 2 years, out on appeal bond, Seattle, - and the Chicago cases.

I am convinced that henceforth even the most peaceful and lawful methods of non-conformist propaganda that can be devised will not be allowed in the open, and I am not of those who think that the end of the war will end that condition. If a Socialist Party is allowed to continue it will be one which will never be allowed to assume potentiality, or one so denatured as not to mean anything in the direction of social readjustment. The formation of truly resistent labor organizations will be the signal for pogroms the like of which we have not heretofore known just as we have not heretofore known such a war.

Sincerely,

BRUCE ROGERS.

Nome, Alaska.

To a Critic

H OW can I sing of her in lines. that dance? You could. Not I. For me, a small gray ancient pain

Breaks, with dull strokes, the beat of joy That brightness of her beauty always brings. How can I sing of her in lines that dance? -Winds of old loves still blow about her hair,

Left from the gusts of passion broken at her mouth.

F. Normile.

Three Poems
I.

S UN and moon and stars were set, But red upon the lea A lantern followed by a knife Came hurrying after me.

Sun and moon and stars were set But a million twinkling eyes

Watched me running across the lea And stumbling over the rise.

When the sun and moon and stars are set Hasten to bar the door

Lest you meet with moon and stars and sun But with your folk no more.

II. Quarry

A YOUNG witch moon rides in the sky, Lean with her magic rites is she, And tawny as the fires of hell She beckons on the shuddering sea.

The trembling stars swarm to the dome

Of heaven, and shrinking view the sight Of that wild moon who calls the waves

And sends them crashing through the

night.

Diana hunted the wood-deer

And loosed her huge hounds from the slips,

But this mad moon halloos the sea

And, golden-eyed, hunts down our ships'

III. Cantonese Song

CLIMB, love, to the flower pagoda Up the narrow high stone stair While the bells at every story Jingle in the springtime air.

Look below you to the river

Where the thousand junks go by, Flower in the Flower Pagoda! Be the first my sail to spy.

Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth.

From a Man \Vithi
a Sore Leg.

D EAR LIBERATOR: It may be unfair to make you suffer for an accident to my leg, but being layed up with a twisted knee-cap just naturally makes me onery. I lays here and looks for victims all day long. I just got through reading the December LIBERATOR. That kind of eased my sore leg because now I can jump on something. Being temperamentally perverse I always commence reading on the last page, so that by the time I don't much care what I read any more, I come to the light stuff. Editorials and such like. Sometimes they rest me wonderfully-same effect as Tan-Lac-but again they will give me that tired feeling. It is queer how things do affect the mortal mind.

When I read that little ad-or was it an ad?.--of Upton Sinclair's on Page 7 I got all "het" up. And I think mainly because I

TI-IE LIBERATOR

thought all of the ads. were in the back part of the book. Any way I am queer and I supose it is because I used to think that is where they ought to he that I got roiled.

But what struck me was this. Why worry about Upton? He is a real nice man and course he can "come back." You seem to think he's got to come right now. The " psycnlogical moment," I believe you fellers what reads and writes books calls it, but I don't agree with you no ways.

I reads everything our President says, I follows him and I believe with him in the principle of selfish determination openly arrived at, without no force being used on nobody. That's me. And that's why I say Upton can come back now, after a while, or at no time no how. And when you says in your editorial, that Upton's " Moment is now" you just naturally disapoint me. And I a friend of yourn too! I all the time thought yours was a heap broader humanity. You're too narrer, that's what you are!

No sir! Upton's "moment" was yesterday, is this morning, will be tomorrow afternoon at 3:29, or any time thereafter. Maybe it will never come. Its all up to Upton and the rest of the world will just have to get used to it. That's what I calls real democracy and if you don't admit it you're a traitor to our flag. If my talk is maybe a little too strong for ye, remember I live in the Woods and got a sore leg.

I know Upton. Seen him myself. He's a good man. I shook hands with him once. He didn't hurt it none. I always liked him for that. But I am wandering. Its my leg and I aint told you all yet either!

I know a man-no fooling now-who's ben a member of the S. P. ever since it was put up. He belonged to the old S. L. P. for years before that. Paid his dues, gave money, spoke for the party on soap box or hall, organized, sold books, boosted the party press, served on every comite at the gift-he uses that word "gift "-of the party in the State and ben in jail a dozen times "for the cause."

One time in that long stretch of " belonging" to the party this man got a little " Upish "-no not exactly that, but a little disgusted with the way the party was acting. "Tactics" I guess is the word for it. Anyhow, what you spose this man did? You couldn't. guess it in the World. Not on your "psychological moment" you couldn't! I'll let you in on it though, if you promise not to. tell again. He

quilt! Yes sir! Just like that! He quitt for about 6 months and never sayed "Beans" about it. Went home from meeting one night and thonk it over; thonk it all over for about near unto a year and by that time he got tired of thinking and then, what you calc!ate he did then? Paid up his back dues and got busy again. And in all that time-as he found out later-the. party managed to kind of wriggle along somehow. What I kind of liked about it all was that he made no fuss about leaving or coming and the party made none neither. I thought then that's the way it ought Io be. I know this got nothing to do with Upton; but when a man has a sore leg he starts one way and goes another. Maybe when I get around again on all fours I'll tell you. what I started out to say. I better quitt, ,I might get my second wind and tell you what I think of our faithful old " Gene." So long.

Yours for Selfish determination,

Felton, Cal.   R. W.

PHONE CHELsze 7328

ADVANCE MAILING CO.

80 FIFTH AVENUE

WEEKLY AND MONTHLY PUBLICATIONS ADDRESSING   MULTIORAPHING

FOLDING   MAILING

46

February, 1919   47

To You Who Don't Subscribe

In December, nine hundred people who wanted to read the Liberator were prevented from doing so because we were sold out and could not fill our news stand orders.

In January, although we had increased our edition by five thousand, we again sold every copy and still the orders came pouring in. This time we printed a second edition, but it took ten days to print and distribute these new copies and meanwhile several thousand people had to wait for the special Russian number.

Were you one of the nine hundred who lost out entirely in December, or one of the three thousand who had to wait ten days in January? Perhaps you were among the lucky ones whose news stands were able to supply them.

But can you afford to take this risk?

Why not subscribe and make sure of one copy, anyhow? Then you can buy another at the news stand, if, you like, and hand it to a friend.

" I always carry a copy of the Liberator in my overcoat pocket," a U. S. ex-Senator told us the other day. "It's a good thing to have along when you meet someone who is just waking up and needs encouragement. I give him the Liberator and buy another at the next stand I come to. But, of course, I keep my subscription copy safe at home."

SPECIAL FEBRUARY OFFER

For every subscription received during February
(whether new or old) we "will send you
FREE a copy of the booklet
"76 Questions and Answers on
7 HE BOLSHEVIKI AND THE SOVIETS"

By Albert Rhys Williams

(Williams is the Soviets' Messenger to America whose conversafion we published in the December Liberator)

THE LIBERATOR

34 Union Square E., New York

Enclosed find $2.00. Send the Liberator for one year and a copy of "The Bolsheviki and the Soviets."

Name    

Address     (Please mention if it is a renewal.)

(If you don't want to mutilate the magazine by using this slip, send $2.00 and mention the booklet.)

The Liberator for One Year, $2.00. Subscribe Today

48   THE LIBERATOR

To Jeannette Rankin   The Flaming Sword

IRELAND, 0 Ireland! Hark! Don't you hear The twanging of a harp?

Ireland, old Ireland! Stop! Can't you feel

The chambers of your heart Contract with pain?

Ireland, green Irelandl Hush! Don't you see

The glory of the slain

On Easter Day?

Ireland, sweet Ireland!

Home of poverty and fears. Ireland, dear Ireland!

Home of merriment and tears,

In all our bulging land of plenty

But one has heard your cry.

To one heart, only, did ypur message fly. Only one in the parliament of the free Timidly pled for prompt decree

That Ireland should go free.

Will Burt.

Indication

DOWN a road Paved with silver of the moon-Towards a mountain

(Vaster than by day)-

One cedar Stiff .

And tall . . . . Abruptly pointing-

Ho-stars!

I salute you . . .!

I am a star as well as you!

And I have it we shall know more of one another-

Nina Bull.

Man-Power

STRONG men from the heart of the world, men of courage and youth and vision, they want you across the sea where the battle rages. Smooth white flesh, rippling muscles, steel nerves for the tanks and the planes and the guns. Without you the guns are silent. With them 'u speak strangely all that you are now, all

you have been, all that you might become.

town hands wielding swift levers, steady

gauging the clouds, pressing feet crowding ohward over wan faces. And back of these the things which make you really effective. Manpower-the flame of unseen altars, the thrill of sunrise, the mystery of moonlit gardens, the gleam of a girl's shoulders, the bent figure of a woman sewing before a window, the warm hand of a friend.

Beautiful bodies under the brown uniforms, haunting memories, blithe dreams, glowing de-sires, curses, prayers, loves, hates-man-power! Forward under the colors. You are the dream of life, the burnt offering, the bloody sacrifice. You are our modern Christ.

ROSE HENDERSON.

Him that I fed upon my breast, And hushed beneath my hand,

To-night is taking other rest-.Saint, make me understand!

It's not my lips that would complain,

My heart that would not bear Its burden of the mother-pain-

Such was The Mother's share.

Only-it's such a little while

Since he was home each night,

And the house was brighter with his smile Than any candle-light.

Only-Saint, stand near me this eve Just at the fall of dark

And mind my head that will believe My silly ears that hark,

Above the silence and the storm,

For sound of his two feet;

My foolish eyes that see his form

A-coming down the street;

Myself that meets him at the gate, Just as we used to do;

My crazy hands that set things straight, And lay the cloth for two. . .

Saint Michael, to your flaming sword My mother-heart submits-

But, Saint dear, if you'd ask the Lord To let me keep my wits!

Hazel Hall.

Partners

JD. ROCKEFELLER, JR., has re-• cently received much applause (and rightly so) by saying that labor and capital are partners.

As I understand it, a partner is a member of a partnership. A partnership is the relation between persons who have contracted to join in business and share profits between them.

Now, after a fair salary has been paid the capital partner and a fair wage has been paid the labor partner, what would Mr. Rockefeller suggest as a fair share of profits between them? Would it be at the ratio of $I,500,ooo,000 to $I or less?

PAUL LIBBY.

(From the New York World)

CREENWtt H VILLAGE

RECTORY

(Strictly speaking, this is NOT a complete directory of Greenwich Village. It is only a step toward such a directory. In time, and with the help of our friends, we shall make this as complete a directory of the Village as is possible in the advertising columns of a magazine.)-flarry Salpeter.

The Devonshire Lace Shop

60 Washington Square. New York

Laces Designed, Made and Mended by
Marian Powys of England

PEOPLE'S HOUSE CAFETERIA

7 East Fifteenth Street
GOOD FOOD-POPULAR PRICES

An opportunity to meet everybody worth while in the thinking world.

EAT WHERE

The food is good
The prices moderate
The environment pleasant

Cafeteria

" Three Steps Down " 19 West Eighth Street

MASCHA STRUNSKY

THE RUSSIAN INN

57 West 37

LUNCHEON   TEA   DINNER
DELICIOUS RUSSIAN COOKING
Table d'Etote and a la Carte

The E. H. & A. C. Friedrichs
Company

MANOFACTURENG RATAILSR9 OF
ARTISTS' MATERIALS

and Picture Frames

169 West 57th Street, New York

DR. MAXIMILIAN COHEN
Surgeon Dentist

(Near Eighth street) 100 SIXTH AVENUE

SAINT MICHAEL, holy warrior! I'm praying, Sir, to you! My lad himself was in the war-

Saint dear, it's true-it's true!

February, 1919   49

RED HOT      If iends, ■ yen want forpaper•elfthoat
r fr

combats all religious doses*. send SI for each

suhseriber AGNOSTIC the hottest

and get   paper pub-
lished. Samples, four different. 1(k. Send today.

THE CRUCIBLE," V   PAPER
1330 let Ave., Seattle. Wash.

The Bolsheviks

and the Soviets

by

ALBERT RIIYS WILLIAMS

A pamphlet of seventy-six questions and answers upon the Russian situation.

Not for the erudite, but for beginners. It takes up the Soviet government, its form, its accomplishments, how it brought the revolution in Germany, the Red Terror, Intervention, and all the first facts about Russia.

The proper antidote to give to a person S11ed with the usual misinformation and lies.

Single copy-10e.

Special prices in large quantities
If ordered by mall, add Sc. for postage

RAND BOOK STORE
7 E. 15th Street   New York City

Write for a catalog for books on all subjects.

Acknowledgement

We gratefully acknowledge, on behalf of the young Russians recently sentenced by Judge Clay-ton to twenty years' imprisonment for protesting against the invasion of their country, a contribution of $24 collected mostly from tuberculosis atients and sent in by )k. M. Slater of Denver,

lo„ for appealing the case.-THE Eames.

X

From a Bus

(To Arturo Giovannitti)

I N back of me upon a bus That through a tireless retinue Of cars and people ploughed its way Up Fifth Avenue

I heard a voice recite some verse To a curious beat of time-

I knew it must be verse because I could not catch a rhyme.

And everywhere about us flowed

In every color under the sun A sea of people old and young,

Busy everyone;

And I would add the view was decked

For some elaborate occurrence

With flags and flowers-did I not know

Such stuff is your abhorrence.

At any rate the lady read

(It was a lady) from the page

About a city worse than Sodom

In words of righteous rage;

You would have thought the poet sang

The horrors of the worst of wars-The poem was about New York,

And, Arthur, it was yours.

Slowly the stately Avenue

Was left behind for Riverside

Where through the trees that shade the Hudson

A bus may slide;

And as I looked upon the water

And heard what she read from the page I wondered, marvelled, Arthur, what Put you in such a rage.

Now, Arthur, it is known so well

That New York holds some stricken people

It hardly needs to be proclaimed From every steeple;

And some there are prefer the death

To life-so sad their choice is: Is that good reason why you and I

Should lose our voices?

Samuel Roth.

Words in Mauve

I HAD always loathed Vers Libre, (Except Max Eastman and Amy Lowell, And even here, sometimes ...)

But I thought perhaps I needed more,

So I got Alfred Kreymborg's "OTHERS"-(Do you? Do they?

Does he?

Perhaps

She-)

And now I have a great task for THE

LIBERATOR

If I may only proclaim it in six-point from a little space stuck in the advertisements: Do you ever think of

Ocean-

A timely and scientific study of

The Revolution

in Germany

By Karl Dannenberg

This pamphlet is a re-print of the article which appeared in the January issue of The Radical Review, and also contains a lucid editorial from the same issue en-titled " That Dictator-ship of the Proletariat."

32 pages   10 cents
$6.50 in lots of 100

THE RADICAL   REVIEW
PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION

202 East 17th Street,
New York

THE LIBERATOR

H. SLIKERMAN

Lawyer

SUITS 631, PACIFIC BUILDING
SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.

31n

(tit-npertttive Cettjwe ' of America

est. LSllirtertttll *trert Nrln url: Litll

to spread knowledge, develop scientific methods, and give expert advice concerning all phases of Consumers' Co-operation.

$1.00 annual membership includes subscription (50c) to the only national co-operative monthly magazine.

" (ga-nitrrattutt "

"Make Ready for the Birth of a New Day."-President Wilson.

Study Socialism

-by Correspondence

The World is being reconstructed on Socialist lines. Thinking men and women should thoroughly understand Socialism, History of Economics, Labor Itovements, Class Struggle, Evolution, etc. Courses by prominent radical teachers. 3 month course, $2.50.

ASK FOR FOLDER " D "

Rand School of Social Science
7 East 15th St., New York

PUBLIC STENOGRAPHER

At your home At your office At any time

Rates Unusually Moderate

PEOPLE'S HOUSE

7 East 15th Street   Stuyvesant 3049

I mean Ocean worm-gnawed, recalcitrant, vertiginous, dactylic.

As it wipes its

Purple and vermilion

Whiskers

On a harlot's

Skirt?-

(I believe, in the night, it is not, so wide-spread as Sedition, or Militarism, or the Subway),

I want THE LIBERATOR

To liberate us from Vers Libre!

TRACY D. MYGATT.

To F. D.

[NOTE:-The Associate Editor sometimes ex-presses his grief at having to reject MSS. by scribbling on the rejection slip the words used as a refrain in this reply of a sympathetic contributor.-F.D.)

y OU tell us all that beauty reigns in joy, That " pleasure-motif " is the future's art; Yet ever you yourself in sorrow sit,

Wrapped and apart.

If I'm mistaken thus in calling you

The saddest man my eyes know near or far,

If you perchance, beneath this mournful mein,

Be laughing-tell me why you ever are

When dedicating song to me-" Sorry!

"F. D."

You ask, and cleverly, in sprightly words, Why poets bend to sadness, death and tears,

When there is sparkling joy in everything-And yet, my friend, for years and years and years,

You've scattered green ink sobs so mourn-fully-

" Sorry!

" F. D."

Often of mornings, when the joy of youth Burns in my toes, I climb the long dark stairs,

With letters from the world-and all the way

Seeing that corner mark, I offer up great prayers-

I tear the wrappings wide, only to see "Sorry!

"F. D."

Because you are the saddest soul abroad,

Because in me the cause of sorrow lies, I've built this little poem up for you

To bring some trace of laughter to your

eyes!

If I've done naught to break monotony-Sorry!

K. P.

   I I OVA   II

, THE NEW ART OF ~~   DRESS

Oi   Garments making available

to all women a new sense

of personas charm, dignity. ease and economy-through an absolutely NEW ART OF DRESS.

Garments for all occasions, from the blue serge of business to the goldcloth of romance. Write for booklet.

BERTHA HOLLEY
21 East 49th Street .
New York City

ESPE RAN TO

The language of the coming INTERNA-
TION, now spoken throughout the world.
Easily acquired by anybody in a short time.
Investigate TODAY

DICTIONARY AND COMPLETID TENT BOOB $1
DON'T PUT IT OFF
Write to the ESPERANTO SOCIETY

2633 Creston Ave., New York City

I make
PRACTICAL and UNUSUAL

Conventions, Hearings,
Mass Meetings, Etc.

REPRODUCED VERBATIM

Expert Stenotypists and Certified Shorthand Re-porters used exclusively on our work.

Translations in All Languages,
Multigraphing, Addressing,
Mimeographing, Public Stenog-
raphy, Etc.

CONVENTION REPORTING
COMPANY

32 UNION SQUARE, NEW YORE, N. Y.
Stuyvesant 1063-5296-837

for women who are tired of ready-made conventional banalities. Interesting colorings and original finishing touches are the features even of the simplest of my garments.

THREE OUTSTANDING BOOKS

FOR READERS OF THE LIBERATOR

THE GREAT CHANGE, by Charles W. Wood

" The Great Change " is chiefly a series of interviews with leaders of American industry and in American thought, such as Charles M. Schwab, Bernard Baruch, John Dewey, Franklin K. Lane, Charles P. Steinmetz, Frank P. Walsh, etc. But it is not a symposium, it is a single theme. It is not a presentation of " views " and " opinions " concerning what America ought to do.; it is the story of what America had to do in order to wig the war ; with a clear-cut demonstration of what must follow if America is to keep the war won.

$1.50

AMERICANIZED SOCIALISM:

A Yankee View of Capitalism, by James MacKaye

The publishers think that this timely volume by James MacKaye will create more discussion than any book on Socialism that has been written in the last few years. Many orthodox Socialists may not like it, but it will be hard for anyone to disagree with its premises and conclusions.

$1.25

JOHN REED'S   AND

TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD

John Reed needs no introduction to LIBERATOR readers, and neither does his great book about the Bolshevist insurrection. It is a large sized i2mo of over 300 pages, profusely illustrated, and contains documents of

various kinds that have never been published before.

Just published. $2.00

BONI & LIVERIGHT, Inc.,   103 West 40th Street, New York

The Voice of the Worker

Organ of the Hellenic Socialist Union
of America

Teaches Socialism and Revolution
to the Greek Workers in the
Language of Plato

Issued monthly in New York
SUP>SCRIPTION $1.00 A YEAR

793 Second Avenue
New York

Radical Papers Please Copy

March to December 1918

"I bought a Bound Volume of the Liberator to give away, but haven't been able to part with it. So here is my check for another one. Although I have been reading you right along, I hadn't realized until I had it all in one book, what an invaluable array of facts about Russia you have given in the last ten months.

"By the way, the ten covers alone are worth $3.00."

P. K. A.

Bound volumes, while they

last $3.00

If your order for the Volume is accompanied by a subscription (either a new one or a renewal), the price of the Bound Volume will be $2.50. (Total for both, $4.50.)

Order from the Liberator, 34 Union Square, New York

These Remarkable Testimonials
Prove Our Claims for
K. I. Shorthand

Below are but a few of legions of
testimonials which we are ready to
give you with full addresses

An Authoress.-"A truly wonderful thing is K. I. Shorthand. It surely is simplified stenography that anyone can learn in a few hours; and then it is a pleasure to speed up in writing one's own thoughts or taking down what others are saying. I am amazed at your beautifully easy method of ac9uiring such a valuable accomplishment. '-GRACE MILLER WHITE.

(Famous for "Tess o' the Storm Country" and numerous other books and screen plays)

In Civil Service.-"Four months ago I knew absolutely nothing of the first rudiments of shorthand. To-day I am holding a position as stenographer in the office of Inspector of Buildings where the terms apply almost wholly to building construction. I think this sufficient recommendation of your system."   E. M. FL'LTON.

A Teacher's Testimony.-"1 learned the K. I. Shorthand principles in five hours, and after not quite two weeks' practice I can write almost as fast as anyone would dictate. It is easier to read than any other system I have seen."

W. RI;DOLPH ALLEN.

L earn ,Shorthand

that OuicA

No longer is it necessary to spend months of time studying shorthand. You can master all the lessons in K. I. Shorthand at home in five evenings. Don't doubt this positive truth! Send for free lessons-also convincing proof that this is the simplest, most practical, lowest-cost course in stenography by personal correspondence instruction.

Used in Big Business.-"I learned your system of Shorthand to save time in making notes while passing about the plant. After only slight study I can take down ordinary conversations. K. I Shorthand is practical, time-saving and simple."

S. 13. ROPER.

A Journalist.-"Your system is excel-lent, being simple, and yetcomprehensive. I find K. I. Shorthand fascinating ill my work as a press correspondent."

ABBIE TOMPKINS.

Better Than Pitman.-"I started with the Ben Pitman method, but stopped it to take K. I. Shorthand, and I find it much quicker and easier to learn."

JOHN LACHENMAYER, JR.

50 Words a Minute in 10 Days.-"Already I can write fifty or more words per minute and it only took ten days-about a ,iuarter hour each day to learn K. I. Short-hand system."

HENRY DRANKE.

80 Words a Minute in 3 Weeks.-"I wish to state my appreciation of K. I. Short-hand. I am delighted with the system. Alter three weeks' practice, I can take eighty w,n"de a minute."

ELEANOR SKINNER.

K. I. Shorthand is the new, simplified and perfected shorthand system that everybody is talking about. I r i s used in the Army and Navy and in numerous other governmental places; also by court officials, doctors, business-men, teachers, clergymen, lawyers, reporters-and those in hundreds of other occupations. I t fits the needs of all.

It is the universal speed-script- the easy to learn, never-forgetable, lightning writing.

On 30 Days' Approval

K. I. Shorthand is acquired with wonderful speed and ease-it is no standardized as to make for perfect legibility and absolute accuracy. Notes years old may be read as easily as when fresh.

Everybody needs K. I. Shorthand-those in business and the professions for their personal ready use-as well as regular stenographers. It is the greatest time-saver compared to the amount of effort and insignificant cost necessary to acquire it. It will permit you to record precious ideas instantly. It will do your remembering for you and develop your all-'round efficiency tremendously.

Thousands have learned K. I. Shorthand who never dreamed they could master the old, complicated systems.

If you are going to be a stenographer, learn K. I. Shorthand because it will fit you for practical work far ahead of old systems. Learn it because you will give greater satisfaction to your employer by transcribing all dictation perfectly, no matter how complex.

Lowest in Cost

Do you know anything about shorthand? Well, then you know that what makes old systems hard to learn is the maze of special rules-positions above, below and on the line-light and heavy shadings, etc. They cause mental friction and retard speed; therefore they do not exist in K. 1. Shorthand.

You learn in your own home by our mail tuition course. You wil have all the personal help of our instruction staff that you need. We are not content to let you shift for yourself after you receive the lessons. When your stenographic competency is established- we award you a recognized Certificate of Proficiency.

Personal Tuition.-In the K. I. Shorthand System you are obtaining far more than a set of lesson books; you have the valuable aid of correspondence tuition in acquiring speed with accuracy and in adapting the principles to your particular vocation.

LEARN WITHOUT COST.-You may learn the en-tire K. 1. Shorthand System without paying a cent of your money. The coupon will bring you the simple plan.

K. I. Shorthand is offered on the most liberal terms right now. Do not miss this opportunity. Send immediately for the first two lessons free. You may then continue the entire course on a month'sapproval. Do not send money. We give you a positive guarantee that you can learn, or no cost to you. King Institute is incorporated in New York State, $100,000 authorized capital.

King

Institute, Inc.

1.54 East 32d Street,

Now York, N.Y.

of 8 S. Wabash Avenue,

Chicago, III.

Please send me, FREE, the

first lessons in K. I. Shorthand,

Also full Information.

LESSONS-Cut out and mail the coupon, or writet asking for free lessons, complete information anti many more convincing testimonials. Be sure to mention Liberator. Address the nearer office.

gmlnstih,uei

154 East 32d Street, 8 S. Wabash Avenue, New York, N. Y.   Chicago, Ill.