FREE TRADE

means

1.  International Justice and Freedom

2.  Removal of Economic Incentive for Imperialism

3.  Security for Small Nations

4.  Disposal of Colonial Questions

5.  Only Secure Foundation for League of Nations

6.  End of Militarism

7.  Economic Peace

8.  Increased Production

9.  Cheaper Distribution

10.  Lower Cost of Living

11. Worldwide Prosperity

12. Permanent Peace

To have International Free Trade incorporated in the Peace Treaty as repeat. edly recommended by (1) President Wilson, (2) the British Labor Party, (3) the German Reichstag, (4) the Russian People's Government, and (5) Socialists everywhere   requires publicity and an aroused public opinion.

If you want to help do this, send $1.00 for annual membership (including publications of the League) and as large a contribution as you can afford, to

INTERNATIONAL FREE TRADE LEAGUE 38 St. Botolph Street   BOSTON, MASS.

r

January, 1919   3

Amarillo, Texas.
November 20, 1918.

O THE LIBERATOR-Greeting!

Dear Comrades, can you give ear to

one more tale of woe?

I am a public school teacher who has served for some fifteen years. Have been a Socialist party member since 1911. Came to the Texas Panhandle last fall to correct a tendency toward pulmonary trouble.

On the 3rd of last June I was arrested for " disloyalty " under the Espionage Act, and was 'held four and a half months on $IO,ooo bond. All my friends live out at the Pacific Coast. I am a stranger here and it was impossible to make the bond.

I was tried in Federal Court October 16th,with the usual prejudiced judge, "paytriotic " jury and perjured evidence. Also the usual result, viz: conviction and sentence to five years in the McAlester Prison, at McAlester, Oklahoma. Southern jails are awful. The heat is excessive, food bad, and no friends could reach me. I was held two months non-communicado, and in solitary confinement. I could not even send out to buy a cooling drink. The door of solid wood never opened save at " feeding time," 9.30 A. M. and 3.30 P. M. The sun came in through the west window and made the stone floor so hot that when I poured water on to cool it off it steamed like the top of a hot stove.

I am a physical wreck, and I fear that further confinement will not improve me.

We are appealing to the higher court and hope to reverse the decision already rendered. If this fails we shall try for pardon.

I hope that I may receive many Ietters from comrades and sympathizers every-where, for letters are a great help to any prisoner. They bear great influence in his favor for release on parole or pardon, to say nothing of the encouragement they are to him in his lonely vigil.

Before this letter reaches you I shall be committed to McAlester Prison. I ask you to give notice of my disaster through the LIBERATOR, if you can, and help me tb live through my ordeal if possible.

I am brave enough, but I do need encouragement and reassurance sometimes.

We need money and influence. I hope for friendly letters, and will answer all I can.

Very truly yours, for Liberty and justice under the New Democracy,

FLORA I. FOREMAN.

Box 398, McAlester, Oklahoma.

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THE LIBERATOR

Vol. 1, No. 11   January, 1919

EDITORIALS

PEOPLE of tender heart are disposed to support " moderate " governments in the revolutionary countries in order to " prevent unnecessary bloodshed." Nothing could be more cruel than their short-sightedness. The idea of a republic of free labor, without a capitalistic class, is firmly and permanently established in the world. The experiment begun, nothing but perpetual forcible repression can stop it until it is carried through to the end. The " moderate " governments will either deny freedom of speech and action to thorough revolutionists, or the revolutionists, teaching the truth, will sweep them from power. In the first case tyranny, riot and class wars will take the place of the old peace of political freedom; bloodshed will be spread out over the century. In the second case a period of enormous disorder and apparent chaos will be passed through, but the new peace of industrial freedom will emerge steadily and surely, and the twentieth century will see the beginning of the kingdom of man.

These are the alternatives between which idealists must choose. And for us, we choose the path of tenderness and far-sighted understanding, even though it must lead through a long period of economic disorder, and relaxation of the boast of efficiency. We would rather live in a poor and seriously troubled world, men earnestly striving shoulder to shoulder to build up toward prosperity a republic of free labor, than to live in a world in which the rich are still rich, the poor are poor, and efficiency is maintained by starving and shooting down strikers and military rebels, and throwing into prison men and women who will insist upon voicing the true ideal. We choose the path of revolutionary reconstruction.

As first steps of importance, we make five immediate demands of our government.

The Right to Speak

W E demand that the right of free speech, free press, and assemblage, as they existed in the days of Thomas Jefferson, be restored to the American people without further delay. The President has formally announced to us that the war is over, " all that we fought for has been accomplished." No excuse then remains for patriotic societies to continue exercising the powers of policemen, for the Post Office to deny the mailing privilege to socialist magazines, for cities to pass ordinances penalizing the display of the red flag, for indiscriminate arrests, jailings and prosecutions

against men who wish to bring the United States forward into her true place in the march of the nations toward liberty.

The Right to Know

S ECOND, we demand that the American people have direct access to the sources of information. We do not want our knowledge of current events strained through the brain of George Creel any longer. And we say this, not merely because George Creel has proved himself an erratic and unreliable fictionary journalist, but because even if he were the wisest man on earth it would endanger the rights of the people to have any official of the Government placed in a position of control or paramount influence over the sources of information and the avenues of publicity. George Creel announces that he has gone to Paris in order to " advertise American ideals " to the world. We deny George Creel the right to determine what American ideals are, and in the name of American ideals we demand that George Creel's bureau be abolished.

Liberation of Prisoners

T BIRD, we demand that with the termination of the war all the political and industrial prisoners, who are held in this country under sentences that remind us of the beginnings of the terror of Nero and the Spanish Inquisition, be set free.

We demand that Torn Mooney be set free.

We demand that Eugene Debs be set free.

We demand that all the boys in the I. W. W. be set free. We demand that the Conscientious Objectors be set free. We demand that Emma Goldman and Alexander Berk-

man be set free.

We demand that when this war ends no man or woman shall be left lying in prison in the United States for publicly expressing and remaining true to his sincere convictions.

There is information that the President has already privately promised a general amnesty for war prisoners. We urge the Civil Liberties Bureau to prepare immediately a complete list and classification of all such prisoners, not only those named above but those symbolized by these names, with an adequate account of their offense against law if it existed, and distribute this list to every liberal, radical and revolutionist in the country. By the time the President returns, this list and classification should be so familiar to all those who care, that any discriminations he may choose to

6   THE LIBERATOR

make will be definite discriminations, so understood, and not acquiesced in as the accidental oversights of one preoccupied with graver problems. There are no graver problems.

Hands off Russia

F OURTH, we demand that our soldiers and sailors be withdrawn immediately from the sovereign territories of the Russian Republic. We demand that the United States forces shall not in any emergency be used for the policing of foreign countries. And we make this demand under the constitution. Since an armistice for the purpose of peace was concluded with the Central Empires, there is no doubt left that every foot of advance that our soldiers make into the territory of Russia is a violation of the United States Constitution. We want no wars conducted without a declaration of war by the representatives of the people. And we want no counter-revolutionary wars conducted.

An End of Organized Libel

FIFTH, we demand that the official suppression of truth, and the semi-official manufacture of lies about the Soviet Government and its elected leaders, by which it is at-tempted to justify counter-revolutionary war, shall cease.

In the United States a capitalistic government is making the working-class behave and we call that " Maintaining Law and Order." In Russia a working-class government is making the capitalists behave and we call that a " Reign of Terror." That is the truth for those who have the will to know it. In America Tom Mooney has been sent to jail for life after a commission of impartial investigators appointed by the President declared that he was unjustly condemned. And on almost the same day the murderers and kidnappers of the copper trust, who shot up and deported 1500 workingmen from Bisbee, Arizona, and dumped them into the desert, have been set free for life, after an impartial commission appointed by the President practically declared that they were guilty.

In Russia the agents of the Copper Trust who are guilty but capitalists would be punished, and Tom Mooney who is innocent but a working man would go free.

St. Bartholomew's Eve

W E are informed by a representative of the Associated Press recently returned from Moscow that 58 per cent of the despatches he sent out from that city were sup-pressed by the British Government. We know how much of the important truth from a working-class point of view it is customary for the Associated Press to send out, and if 58 per cent even of what they send out is suppressed before it reaches these shores, and then the rest is blue-penciled and distorted by our own censors and headline writers, we can infer that the amount which reaches us of what we would like to know about Russia, is practically not one single word.

The great movement for the modern and free education of all the Russian people under one of the most cultivated

and idealistic scholars in the world, A. V. Lunarcharskyand cooperating with him a man whose tender human love and intellectual force and integrity have been almost the highest glory of European letters-Maxim Gorky-we hear, little of that,

We hear little of the great works of proletarian art, the working-people's theaters, and the provisions for popular recreation and hygiene, and the care of the health and training of young children that were one of the first undertakings of the Soviet Government.

We are told that the Bolsheviki do not represent a majority of the Russian people, but we never see printed the true story of the elections that were held under the eyes of the Allied generals at Vladivostok, when the Bolsheviki were re-turned to power with more votes than all of the sixteen other parties put together-and this although their leaders were slain or imprisoned, the Soviets destroyed, and their press abolished. We are not told that the war for democracy in Siberia began by declaring that election void, and establishing a military government of Vladivostok in its place.

We are told that the Bolsheviki are dishonorable robbers because they repudiated the Russian national debt-a debt which represented very largely the moneys that were loaned to the Czar by England and France for the purpose of putting down the revolution of 1905. But we are not told that subsequently the Bolsheviki promised to guarantee against loss the poor people and peasants of France who had invested their savings in that Russian debt. And we are not told that after that they even offered to make some compromise with the great powers, which would stabilize the finances of the world and prevent a serious break-down of international credit.

We were told last month that the Soviet Government was planning a new massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve, and that on November loth all of the Bourgeoisie and the children of the Bourgeoisie were going to be slaughtered to feed blood and bones to these monsters of the new religion of Bolshevism. This amazing news despatch was flared all over the front pages of our papers in New York. And then St. Bartholomew's Eve came, and a despatch arrived stating that the Bolsheviki had taken that occasion to release all political prisoners except those whose continued imprisonment is absolutely indispensable to guarantee the safety of Bolsheviki who have fallen into the hands of the enemy. And was that despatch flared on the front pages where the lie had been? It was not published at all, except on the in-side of one newspaper with a small headline in a paragraph one inch high.*

And in the very issue of the New York World that con-

" Since this editorial was written, I have learned the exact truth of the matter as follows: Zinovieff, the president of the Petrograd Soviet, in a heated speech, made the threat of a general execution on St. Bartholomew's Eve. He did not seriously consider such a thing either advisable or possible. In view of the indiscretion of his speech, however, he was requested by Lenin to resign. He did resign, and A. V. Lunarcharsky, celebrated as a humanitarian, was elected in his place. Lunarcharski's post in the Cabinet as People's Commissar of Education was given to Maxim Gorki. This is the truth. Were we not entitled to know?

January, 1919   7

tained that despatch, there was another despatch from our own sovereign state of Alabama, which I quote:

" Sheffield, Ala., Nov. lo.-William Bird, a negro was taken from the jail here tonight by a mob of about too men and hanged. Bird was captured and placed in jail this afternoon after a running fight with officers following a disturbance he was said to have created in the lower section of Sheffield."

In Russia on St. Bartholomew's Day they restorer'. to liberty men who had been convicted of plotting the over-throw of the government. In America we took out of jail and murdered without trial a man who " was said to have created a disturbance."

It would not be honest to cite this contrast merely because of the accidental coincidence of the dates, if it were not a statistical fact that we so hang, burn or torture to death one American citizen in every four days. And though I have not the figures, there is little doubt that we execute three or four times that number after due process of law, and we shoot down in strikes probably almost as many more. So that if any correspondent chose to see nothing of what is good in this country and all of what is bad, he could easily portray it as a hell on earth, as indeed I fear some of its more unlucky emigrants do.

We now know from the official report of Boris Litvinoff that the number of political prisoners executed by the Soviet Government in Moscow is 240. The number is said to have been greater in Petrograd because of a conflict of authority there which divided the sense of responsibility. We do not know the number in Petrograd, but upon the basis of the important figures we have we are able to assert that no revolution, involving a fundamental change of sovereignty, ever before in the history of the world, has been so merciful of counter-revolutionists as that. And if 240 is the number that have been officially executed since our armies invaded Russia with the purpose of stirring up conspiracies to overthrow the Soviet Government, we are able to assert further that in all probability if our armies had stayed out of Russia and left the Soviet Government alone, the number executed for conspiracy would have been hardly one. For if there is any single thing historically sure in this matter it is that whatever reign of terror exists in Russia today, and whatever extreme measures may have been taken by the Russian Government to protect itself against crimes of sedition, are the direct inevitable result of the Allied invasion of Russia, the military and moral support given to those crimes of sedition by the Allied governments.

It is our chief duty as socialists of the United States, at every meeting we hold and in every paper we publish, to stand up and say that the whole story of Russian affairs as it has been fed into the minds of the American people is a conspiracy and a lie. With all the sincerity of our hearts, and our most sober and deliberate judgment concurring, we believe, and we continue to believe, that there is growing into maturity in that country the most just and wise and humane and democratic government that ever existed in the

world. And he head of that government, Nicolai Lenin, is one of the supreme statesmen of history.

Significant

WE were worrying a little for fear the German republic, with Scheidemann and Solf and Erzberger in it, would not be radical enough to recognize the Bolsheviki. We were waiting for dispatches that would reassure us. And the first dispatch that came informed us that the German republic had sent to Moscow an sager and imperious demand that the Bolsheviki should recognize them!

That tells us who is in power with the people.

And Germany.

WITH a precision that should drive conviction into the

WITH most sceptical minds, and even into those debauched with erudition, we see the prophecies of Karl Marx fulfilling themselves in Germany as they did in Russia. The power is in the workmen's councils. The political government becomes more and more but a figure and a puppet. The Constituent Assembly is demanded and postponed, demanded and postponed. And when it assembles, if it does, it will be but a figure and a puppet too, the expression in politics of an economic system whose day is past. The power is in the workmen's councils. The sovereignty belongs to the working-class, the future to them. Only the direst conspiracy of men and events can alter that, or ever send Germany back into the blind misery of the rule of capital.

All hail to Karl Liebknecht who clearly and courageously understands !

MAX EASTMAN.

THE LIBERATOR

A Journal of Revolutionary Progress

Editors, Max Eastman Crystal Eastman

Associate Editor, Floyd Dell Business Manager, Margaret Lane

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8

A Letter to AmerieanWorkingmen

By Nikolai Lenin

[T his is the first direct word that has come to the American people from Nikolai Lenin since he became the recognised leader of the proletarian world. Early efforts to get it past the censor-ship lines evidently failed. It arrived in New York just as this issue was going to press. Certain passliges have been omitted in deference to the extremely literal interpretation of the Espionage law, but the heart of Lenin's message is here.]

Moscow, August 20, 1918.

(mOMRADES : A Russian Bolshevik who par-

ticipated in the revolution of 1905 and for many years afterward lived in your country has offered to transmit this letter to you. I have grasped this opportunity joyfully, for the revolutionary proletariat of America-in so far as it is the enemy of American imperialism-is destined to perform an important task at this time. . . .

Had the Anglo-French and American bourgeoisie accepted the Soviet invitation to participate in peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk, instead of leaving Russia to the mercy of brutal Germany, a just peace without annexations and indemnities, a peace based upon complete equality could have been forded upon Germany, and millions of lives might have been saved. Because they hoped to re-establish the East-ern Front by once more drawing us into the whirl-pool of warfare, they refused to attend peace negotiations and gave Germany a free hand to cram its shameful terms down the throat of the Russian people. It lay in the power of the Allied countries to make the Brest-Litovsk negotiations the forerunner of a general peace. It ill becomes them to throw the blame for the Russo-German peace upon our shoulders! . . .

The workers of the whole world, in whatever country they may live, rejoice with us and sympathize with us, applaud us for having burst the iron ring of imperialistic agreements and treaties, for having dreaded no sacrifice, however great, to free ourselves, for having established ourselves as a socialist republic, even so rent asunder and plundered by German imperialists, for having raised the banner of peace, the banner of Socialism over the world. What wonder that we are hated by the capitalist class the world over! But this hatred of imperialism and the sympathy of the class-conscious workers of all countries give us assurance of the righteousness of our cause.

He is no Socialist who cannot understand that one cannot and must not hesitate to bring even that greatest of sacrifices, the sacrifice of territory,' that one must be ready to accept even military defeat at the hands of imperialism, in the interests of victory over the bourgeoisie, in the interests of a transfer of power to the working-class. For the sake of " their " cause, that is for the conquest of world-power, the imperialists of England and Germany have not hesitated to ruin a whole row of nations, from Belgium to Servia to Palestine to Mesopotamia. Shall we then hesitate to act in the name of the liberation of the workers of the world from the yoke of capitalism, in the name of a general honor-able peace; shall we wait until we can find a way that entails no sacrifice; shall we be afraid to begin the fight until an easy victory is assured; shall we place the integrity and safety of this " fatherland " created by the bourgeoisie over the interests of the international socialist revolution? . . .

The great Russian revolutionist, Tchernychewski, once said: Political activity is not as smooth as the pavement of the Newski Prospect. He is no revolutionist who would have the revolution of the proletariat only under the " condition " that it proceed smoothly and in an orderly manner, that the proletarians of all countries immediately go into action, that guarantees against defeat he given beforehand, that the revolution go forward along the broad, free, straight path to victory, that there shall not be here and there the heaviest sacrifices, that we shall not have to lie in wait in besieged fortresses, shall not have to climb up along the narrowest paths, the most impassable, winding, dangerous mountain roads. He is no revolutionist, he has not yet freed himself from the pedantry of bourgeois intellectuaI-ism, he will fall back, again and again, into the camp of the counter-revolutionary borgeoisie.

They are little more than imitators of the bourgeoisie, these gentlemen who delight in holding up to us the " chaos " of the revolution, the " destruction " of industry, the unemployment, the lack of food. Can there be anything more hypocritical than such accusations from people who greeted and sup-ported the imperialistic war and made common cause with Kerensky when he Lontinued the war? Is not

January, 1919   9

this imperialistic war the cause of all our misfortune? The revolution that was born by the war must necessarily go on through the terrible difficulties and sufferings that war created, through this heritage of destruction and reactionary mass murder. To accuse us of " destruction " of industries and " terror " is hypocrisy or clumsy pedantry, and shows an incapability of understanding the most elemental fundamentals of the raging, climactic force of the class struggle called revolution.

In words our accusers " recognize " this kind of class struggle, in deeds they revert again and again to the middle-class utopia of " class-harmony " and the mutual " interdependence " of classes upon one another. In reality the class struggle in revolutionary times has always inevitably taken on the form of civil war, and civil war is unthinkable without the worst kind of destruction, without terror and limitations of the form of democracy in the interests of the war. One must be a sickly sentimentalist not to be able to see, to understand and appreciate this necessity. Only the Tchechow type of the lifeless " Man in the Box " can denounce the revolution for this reason instead of throwing himself into the fight with the whole vehemence and decision of his soul at a moment when history demands that the highest problems of humanity e solved by struggle and war.

The best representatives of the American proletariat-those representatives who have repeatedly given expression of their full solidarity with us, the Bolsheviki-are the expression of this. revolutionary tradition in the life of the American people. This tradition originated in the war of liberation against the English in the Eighteenth and the civil war in the Nineteenth Century. Industry and commerce in 187o were in a much worse position than in r 86o. But where can you find an American so pedantic, so absolutely idiotic as to deny the revolutionary and progressive significance of the American civil war of 186o-1865?

The representatives of the bourgeoisie understand very well that the overthrow of slavery was well worth the three years of civil war, the depth of destruction, devastation and terror that were its accompaniment. But these same gentlemen and the reform socialists who have allowed themselves to be cowed by the bourgeoisie and tremble at the thought of a revolution, cannot, nay, will not, see the necessity and righteousness of a civil war in Russia, though it is faring a far greater task, the work of abolishing capitalist wage-slavery and overthrowing the rule of the bourgeoisie.

The American working-class will not follow the lead of its bourgeoisie. It will go with us against the bourgeoisie. The whole history of the American people gives me this confidence, this conviction. I recall with pride the words of one of the best loved leaders of the American proletariat, Eugene V. Debs, who in the flppeal to Reason at the end of 1915= when it was still a socialist paper, in an article entitled " Why Should I Fight? " said

* * * * * I am not surprised that this fearless man was thrown into prison by the American bourgeoisie. Let them assault the true internationalists, the real representatives of the revolutionary proletariat. The greater the bitterness and brutality they sow, the nearer is the day of the victorious proletarian revolution.

We are accused of having brought devastation upon Russia. Who is it that makes these accusations? The train-bearers of the bourgeoisie, of that same bourgeoisie that almost completely destroyed the culture of Europe, that has dragged the whole continent back to barbarism, that has brought hunger and destruction to the world. This bourgeoisie now demands that we find a different basis for our revolution than that of destruction, that we shall not build it up upon the ruins of war, with human _ beings degraded and brutalized by years of warfare. O, how human, how just is this bourgeoisie! '

Its servants charge us with the use of terroristic methods. . . . Have the English forgotten their 1649, the French their 1793? Terror was just and justified when it was employed by the bourgeoisie for its own purposes against feudal domination. But terror becomes criminal when working-men and poverty stricken peasants dare to use it against the bourgeoisie. Terror was just and justified when it was used to put one exploiting minority in the place of another. But terror becomes horrible and criminal when it is used to abolish all exploiting minorities, when-it is employed in the cause of the actual majority, in the cause of the proletariat and the semi-proletariat, of the working-class and the poor peasantry.

The bourgeoisie of international imperialism has succeeded in slaughtering to millions, in crippling 20 millions in its war. Should our war, the war of the oppressed and the exploited, against oppressors and exploiters cost a half or a whole mil-

t

to   THE LIBERATOR

lion victims in all countries, the bourgeoisie would still maintain that the victims of the world war died a righteous death, that those of the civil war were sacrificed for a criminal cause.

But the proletariat, even now, in the midst of the horrors of war, is learning the great truth that all revolutions teach, the truth that has been handed down to us by our best teachers, the founders of modern Socialism. From them we have learned that a successful revolution is inconceivable unless it breaks the resistance of the exploiting class. When the workers and the laboring peasants took hold of the powers of state, it became our duty to quell the resistance of the exploiting class. We are proud that we have done it, that we are doing it. We only regret that we did not do it at the beginning, with sufficient firmness and decision.

We realize that the mad resistance of the bourgeoisie against the socialist revolution in all countries is unavoidable. We know too, that with the development of this revolution, this resistance will grow. But the proletariat will break down this resistance and in the course of its struggle against the bourgeoisie the proletariat will finally become ripe for victory and power.

Let the corrupt bourgeois press trumpet every mistake that is made by our revolution out into the world. We are not afraid of our mistakes. The beginning of the revolution has not sanctified humanity. It is not to be expected that the working class which has been exploited and forcibly held down by the clutches of want, of ignorance and degradation for centuries should conduct its revolution without mistakes. The dead body of bourgeois society can-not simply be put into a coffin and buried. It rots in our midst, poisons the air we breath, pollutes our lives, clings to the new, the fresh, the living with a thousand threads and tendrils of old customs, of death and decay.

But for every hundred of our mistakes that are heralded into the world by the bourgeoisie and its sycophants, there are ten thousand great deeds of heroism, greater and more heroic because they seem so simple and unpretentious, because they take place in the every-day life of the factory districts or in secluded villages, because they are the deeds of people who are not in the habit of proclaiming their every success to the world, who have no opportunity to do so.

But even if the contrary were true-I know, of course. that this is not so-but even if we had committed to,ooo mistakes to every too wise and right-

eous deeds, yes, even then our revolution would be great and invincible. And it will go down in the history of the world as triumphant. For the first time in the history of the world not the minority, not alone the rich and the educated, but the real masses, the huge majority of the working-class itself, are building up a new world, are deciding the most difficult questions of social organization out of their own experience.

Every mistake that is made in this work, in this honestly conscientious co-operation of ten million plain workingmen and peasants in the re-creation of their entire lives-every such mistake is worth thous-ands and millions of " faultless " successes of the exploiting minority in outwitting and taking advantage of the laboring masses. For only through these mistakes can the workers and peasants learn to organize their new existence, to get along with-out the capitalist class. Only thus will they be able to blaze their way through thousands of hindrances to victorious socialism.

Mistakes are being made by our peasants who, at one stroke, in the night from October 25 to October 26 (Russian calendar), 1917, did away with all private ownership of land, and are now struggling, from month to month, under the greatest difficulties, to correct their own mistakes, trying to solve in practice the most difficult problems of organizing a new social state, fighting against profiteers to secure the possession of the land for the worker instead of for the speculator, to carry on agricultural production under a system of communist farming on a large scale.

Mistakes are being made by our workmen in their revolutionary activity, who, in a few short months, have placed practically all of the larger factories and works under state ownership, and are now learning, from day to day, under the greatest difficulties, to conduct the management of entire industries, to reorganize industries already organized, to over-come the deadly resistance of laziness and middle-class reaction and egotism. Stone upon stone they are building the foundation for a new social community, the self-discipline of labor, the new rule of the labor organizations of the working-class over their members.

Mistakes are being made in their revolutionary activity by the Soviets which were first created in I905 by the gigantic upheaval of the masses. The Workmen's and Peasants' Soviets are a new type of state, a new highest form of democracy, a particular form of the dictatorship of the proletariat,

January, 1919   11

a mode of conducting the business of the state with-out the bourgeoisie and against the bourgeoisie. For the first time democracy is placed at the service of the masses, of the workers, and ceases to be democracy for the rich, as it is, in the last analysis, in all capitalist, yes, in all democratic republics. For the first time the masses of the people, in a nation of many hundred millions, are fulfilling the task of realizing the dictatorship of the proletariat and the semi-proletariat, without which socialism is not to be thought of.

Let incurable pedants, crammed full of bourgeois democratic and parliamentary prejudices, shake their heads gravely over our Soviets, let them deplore the fact that we have no direct elections. These people have forgotten nothing, have learned nothing in the great upheaval of 1914-1918. the combination of the dictatorship of the proletariat with the new democracy of the proletariat, of civil war with the widest application of the masses to political problems, such a combination cannot be achieved in a day, cannot be forced into the battered modes of formal parliamentary democratism. In the Soviet Republic there arises before us a new world, the world of Socialism. Such a world can-not be materialized as if by magic, complete in every detail, as Minerva sprang from Jupiter's head.

While the old bourgeois democratic constitutions, for instance, 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 hive placed them at the disposal of the work-men and peasants for meeting and organization purposes. That is how our right of assemblage looks --for the workers. That is the meaning and con-tent of our Soviet, of our socialist constitution.

And for this reason we are all firmly convinced that the Soviet Republic, whatever misfortune may still lie in store for it, is unconquerable.

It is unconquerable because every blow that comes from the powers of madly raging imperialism, every

new attack by the international bourgeoisie will bring new, and hitherto unaffected strata of workingmen and peasants into the fight, will educate them at the cost of the greatest sacrifice, making them hard as steel, awakening a new heroism in the masses.

We know that it may take a long time before help can come from you, comrades, American Working-men, for the development of the revolution in the different countries proceeds along various paths, with varying rapidity (how should it be other-wise!). We know full well that the outbreak of the European proletarian revolution may take many weeks to come, quickly as it is ripening in these days. We are counting on the inevitability of the international revolution. But that does not mean that we count upon its coming at some definite, nearby date. We have experienced two great revolutions in our own country, that of 1905 and that of 1917, and we know that revolutions can come neither at a word of command nor according to prearranged plans. We know that circumstances alone have pushed us, the proletariat of Russia, forward, that we have reached this new stage in the social life of the world not because of our superiority but be-cause of the peculiarly reactionary character of Russia. But until the outbreak of the international revolution, revolutions in individual countries may still meet with a number of serious setbacks and overthrows.

And yet we are certain that we are invincible, for humanity will not emerge from this imperialistic massacre broken in spirit, it will triumph. Ours was the first country to break the chains of imperialistic warfare. We broke them with the greatest sacrifice, but they are broken. We stand outside of imperialistic duties and considerations, we have raised the banner of the fight for the complete overthrow of imperialism for the world.

We are in a beleaguered fortress, so long as no other international socialist revolution comes to our assistance with its armies. But these armies exist, they are stronger than ours, they grow, they strive, they become more invincible the longer imperialism with its brutalities continues. Working-men the world over are breaking with their betrayers, with their Gompers and their Scheidemanns. Inevitably Iabor is approaching communistic Bolshevistic tactics, is preparing for the proletarian revolution that alone is capable of preserving culture and humanity from destruction. We are invincible. The proletarian Revolution is invincible.

12   THE LIBERATOR

Justice-lor Capitalists

The indicted officers and gunmen of the Arizona Copper Trust have been set free without-trial
after an impartial commission appointed by the President demanded their prosecution.

January, 1919

Justice for Working Men

Tom Mooney has been sent to prison for life after an impartial commission appointed by the President declared that he was unjustly condemned.

I3

14

.,

What Are You Doing Out There?"

T HIS magazine goes to two classes of readers: those who are in jail, and those who are out. This particular article is intended for the latter class. It is intended for those who wish to prove themselves friends of American freedom rather than those who have had it proved against them.

The relation between these two classes of people is embarrassingly like that in the old anecdote about Emerson and Thoreau. Thoreau refused to obey some law which he considered unjust, and was sent to jail, Emerson went to visit him. " What are you doing in here, Henry? " asked Emerson.

" What are you doing out there?" returned Thoreau grimly.

That is what the people who have gone to prison for the ideas in which we believe seem to be asking us now.

And the only self-respecting answer which we can give to this grim, silent challenge, is this: "We are working to get you out! "

That is our excuse, and we must see that it is a true one. We are voices to speak up for those whose voice has been silenced.

There are some silences that are more eloquent than speech. The newspapers were forbidden to print what 'Gene Debs said in court; but his silence echoes around the earth in the heart of workingmen. They know what he was not allowed to tell them; and they feel that it is true.

It would be wrong to think of this as an opportunity to do something for Debs; it is rather our opportunity to make ourselves worthy of what he has done for us.

There is nothing more important before the friends of American freedom at this moment than the task of effecting the release of the political prisoners who have been sent to jail during the war.

It is a task of some magnitude. For a year and a half our federal, state and municipal courts have been working overtime putting people in jail on the theory that their activities, or their opinions, or even their mere lack of patriotic belligerency, hindered the carrying on of the war. In many cases the defendants were obscure and powerless. Organizations which attempted to give them assistance and advice were hampered by government officials; their offices were raided, their files removed. Under these circumstances no complete record of the cases known to these organizations is at present available. Many cases of friendless and helpless people have been rushed through the courts without any publicity, and doubtless some of these have not yet come to light. The National Civil Liberties Bureau, however, has had re-ports of some 753 cases under federal, state and local laws, and estimates that more than 1,5oo people are now in jail, or under sentence, or awaiting trial under these laws.

One case, characteristic of many, is that of a school teacher,

Mrs. Flora I. Foreman, of Amarillo, Texas. A soldier was interested in a girl who failed to return his interest, saying that she was " no militarist." He wanted to know who had given her such ideas, and when he found that Mrs. Foreman had talked with her about militarism he had the teacher arrested. She vs as charged with refusing to contribute to the Red Cross, and with referring to President Wilson as " the school teacher in the White House," She was sentenced to five years in prison.*

Another case which illustrates the uses to which the war-time legislation easily lends itself is the arrest, ten days before the election, of Frank B. Hamilton, the Socialist mayor of Piqua, O., together with a city official, a councilman and three others, all Socialists. The charge, " obstructing the Liberty Loan," was based on statements made by spies in the pay of the "old gang " in the city council. The defend-ants are held under $1o,ooo bond, awaiting trial.

The armistice has not served to soften the execution of the Espionage Act. Within the last few weeks, in Auburn, N. Y., John Summerfield Randolph, a lineal descendant of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, was sentenced to ten years in prison for " cursing the government," and being a member of the I. W. W.

The Chicago I. W. W. trial has been only one of a number of persecutions in which the Espionage Act is being used in the attempt to stamp out this organization. In Wichita, Kan., thirty-four I. W. W. men who tried to organize the workers in the Kansas oil fields were jailed at instigation of Oil Trust officials in November, 1917, not indicted until last March, reindicted in September, and will not be tried until next March. In the meantime, one has died as a result of conditions in the jail, another has become insane, and two more are dying. The cells are unheated, unventilated, in total darkness except for a few seconds twice a day when food is shoved in.

In Sacramento. four out of sixty-seven imprisoned I. W. W. men have died in jail. They stand accused of conspiring against all the war measures passed by Congress from the declaration of war on. Among the overt acts charged are included telegrams to public officials protesting against jail conditions, and the receipt of letters from I W. W. prisoners in the Cook County jail; also circuculating an article reprinted from the Public! In other parts of the country some hundred and fifty I. W. W. members are being held awaiting trial.

But, even if it were true that the I. W. W. ideal of society constituted a hindrance to war-operations; even if it were true that the hundred I. W. W.'s who were tried in Chicago had opposed the draft; now that the war is over,

:qrs. Foreman's health has broken down in prison, and money is urgently needed for bail during appeal. Part of this hail has been raised, but $30o is still wanting. Contributions and correspondence sent in care of THE LIBERATOR will be forwarded.

January, 1919   15

must they remain in prison until 1928? And Kate Richards O'Hare, who said that militarism turned women into breeding animals   is she to go to prison for five years? Is Rose
Pastor Stokes to serve ten years for criticising the government in a letter to a newspaper? And Krafft in New Jersey and Bentall in Wisconsin, Socialists who made speeches on conscription-are they to set've out their five years? And all those others of whom we have barely heard-the Vermont preacher who got fifteen years for saying that a Christian ought not to fight; the man in Iowa who got twenty years for calling this a capitalist war, and the other man in the same state who got the same sentence for circulating a petition opposing the re-election of a congressman because he had voted for the draft; the girl in Seattle who got ten years for a letter criticizing the draft; the man in Vermont who got fifteen years for " disloyal remarks " made in private conversation; all those hundreds" whose sentences total some 120,000 years, and those other hundreds still to be sentenced -now that there is no draft to be obstructed by quotations from the Declaration of Independence, nor even any morale of bellicosity to be undermined by references to the sayings of Jesus of Nazareth, are they to serve their sentences, and emerge-if they do emerge-from prison along in 1925, 1930 or 1938, broken in health and in mind, into a world which has forgotten their existence?

It seems improbable. Yet it is easier to put people into jail than to get them out again. It has been the pious expectation of many "liberal " supporters of the war that a general amnesty for political prisoners would be proclaimed as soon as the war was over; and under the influence of this amiable notion they have seen without protest and without compunction the jailing, day after day and , month after month, of radicals, Pacifists, Socialists, I. W. W.'s. But prison is a grave which keeps a jealous hold upon all except bank-presidents. It will not easily yield up its war-victims. Precisely because they are radicals, because they are Socialists, Pacifists, I. W. `V.'s, there will be powerful influences at work to keep them right where they are; and if these elements have their way, they will rot there.

It is eminently desirable that we take advantage of the present situation to build up in the American public mind a conception of the difference between " political crime " and other crime. Political crime is simply the expression of the political will of repressed minorities or of oppressed majorities. Even when such expression takes the form of violence, it has a special dignity because of the intention, how-ever mistaken, with which it is performed. It has become the custom of civilized nations to anticipate to some extent the verdict of history upon such " criminals," and to distinguish, by more respectful treatment, between them and common law-breakers. Political crime, moreover, is generally crime only by definition; some ordinary and legal procedure has been denominated criminal in order that the group in

* Literature describing these cases can he obtained from the National Civil Liberties Bureau, 41 Union Square, N. Y. C., and the New York Bureau of Legal Advice, 118 East 28th Street, N. Y. C. Information about such cases should he communicated to these organizations.

power may pursue its plans without interference from those who disagree.

Our war-time legislation has served these purposes of medieval statecraft admirably-though not without putting in jeopardy the whole structure of our constitutional liberties. But if it really was " war-time " legislation, if it is not confessedly intended to serve the purposes of a capitalist peace, it is time now that its too-far-reaching results were swept away. The war is over; if the war was all they feared Debs might obstruct, they can let him go free. If it is some other plans which would proceed more smoothly with Debs, and the rest in jail, let us find it out now.

In addition to these political prisoners, there are some 280 conscientious objectors in Fort Leavenworth, and between fifty and a hundred others at various camps who are still awaiting sentence. These are the " absolute " objectors, who have refused to accept alternative service, or have been denied it, and who will therefore not be mustered out. Their sentences run from five to thirty years. They have been treated with incredible barbarity in camp, in gross violation of the administrative order which was supposed to secure proper treatment for them. Kicked, beaten with rifles, choked, starved, beaten with whips,* and made the victims of disgusting brutalities,f they have nevertheless remained firm in their convictions, only to be sent to a military prison, where still further tortures permitted by the military regulations are inflicted upon them.*

It is hard to speak of these men without paying them the tribute of admiration which such conduct as theirs must necessarily arouse in any lover of heroism. During the war the expression of such admiration laid one open to an indictment under the Espionage Act ; for the bureaucratic mind, which cannot understand heroism, is incapable of realizing that such courage cannot be created by pamphlets or speeches any more than it can be destroyed by curses and kicks. But if hearing the story of the conscientious objectors will not make the public feel disposed to emulate their conduct, it will nevertheless arouse in that public a just anger against the government which subjects them to such treatment; for though few of us have the stuff of martyrdom in our souls, we all have a sense of fair play. The whole story of the treatment of conscientious objectors is one which the government might well wish, for its own sake, to be left untold: and our bureaucracy will, if it is wise, see that the scandal is obliterated before it receives too much .publicity.

FLOYD DELL.

* Colonel Barnes, the Provost Marshal, called while some of the objectors were taking their enforced exercise. He ordered them to stand at ' Attention.' When they refused, he beat them vigorously with his heavy riding crop. Shotkin was badly hurt, the Colonel breaking his crop over the former's ankles. Fle deprecated the ruining of his stock." Report of Treatment of ,Conscientious Objectors at the Camp Fttnston (Kos.) Guard House.

t " We were marched to the latrine in a body. The Captain himself brought forth scrub brushes, used ordinarily for cleaning toilet seats, and brooms used for sweeping, and ordered that we scrub each other with them. Franklin refused to use the filthy brush. He was seized and roughly thrown to the floor, dragged back and forth and viciously be-labored until thoroughly exhausted. He was then placed under the cold spray and left there until he collapsed."-Satire.

t Manaclin to walls of cell was abolished by order of the Secretary of War on Dec. 6, but solitary confinement and the bread-and-water diet are still used-

16

THE LIBERATOR

How- Soviet Russia Conquered

Imperial Germany

By John Reed

1j ~~NOW that Imperial Germany is overthrown, we are told by the capitalist press of all countries that the Allied armies did it.

The pressure of superior Allied arms undoubtedly broke the power of the German offensive in the west, but that is all. Soviet Russia conquered Imperial Germany.

Two months ago our Government warned us that the war might last five years longer. At the very height of the German retreat, the Army and Navy Journal and the military experts of the New York Tribune and the London Times pointed out that the German armies were falling back in perfect order, according to well-worked-out strategic plans. When the Allied armies entered Lille they were not even in contact with the German rear-guard. Germany could 'have defended her frontiers almost indefinitely. . . .

It was not the Allied armies which broke the morale of the Central Powers, but something else, something internal. It is generally admitted that Germany had plenty of men, plenty of arms, and even food. . . . Why couldn't she answer Bulgaria's call for help? And Austria's? Because in Germany itself, in the heart of the greatest military ma-chine in history, was a more powerful enemy than the Allies-the Rising of the Proletariat.

The German Imperial Government, the German bourgeoisie, preferred surrender to the bourgeois nations of the west, who respect private property, to the Social Revolution. . . . Even now, as the Russian bourgeoisie before them, they are appealing to the Allies for help against their own Red working-class. . . .

In July, 1917, after three months of inaction, the Russian armies were ordered to advance in Galicia. During those three months there had been almost continuous fraternization on the Eastern front. The German armies were becoming demoralized-whole regiments refused to fire on the Russian lines, were reorganized, and many soldiers executed. There was alarm throughout Germany. But the Galician offensive broke the spell. Nothing could have been more welcome to the German High Command.

In Stockholm, in August, I saw a letter written by Rosa Luxemburg to a friend:

" So, you Russians have broken the peace! The
Russian Revolution was everything to us, too.
Everything in Germany was tottering, falling.
. . . For months the soldiers of the two armies
had fraternized, and our officers were powerless.
. Then suddenly, without a word of warn-

ing, the Russians fired on their German comrades! After that it was easy to convince the Germans that the Russian peace was a lie. Alas, my poor friends! Germany will destroy you now, and for us is black despair come again. . . ."

It was because of this that the German advance on Riga was so effective, although there had been no fighting in that sector since April. . . . When the Army Committee of the Twelfth Army evacuated the city, however, soldiers went about under bombardment, posting on all walls and open spaces this proclamation:

" German Soldiers!

" The Russian soldiers of the Twelfth Army draw your attention to the fact that you are carrying on a war for autocracy against Revolution, freedom and justice. The victory of Wilhelm will he death to democracy and freedom. We withdraw from Riga, but we know that the forces of the Revolution will ultimately prove themselves more powerful than the force of cannons. We know that in the long run your con-science will overcome everything, and that the German soldiers, with the Russian Revolutionary Army, will march to the victory of freedom. You are at present stronger than we are, but yours is only the victory of brute force. The moral force is on our side. History will tell that the German proletarians went against their revolutionary brothers, and that they forgot international working-class solidarity. This crime you can expiate only by one means. You must understand your own and at the same time the universal interests, and strain all your immense power against imperialism, and go hand in hand with us   toward life and liberty!"

A month later mutiny broke out on the German fleet at Kiel. The sailors of the Russian battleships in the Baltic, in convention assembled, sent this greeting:

" The revolutionary sailors of the Baltic Fleet

. send their brotherhood greetings to their heroic German comrades who have taken part in the insurrection at Kiel,.

" The Russian sailors are in complete possession of their battleships. The Sailors' Committees are the High Command. The yacht of the former Tsar, the ` Polar Star,' is now the headquarters

January; 1919   17

DIE FACKEL

(The Torch)

Organ of the Russian Revolu-

tionary Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Government.

Meant for general distribution among German brothers.

This issue contains a characteristic Christmas message to the German soldiers.

"MERRY CHRISTMAS,
SOLDIERS AND BROTHERS!"
it begins. To paraphrase roughly:

Another Christmas in the cold, damp, diseased, lonely trenches! For the fourth time the wicked policy of Capitalism in all lands inflicts such a Christmas upon the proletariat and peasantry of Europe.

Instead of resting peacefully to-night at home in the company of wife and child, the poor are condemned by the mad misrule of international capitalism to bring death and suffering on this holy night to their brothers. Instead of sitting with his dear ones at the Christmas feast, he is lying hungry in far-away trenches. For them, and for him, it is not much of a Christmas!

What is to blame for all this suffering? The robber-imperialism of all countries is to blame. Its secret diplomacy and intrigue have set the working classes of the world against each other.

Civilization is threatened with ruin if the war does not end. Yet the Capitalists and diplomats make no effort whatever to bring about peace.-And, after all, why should they bother about peace? They spend Christmas in their usual way. The war has made no difference to them except that it helps them to stuff their pockets. . .

Peace will come only by the efforts of the workers themselves. They should stop fighting each other, unite to realize their own ideals-and then it will be a Merry Christmas indeed!

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g°.I)r   tatb e=nbr~Ct ba lilett one 5a= gil siet fa ill ed. brtliarnit bait fari(ntad3tat   tii~{ic'lend cub fan3[ei[idjtr ffi4ctlw

uuselirure SFatalitott;e bxattf, [What fetne FIRM htneejcu.   .l'tibS1Il RfYeetjned~tar, t$arrterabul banntgeu it beelike. - 3[tt ftebl

ter stun nett m1143ri, seen rn fit Seep b r3 rile bra teittar at ,mS Sa cat,!!   alit 9tegienniben, AIL Rippe, ale

bide *a= nbjotut Petit ant beet tirb aldt bad   ket -:lira Inca   `l?arteien ties ffimpfrtbat S&rdia Re,

tjriebi - b$uye Vital fie lit¢ ou ebtr faith ttn ben alb= `jru.~as   -_.s~   amlvlgen, tat bit puid3itbet geftti[Se

bieft aijile gebca2 Eft, bit et' tide .einlleilat tat7c tlraug Ind bet   & tip, a6. lie donnlrj b.®e ftnik slit

The First Bolshevik International Propaganda Newspaper
Half a million copies of this newspaper were printed each day and smuggled into the

German trenches. This is one of a series of newspapers in various languages,

issued under the direction of a propaganda bureau with the object of creating

revolutions in Germany and 4ustria-Hungary.

18   THE LIBERATOR

   =iponeme~i: Oehxv canpaaev, ceeasR ,iamecb!

THE MASKS ARE OFF!

The leading editorial in this issue is a bitter denunciation, by Carl Radek, of German and Austrian imperialistic purposes as they were revealed in the Brest--Litovsk peace-terms.

On Christmas (he begins satirically), on the day on which the bells of peace ring out good tidings to mankind, the Governments of Germany, Austria and their Bulgarian and Turkish AIlies, announced their decision to cease hostilities. They recognized the right of all peoples to self-determination. The working-people's press in Germany, Austria and Russia hailed this decision as a ray of light piercing into the dark night of the war and showing the way to a general peace. For it was clear that if the German government would conclude a democratic peace with Russia, and stood ready to conclude a general peace on the same basis, the governments of England and France would not be able to go on with the war. The war-weary masses in those countries would compel the capitalists to end the war. A great hope arose in the heart of the proletariat of all lands: soon, they thought, the mass-murder will end!

But hardly a week passed, and the German and Austrian governments have let the masks fall from their faces. At one of the sittings of the conference, they handed to the Russian delegates peace-terms which show that all the German and Austrian promises regarding democratic peace are nothing but brazen lies.

The workers' and soldiers' government has no use for secret diplomacy, and herewith publishes the " peace-terms." Here they are-

(The articles of the Brest-Litovsk treaty) follow, with a scathing expose of their hypocrisy by Radek,)

MHpb flt1OOB

OprAHb 1CIEN( Y113p0ANafO Outin BCBpOCCiRCHal'O Re M. Hr CBBtTa Pa60411Xb, CO!!AaTeRlIn N HpOCTbANCHNXb 48ByIaTOBbe ltddlarr A AIR 6OeMA5srO 54CnpOCTPRROR(I rpeAtt Hi;pEly4MXb 9 Tbee1-6dA},t{rti. iz n ILIMJtbuBBO ueAti Pigallflfll HAPAA PAJIEHA.

Pralatatrikr idler finder, vereinigt ouch!

I~Iki,4thhi+

Orin der Infsrnafie~iea BDlefigs0 lea ltofrallmilaal defy   , SaEdsfsA- ~d Eaeersds[eiierfssrOfa.

Zia unef#geKltd)ti Oermreilpg8 1wtt7 d cc$eo   den' ballast.

rtrfddrt tlglld aaltt Itr Relettiir and stabelte,

C.•rlerupbyprb, 19-ra fiel!aepl   011R 911A) 1917 r.   7std 1.   SiriPetersburg, den 19. Dezember O. Tama) 19111.

Itloshtn bier fAib lie.

Si,esbritomak, am 27 Dee. 1917 En t it nrf. Artilcol 1

Aussiand tend Daolschland or-Irlii3ut die Besudietins dins lindens.

,necks. i;oido National Sind cat :chlocan, rarl;m in Friakn and rreundscbafl rusarumen to lobar.

Ikulseltland tvurde (ureter dim l'eurnussrin ung ~I,rr cuewla,ul zre mile" her rineiftic~ait grgenulrcr rci turf Bu desgm bests) bored sain sohvld dot Friars 'l ld..1mnd er-abinssen turd din Pamotril ;a

rung der russiselten Violin durrIcgnfiihrt IS, die jeogen 21eL. lungnec xind duns Ixseisle ressisclar Geiiet zit race n, solvcii skis niche nits deb bi.rtidtel 'l out An:lara ar 1•

Artikel 2

Da in itmjmigm Oeblabsibi rind mekhb die vorsrelrenden .Bcstisn' r nc „rmn Anlrtnbulg linden, die brags ilea Aflunarng nichf so loge, doss ,Liven geniis dun l ediaunlm gen IIts Art. 1 vo(9cn,HmrnCS< weft doe hoes, so monism Znirptm13 rail Blain r5rem den mach euc i charAul fa-s-wrg niugon Bekri(tigunp. ilia talon arlisgeadcn Lostmnnrmgsarble uugen ii bait oh! H'n4rsiurn :, of hrci~.cr Gnmd[age,•hei der pandrin milit;iriseher Druek in jades 1i'e-ise ausruscl,al isu 1st, des Ileaatnng and Festsok ung duals are beeonrimv tu:ttrnissian orbc-lualtcn

raisin bat.

Eton di? Zetstralm1cttle thin [ales, d;: ((Shaer tier 1199 Ihren br,cdrirn Gebiel; hiiilian s g lets 11th) frr Ace tit?:'tui ant von FOP land, d,,g- ul) der ialfii(l".:i i"r.

thr

p~nD grfallen.

~1m _3nlprmi~lag, nun `Sant, ba 5ie n3lladea ben arid7cit Riot nub bentrnhrn 7icnj cn brrri:nba.tcn, ere fldrrcn b:r Rep irrcngc! gr ljd;Ienb;I, L+efierreid;3 urb il1ee bvf3nxisdle, anb tiutild7ne Zlelallat i;lren 'b`eldllvG, bun jrbrt 01c1oa11'lunenhung abyu• jetlcn sir <lerranll!en bob iicd}I tine= jibrr[ Steers itber bag cigene C ci i• rill cnljr,ltibul. 12<r bcutj:: r. bftrrreib ijdte <nib rujjijdye 4irbeben brdje begrufltr biefetl I7ttfdllub her $entralinlidde alb. cittatt tiritfi!lirn l7h ha in bie burfle lilmt l l;r_ S'tirnet ts'tneulicudllcl, ben mien ,e cinrm aligeunsnelt ' rirbett grigt. Taal ea roar lint: bafili bit buddy bienierung anal rirrli:LLr:t beniofrnlt ctic:t 3riebclt mil glujflailb irblieben murbe nib

bie allg^-nteinen ~rrie= hear cull bccjelben CtlruttbIngc Tnnbeciren Ivdrbe, hill; bruin bit ill rgicco t-Eden rmtTreuhh crib lin001bl 1id)1

inn hi lent tvilrbcn ben Sting railer bit riit;ren.:~.it fri:gSntubear S:rbritexmajfrn bilge ~'linbet murben if)re SYm

pitnliftml ubrisen, Sdrirg gn beenben, dine ntufie yclrnintg ealfinnb in bar S7ctgan her S libntnfj ea tiler $anbcr: bulb luirb her 'Z'•iillormoeb tin d:ttbe nrl)ntrepn

Orr el bcrging Leine 96rcrr unb bie beutjdlr nub dia glaring lien bit rJ"jndtnt lariat

:3n

titter uerlxorlid;r`I Sibung 17anbi5te fie her rujiirdiat 3iridicnbbclegatian ilirr gricbenlibebinnunn-n chi, bie gel grit. boll 'fie bcttfiilc 'nib ilIlen reidiilrI, ilerl)eijsungrn ben berttnfrau tifdicr, 3rcieben8 cite t ibexidldntrc °flge firb, zit btrbcilar- nub StWairn= rrgierung 21itfllmtb3 nnerrelmt trine

fillies rSlt~itomntic, nub fie betoj-,:;:a'sl;te bicjc „l ricbenlinbingurt

Bas deutli e
„Sol bitbeftimrtuugsredt".

lint ban .2qulgmnd, bie Seringen, I)cit Meier „5lricbuiibcbingungcn" au ncrgeljrl, geniigt £d, fiii bnrnn gu cabman, air hie Eberrldyrllt ba ?nujd}at hi 'fiolat unb bditaucrt ma, huh , enter her jilt bra „fi,ulfstvilbe" biej t On: Able ratIgebriidl bal. ,311

Sacbdem die rssincbe Rect.., bet run but beuljdlen tntpperl be, rung emrspre<rirnnd 2h en crunde . i4rSt geLiiirn basl.b t bie brlnafne. Irk, far ally ins Verbande des res- de lysine 51ul birbeita luirb   net

Aeiches lt:xndeb 1'niker, nett gtrntGt chic tudb, .3egb ,,,n,,, c ~n Ass <limo tin his - ndo, nilierl, fie Incrbett geiengen, rind] viii ligea nraviaer,m_ e,•s'-~tda

21c.bsibealimmangbi,b:5 pr..ilu=~1: Neltr?l7Lanb v1i:4 1, in $abcifelt gux let, tie-nil sin Konntnis von hieing geiimut:grn, all Cdr n es; be, rnn Bes chiS seen, Icatin dot ilnitbelf Sir ilea Stint bex6leibenbell

VetLee-ille ansg edriitki i:; °.,ir5eiitrairffai tuerbcn miter   bcr
fret ?91s”, wail Ise Litau,,L veitei bet rtrrLr iridrn dlioct1t e

t:ur land= Teiln von Estl'.ai-   1   j )

and Livlaced die voile stan.U br Stmt zee 4ira:ilrcyrr1rc ruurbc iu= litho Selbstan dig boil in An- erfl unlex bie ldirvt,-jki 3enfur gettellt,

<fructc to nob men And nus

dons russiemiten Lieichaverbande a.ueeusahoidea

Trio russisahd t „tiennt m,iiassdArise KK un rig u_.gen. infer dint piigarseirtigen 1'erhii:nl'< son nisi A us rlrcvk dos Vol it. o illets anauschi,t rind, unit 1st be-mit, die bieruus xirh erccbendm: 1'ulgertuWar sa uehen.

beatfdlee Ll1cid72fn(f 11115 5catlrifdiat dtmbrag bast brutfrgea laliaSeerno tar tifcbal uetb Yniuildtrn bftt cr1lcI ere Zip gcnrbnctea bargefrot1t Lei wit Memo brlegl.

f 1 fe SA a f[y tiaf Fsi„ deem bet beulfdjart errirfit is Sur otfityiertrn giebieien heir Xx5rilrbi mailer gegenfrba. 'Ma bidfeidlt thine iii bit beutfdle 91rgitecrg auf bad pis-1aq to urb ditmtittii 512irgaltrrn?

litrttnbrt brawl gduen eintarbe Zatjadjert: bin bctrtfd)e blegirnrrrg bat tine Iatuifd)e llniberlitat tciiffnu itch etubte fie ji Bolen. lAie beutltir. Res giaung ea[Ife ealbalen in Smite crlrutieren tmb menhir hence nhfelten On, lie fail (iii galling! ben :2)riga■ bier ~tilfubfii, ben edj<picr ulna bentfdlec mtb ifterxeidhijdlex ielhmg rimblenberr Ccgianen au ber(lajtcn. lltur in Sihrlwrb 17,t bie hentjdje Yeglerung Clasen gel utbeu: In ben Der, (batten GLlaur,iljanS(ern, ben bemitt er,

baltifben cxa lien, tier Sc'1inbern ba Lcohjd7e:t bauern. `Viejo ?.enter jd7inber in 5Pudpnb Amnon niclie:U!t Gicj ittnun5t9rnoij etc bei nett Safi:;' jdlen 13antun, bie ii, littler 21110 la Gan, bell bie tujjijdle Rebblurlbri midi in ben golniidlen Irenbf4en %trfcie, dorm bit S'.uf! erardr.tt fiiisb, fired

3riiiliei be, rujlildicii i'lati ii   ,,n

lull's anb jidl rail bait S)t[ij _ ;Simla s,n befrcicn. Sod Ift, brig „`Sall", bellen Siitntne bie butter's

halm bniifurran_n wttabritd£.   ate nub dllerreirilildc Ei:ginru ig-aid trim
°[rbeiferiLiI our gin S71.1ttbeitcrn in bicifd;cibrtsf file hie tL;rjd;lrlr her yninl=

bcuijrbott .hnrgctdrarioriiinger   bee=• Iauc, €inn::ijd)ut itnb Lrltifd;ut idcbtb

fdpWpt, ter Ile tlftunntc fang bbbigrIt.it.

Tie S31ihpcrbcinailfrtd!lnnr:r bin Sir= beitrr e,,:ebut nr.:f liS l(ou5eloriR at:a= einaubeagejngl, mil iitrri nilrb -bat S+uugee bet lttnness utts Jreije ale= jinll, rSic5 ciie~ rvurbe bielrlldl fit

The Paper of "The People's Peace"
All secret treaties exposing the schemes of the German and Russian militaristic cliques

were published in this newspaper, which had an immense `r underground"

-

circulation in the German armies on the Eastern front.

January, 1919   19

of the Fleet Committee, which is composed of cornmon sailors, one from each ship.

" Since the Revolution, the Russian Fleet is as busy as formerly, but the Russian sailors will not use the fleet to fight then' brothers, but everywhere to fight under the Red Flag of the International for the freedom of the proletariat throughout the entire world."

The first act of the Bolshevik uprising in November was to order all company, regimental and army committees on the Russian front to begin fraternization with the Germans, and to conclude immediate temporary armistice treaties with the military units opposing them.

On the night of November 8th, in the Congress of Sov-

iets, Lenin read the Decree on Peace, part of which said:

Addressing this proposal for peace to the Governments and peoples of all the belligerent countries, the Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Governmentof Russia addresses itself also in .particular to the conscious workmen of the three most advanced nations of humanity and the greatest of the powers participating in the present war-England, France and Germany. The workers of these countries have rendered great service to the cause of progress and Socialism; the Chartist movement in England, the series of Revolutions carried out by the French proletariat, and lastly, the heroic struggle against the Laws of Exception in Germany, and the long, stubborn, disciplinary work of creating proletarian organizations in Germany, which ought to serve as a model for the whole world-all these models of proletarian heroism and historical creation are guarantees that the workers of the above-named countries will understand their duty, which is to deliver humanity from the horrors and results of war. These same workers, by their decisive and energetic action, will help us bring to a successful conclusion the fight for peace, and at the same time the liberation of all the working-classes from slavery and exploitation. . . ."

At the same time a proclamation to the German soldiers

was drawn up, printed in millions of copies, and not only

smuggled across the front but dropped from aeroplanes in-

side Germany. It begins:

" To the German Soldiers!

" SOLDIERS, BROTHERS!

" On October 25th (old style), the workmen and soldiers of St. Petersburg overthrew the imperialistic Government of Kerensky and placed the whole power in the hands of the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies. The new Government, under the name of the Council of People's Commissars, was confirmed by the All-Russian Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. Our program, to the execution of which the Government has immediately proceeded, consists

in a proposal of an immediate democratic peace, which has already been communicated to the belligerent nations and their Governments, in the transfer without compensation of all the land to the peasants for their use, and in the realization of Workers' Control over production and industry.

" We have taken all measures and will in the future leave none untried, in order that all the belligerent Governments and peoples shall be informed of the full content of our peace negotiations. In addition to the above-mentioned peace proposal, we consider it our duty to address ourselves particularly, to you, as representatives of a nation which is at the head of the coalition engaged in war against Russia on an extensive front.

" Soldiers, Brothers! We ask you to stand by Socialism with all your might in the struggle for immediate peace, as that is the only means to secure an equitable and permanent peace for the working-classes of all countries, and to heal the wounds which the present most criminal of all wars has inflicted on humanity. . . ."

This was followed by the " Appeal to the Toiling and Exploited Peoples of All Lands," and the texts of the Decree on Peace and the Decree on Land.

A proclamation printed for the Austrian trenches hailed Friedrich Adler, arrested for assassinating a reactionary Minister in Vienna, as the " Eagle " (adler) of the International Social Revolution.

The first week in November there was established in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs a Bureau of the Press, under Radek, and a Bureau of International Revolutionary Propaganda, in charge of.Boris Reinstein, of Buffalo, New York, in which for a short time I held a position in the English-speaking Section. 1 was succeeded by Albert Rhys Williams who, after the Brest-Litovsk treaty, became Commissar of the whole bureau, then disguised under the name of Bureau of Foreign Political Literature.

We immediately began publication of a series of daily propaganda newspapers. The first of these was in German, Die Fackel (The Torch), issued in editions of half a million a day, and sent by special train to the central Army Committees in Minsk, Kiev and other cities, which, in turn, by special automobiles, distributed them to different towns along the front, where a regularly-organized system of couriers brought their to the front trenches for distribution.

During the day time, at the official fraternization points, bundles of these pipers were ostentatiously carried; and they were always confiscated by the German officers. But at night the real work of distribution began. In isolated spots there were continually secret meetings, at which the bundles of propaganda literature were put into the hands of German soldiers. At other points Russian soldiers buried bundles of papers in places agreed upon, where they were dug up by the Germans.

After about a dozen numbers the name of Die Fackel was

20.   THE LIBERATOR

changed to Der T olkerfriede (The People's Peace). By this time we had daily papers in Hungarian, Bohemian, Roumanian (for the Transylvanian regiments) and Croatian. Williams and I also got out a weekly illustrated paper of four pages, for the simpler, less-educated German soldiers, called Die Russiche Revolution in Bildern (The Russian Revolution in Pictures). Each number contained twelve or fifteen photographs of revolutionary events, with a caption underneath of extremely elementary propaganda.

Under a scene wherein a workman is tearing the Imperial eagles from the roof of a palace, and the crowd is burning them :

On the roof of a palace, a workingman is tearing down the hateful emblem of autocracy. At the foot of the building the crowd is burning the eagles. The soldier is explaining to the crowd that the overthrow of autocracy is only the first step in the march of social revolution.

It is easy to overthrow autocracy. Autocracy rests on nothing but the blind obedience of soldiers.

The Russian soldiers merely opened their eyes, and autocracy disappeared.

For a photograph of soldiers meeting in a palace:

Socialists have often said, " Those who build the palaces should live in them! "

Here in Russia for the first time you can see workmen-soldiers, whose sweat and labor built the palace, whose blood was shed defending it, enjoying a palace as their home.

And under a picture of the German Embassy in Petrograd was this:

See the great banner. It is the word of a famous German. Was it Bismarck? Was it Hindenburg? No, it is the call of immortal Karl Marx to international brotherhood: " Proletarians of all lands, unite!"

Teaching Revolution by Pictures

January, 1919   21

This is not only a prettty decoration of the German Embassy. In all seriousness the Russian Workmen, Soldiers and Peasants have raised this banner, to you German people they hurl back the same words that your Karl Marx gave the whole world seventy years ago.

At last a real proletarian republic has been founded. But this republic cannot be secure until the workers of all lands conquer the power of government.

The Russian workers, peasants and soldiers will soon send a Socialist as ambassador to Berlin. When will Germany send an international socialist to this building of the German Embassy in Petrograd?

Emissaries were sent out to visit all the German prison-camps in Russia and Siberia, and encourage the formation of Socialist organizations. For this work there were men who spoke German, Hungarian, Roumanian, Polish, Yid-dish, Turkish, Croatian, Tcheko-Slovak and Bulgarian. The response was immediate. In Moscow, for example, ten thousand German and Austrian prisoners organized along Bolshevik lines and started an active propaganda among their countrymen. Newspapers for the prisoners, published

in their own languages, by their fellow-prisoners, started up all over Russia and Siberia. The money was furnished by the Soviet Government, and the whole work was con-trolled by the Bureau of War Prisoners attached to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, This work was so effective that when prisoners were returned to Austria and Germany they were confined for thirty days in " political quarantine camps," fed and treated well, and " educated " with Government promises, patriotic literature and Majority Social-Democratic propaganda.

Hundreds of thousands of these German prisoners and deserters applied for citizenship in the new Soviet Republic. Thousands enlisted in the Red Army; in fact, it was the German and Austrian prisoners who put up the only effective resistance to the Imperial German and Austrian armies marching into Russia after Brest-Litovsk. . . . On May Day, 1918, when Count von Mirbach, the German ambassador, was watching the Parade in Moscow, he was startled to see a company of German soldiers marching with the Soviet troops, under red banners with revolutionary inscriptions in their own language.

DpOEaTgpili Bctxb CTpa b COO HHR TeCb

COMLICTIatMITSPIlIZIMAXICT'k.

ECHrepCR I opraw

11aAarTC9 arts fieanaaTaaro paclfposrpafleHbl cprt3H Bei repcKiirt. 6partte>rb-aoaaary

Vilag Proletarjai Egeyesflljetekl

7E:- NIflKVZI stociiAUStA

Hiad*a a manias is katonakiktildUttek tanacsdnak nemzetkOzi osatdlya. higyen kiadvdny a aaagyar katonatestvvrek ssimira

   -ass

Poaxgla: 1leTporpagi, 8pTe31e8'L 13.   Minden kizleminy P6tergi}r Mein, 13 ell kQIdendb

LE HULLT AZ ALARC

TITKOS NEMET BEKEFELTETELEK HOGYAN AKART ANNEKSZIOT NEMETORSZAG. A NE M ET,,BEK ESZERET ET" OSAK A KATONAK TEREMTHETIK MEG A BEOSULETES BEKET,

KarAcaony napj an, amikor az emberistgnsk beket Es jo hirt felentenek a harangok, Nemtorszag, Ausztria-Magyarorszag kormanyai es bolgar meg torok

lobbagyaik tudattak arra vonatozd eJ hatarozasukat. hoggyy lemondanak minden eras zak• al-

asarul, alt   minden

As. orrery kormdny elismen,ilitvan es left nap soft-Ara. hIajnEpnek. De nem Is emberkehngy ezek a megnyllatkozasokkehat a kozponti hataimak kor- reskedok As soha sem fogjak a Jalenlagl I rillme'nyek kozott manyal art al]itjak, hogy az oszttlysorsosaikat elaInl. llyen a nepakarat klfejezts>nnk tekin-l Altaluk megarallva tartott tern- alapon nem Iehet tiirgyalni saha tendiik, der kesz az ebbbl folydlictelc nepal elhatareatak slsza- es semmf kkrblmenyek,kozott kovetke latesakut levonni.   ladasnkat Oroaxnrzagt6l, va- as taro= munkaskormartnyal.

Miuta eznken a terwsteken, gyms az tiros*- munkas es katona-   Az   a i - a r c   i e h u l l t.
amelyekre a fennebbfekben uta--kormanytdl, akkor egyszotuen M o s t r a j t a t o k a s ti r

man torttnt, a kiiirites kerdese hazudnakl   ] in a g y a r .   a k d s-

tem vonh-   ran- A ndmot   jogk

aserepdt 1 niter nvpatakult t a$.?

ma-

a. ptviitan ldteaitead6 hdttogoly szo. aackk ktiantt, A p..111ia rtslilcezeta:ui lee'ci a pit-rvAri lvtdi(nglpok tot-

t ,[, cmbre' lit-lI, ,ae,t mcm imire ur.t magic a raepjelent hedltnnlvnk a-01 LIRisa elmeudoltAk: cr a nap salt as els3, maelyra ernltadon inehnttek .Ayg Pli-erAr strain.

A ha. ' ]yak. ems elan surbad nu. Ito   .a id tier]

ohbm ' harabaa naiades pmletit oayatt leas, nit leeanak a hadltoglyok Ie ea nem akad keatak se sent old fuutlja leans aZ elacoatattak a pm. letdtak'neat nape As Urals harc;eak. Az a,2trAk-mngyar As almet ha

reg bedlloglyaiaak mltingje 1817 de• reraber to (9a-tin) Pltxndmtt a Cull Madera 4etviepg?ben a kdvetkrri ha•

ti palish

Propaganda for the Hungarian Trenches

THE LIBERATOR

HIGHLAND BROTHERS/

22

Epamz repo!!

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The Petrograd North Caucasus and Daghestan Highlanders Committee informs you that the Central Committee of the North Caucasus and Daghestan United Highlanders, at the conference held on Au,ust IO, 1917, in the city of I/ladicaucasus in the presence of delegates from the various retiiments of the home division, has ordained to consider that the only purpose of the regiments of the home divisions is to defend the father-land from the outward foe, and in no way to serve as a tool in the hands of any parties in their political strife. By your interference you break off from the common family of Highlanders, and so deal an irremediable blots to the idea of unity and national self-determination of the whole of the Highlander's.

We therefore appeal to you to desist from any future participation in the political strife that is going on now.

The Petrograd North Caucasus and Daghestan Highlanders Committee.

The Caucasus Mahometans in Petrograd Committee.

The Executive Committee of the A1ll:ussian Mahometan Council appeals to the Mahometan brethren.-warriors of the valiant home divisions
   at this most serious moment in the life of the various nationalities of Russia, asking them to accept as their guide this brotherly message contin . front their kindred organizations.

The Executive Committee of the All-Russian Mahometan Council.

Petrograd, August 29, 1917.

The proclamation that broke the back of
Kornilov's Cossack revolt

January, 1919   23

Another branch of the Propoganda Bureau's work was the reception of deserters, who came across the lines in a continuous stream. They always had interesting information, if it were only how our publicity was going, and what interested the German soldiers most. . . . But some-times they came on unusual errands; I remember a delegation from the German troops on the island of Ocsel, who wanted literature and speakers to take back with them! A couple of sailors who spoke German were sent back with them, smuggled across the lines in German uniforms; they stayed a week and converted about a thousand men,

Back of the German lines, near Kovne, at this time, was formed a camp of mutineers, about fifteen or twenty thou-sand of them according to deserters' stories. They refused to fight, and declared that if the front line moved forward they would fire on it . Our delegates made their way across the lines to that camp, with detailed information about the Revolution, copies of Soviet decrees and proclamations. Just before the end of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations the camp was destroyed by artillery fire; but the poison spread.

During the armistice and peace negotiations, which, at Trotsky's instance, were conducted in the open, the German newspapers intentionally falsified the reports. The Soviet Government published daily the correct version in Der Volkerfriede, with which the German trenches were flooded. Proclamations, appeals, decrees, all in German, urging the enemy soldiers to upset their Government, throw out the Kaiser, declare a revolutionary peace. . . . Every day or so General Hoffman threatened to break off negotiations if the Russian troops were not ordered to cease fraternization and to refrain from inciting German troops to revolt. After the armistice was signed, too, the Imperial Government warned the Soviets that revolutionary propaganda was a violation of the armistice.

To this the Council of People's Commissars answered by apologies and promises. Krylenko, the Russian Commander, publicly ordered that propaganda should cease, and privately sent word to the troops to redouble their efforts.

On the 23d of December the Soviet Government passed the following resolution:

" Taking into consideration that the Soviet Power is based on the principle of international proletarian solidarity and the brotherhood of workers of all countries, that the struggle against the war and against Imperialism can only lead to victory if it is carried out on an international scale, the Council of People's Commissars deems it necessary to come to the assistance of the Left International wing of the labor movement of all countries, by all possible means, including funds, whether the said countries are at war with Russia, or allied to Russia, or occupying a neutral position.

" For this purpose the Council of People's Commissars resolves: That at the disposal of the foreign representative of the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs shall be placed the sum of Two Mil-

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Announcement to the workers of all lands

of Russia's Peace Terms

lion Rubles for the needs of the Revolutionary Internationalist movement.

" Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars,

V. OULIANOV (LENIN). " People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, L. TROTSKY."

By September, 1918, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had on its payroll sixty-eight agents in Austria-Hungary, and more than that in Germany, as well as others in France, Switzerland and Italy.

Of course most of the attention of the Bureau of Inter-national Revolutionary Propaganda was concentrated on the Central Powers. A weekly magazine in French-English was planned, as well as an Italian weekly, but never carried out. For one agent in the Allied countries, the Soviet Government had fifty in Germany and Austria.

The Central Powers were Soviet Russia's greatest menace. It was utterly impossible for Imperial Germany and Socialist Russia to exist side by side. Imperial Germany must be destroyed-and quickly. But while in Germany there existed the most sinister enemy of the Russian Revolution, on the- other hand in Germany was also Russia's greatest potential ally-a working class well-trained in the fundamentals of Marxian doctrine, and better organized than any other in Europe.

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24   THE LIBERATOR

This condition determined somewhat the form of Russian propaganda. It was all aimed at the German workers and soldiers. It would not do simply to cry out against the Kaiser and the Junkers; that is the trick of the bourgeoisie, practised for four long years in the name of " democracy" by all the Imperialists of the western nations. The German workers were too well educated to be fooled by that. Propaganda had to. be international, against all bourgeois imperialists, with special emphasis on the Secret Treaties, and the imperialistic designs and actions of the Entente.

But the Bolshevik attack on the Kaiser and the German Junkers did not cease, for all of that. . . . In the first number of Rabotchi i Soldat, organ of the Petrograd Soviet, published October 31, 1917, occurred the following paragraph:

" The German Kaiser, covered with the blood of millions of innocent dead, wants to hurl his army against Petrograd. Let us call to the German workmen, soldiers and peasants, who want peace not less than we do, to . . . stand up against this damned war!

" This can be done only by a revolutionary Government, which would speak really for the workmen, soldiers and peasants of Russia, and would appeal over the heads of the diplomats directly to the German troops, fill the German trenches with proclamations in the German language. . . . Our airmen would spread these proclamations all over Germany. . . ."

This was one week before the Bolshevik insurrection. Eight days later, in an appeal to the German soldiers, the Council of People's Commissars said:

"Brothers, German soldiers! The great ex-ample of your comrade, Karl Liebknecht, the most eminent leader of International Socialism, the per-severing and long-continued struggle which you have conducted by publishing newspapers and pamphlets, by numerous demonstrations and strikes, the struggle for which your Government has thrown into prison hundreds and thousands of your comrades, and lastly, the heroic revolt of your sailors of the Fleet serve as a guarantee to us that the mass of the working-class of your nation is ready to enter the decisive struggle for peace.

" Hasten to our assistance! In the name of the Workers' and Peasants' Government we guarantee that our soldiers shall not move one step for-ward if you decide to take in your hands the flag of peace, and even if the struggle for peace inside your country takes away part of your forces from the front.   . . ."

After Brest-Litovsk, according to the provisions of the treaty, the Bureau of International Revolutionary Propaganda was abolished. But the first act of the new Council of People's Commissars was secretly to reorganize this work,

appointing an unofficial committee to take charge of it, and appropriating for this purpose twenty million rubles.

At the same time Adolph Yaffe was made Ambassador to Berlin. In his suite were ten expert propagandists who spoke German. They bought bicycles, on which they began a systematic tour of the country, organizing, spreading the word, preparing. The three million Russian prisoners were reached. Two of these couriers were caught and expelled from the country. Yoffe was repeatedly warned by the German Government, repeatedly apologized, and kept on.

His first act in the German capital was to hoist over the Russian Embassy the Red Flag, lettered with the device of the Soviet Republic, " Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. Workmen of all countries, unite! " He refused to present his credentials to the Kaiser, and invited to his first state banquet Haase, Ledebour, Dittman, Franz Mehring, Rosa Luxembourg, Clara Zetkind and Karl Liebknecht (then in prison).

The first act of the new German coalition Ebert Government was to expel Yoffe from Berlin-as was natural. However, he was invited to return a week later by the Berlin Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, and did so. Upon his release from prison, Karl Liebknecht, his flower-filled carriage escorted by hundreds of thousands of workers, went straight to the Russian Embassy, from the balcony of which he made a speech, saying that it was now time that the German people followed Russia's example.

The New York evening newspapers of November 25th re-port an address of Liebknecht's before the Berlin Workers' and Soldiers' Council, upon the night of the overthrow of the Coalition Government:

" Did the bourgeoisie while in power permit you to have a voice in the Government? No! Then the workers must not allow it to have any say now. We need a Government of soldiers and workmen, one typifying the proletariat, which will not have to bow down before the Entente.

" There must be no dickering with Entente imperialism. We will dispose of that just as we did with German autocracy. The Revolution is bound also to reach the Entente countries, but we, who made the Russians waste a whole year, are insisting that the Revolution break out in England and France within twenty-four hours. .   ."

During this same period the Allied Governments were conducting an enormous propaganda, not only in the Central Empires, through Switzerland, Scandinavia and Holland, but also in Russia itself The Russian branch of the American Committee on Public Information spent more than three hundred thousand dollars in Russia, printing Wilson's speeches in thousands of copies, producing great moving picture films, and hiring Russian propagandists. French and the British Governments maintained expensive Liformation Bureaus in all countries. In the neutral countries and in Russia newspapers were subsidized, and even bought by the

January, 1919   25

Allies, and local journalists were on the payroll of the Al-lied Embassies. . . .

Why did Allied propaganda fail and Bolshevik propaganda succeed? The reason is simple, especially simple as regards American propaganda. The masses of the war-weary peoples of Russia and of the Central Powers were Socialists. They had been educated to look forward to the Social Revolution, the destruction of the bourgeoisie, the public seizure of land, industrial plants and financial institution. They were fundamentally trained to see in the war a simple clash of capitalistic interests.   .   . .

Allied propaganda harped on patriotism, on the advantages of the bourgeois political democracy; its language was

A

Typical American government propaganda-
President WTilson's " 14-point " Speech

the language of eighteenth century political economy. It showed a hatred of Socialism only less than its hatred of Kaiserism. American propaganda advocated the American form of government as the social and economic millenium. In America there was free speech, free press and universal wealth. By editing and perverting the words and deeds of real American Socialists, it was proven that we had gone back on our Internationalism, that we were heart and soul with the Government. This was clone in the case of Eugene Debs, Max Eastman, myself. . . . The activities of Gompers, Walling, Spargo and Russell were played up. Boasting about America's part in the war, statistics, moving pictures showing the amount of gold bullion in the vaults of the United States Treasury. . . . All these phases of political and economic life which the Russian and German people had been working to get rid of for decades were displayed to them. . . . Root was sent to Russia. Frank Bohn was sent to Switzerland to get in touch with the Germans.   .

In all these efforts at creating pro-Ally sympathy in the " hostile " countries Socialism was let severely alone. Only the most reactionary pro-Government Majority Socialist groups in all countries were thought Worthy of influencing. The Liberal republican movements were fostered. Purely Nationalist sentiments were encouraged in all the little op-pressed countries.

To Allied propagandists the most effective weapons were President Wilson's speeches, which the revolutionary working-class of all countries refused to trust, and which did not interest them much anyway. .

RESPECTABILITY

I HUG my hearth fire, cozy-warm, Approved by wise and loving friends; She passes in the marching storm

Down the long road that never ends, Rebel and outcast, beggared, free-

The woman that I dare not be.

I have a task that fills my days.

I do it with a right good will

And earn thereby both bread and praise;

Why does her mocking laughter still Burn to the very soul of me, The woman that I dare not be?

A sanctuary I would seek

On Sundays in the House of Prayer; But when I kneel among the meek

Between me and the altar there, God's scorn in her clear eyes, I see The woman that I dare not be.

Allene Gregory.

"MR' .MB 1 MAFO PA•:

The Family

27

of Nations

28

THE LIBERATOR

Demobilizing the Trade Unions

By H. M

THE demobilization of war industries has begun. It is a matter of taking three to five million workers out of war work and finding jobs for them in normal industry, and at the same time finding jobs for three to four mil-lion discharged soldiers. From six to eight million potentially unemployed persons! At the other extreme, there is the theoretic possibility of placing the demobilized war-worker and soldier directly into a new job, and thus keeping unemployment at zero. Somewhere between these two extremes we shall muddle through our demobilization period.

There are possibilities in the situation, enormous possibilities for good or for evil.

Little had been published, during the first two or three weeks of the armistice, about demobilization in the concrete. But a great deal was said about it in general. President Wilson, for example, said in general that he had no opinion on the problem, except that he thought it could safely be left to " agencies in existence" and to the " quick initiative " of America's business men. More reassuring words came from Atlantic City, where an extraordinary War Emergency and Reconstruction Conference of the United States Chamber of Commerce was in session. Here it was agreed that employers should not insist upon reducing wages, that good labor unions should not be frowned upon, that co-operation should take the place of class warfare in industry, and that industrial Kaiserism should cease. The Conference felt most optimistic concerning reconstruction, provided the Government immediately returned the railroads, the wires and the munitions plants to the ownership and control of their original possessors, and left all other problems to " individual initiative." The War Industries Board, about the same time, issued a most reassuring swan-song concerning the apparent fluency of the readjustment. It became clear to all readers of the Times and Tribune that everything was as good as it could possibly be.

But the most inspiring thing about this Emergency Conference was its insistence upon the ethical note. In its more sublime aspects this ,received expression in the " ten commandments " of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., from whose speech I quote the following Credo:

" I believe that every living man is entitled to the opportunity of earning a living, to fair wages, to reasonable hours of work and proper working conditions; to a decent home, to the opportunity to learn, to worship and to love, as well as to toil; and that the opportunity rests upon government or society to see that these conditions and opportunities prevail."

" The opportunity to learn, to worship and to love ! " ex-claimed a New York daily. " What is that but the epitome of human aspirations, the sum total of human desires? "

Summing up the situation, this same daily sees Utopia upon us as a result of the late slaughter in Europe. " The proceedings of the Conference reveal," it says, " the vast change that is coming in the relations between capital and labor. Heretofore industry has represented an autocracy. The views expressed by national authorities at Atlantic City indicate that industry is on the way to becoming a democracy. Such a new interpretation of the brotherhood of man is an inevitable result of the triumph of the free nations in a war for the establishment of the principle of the brotherhood of nations."

The most compelling voice in the Conference was perhaps that of Charles M. Schwab, late president and still the controlling power of the Bethlehem Steel Company. Mr. Schwab stated that men should be permitted and encouraged to form labor unions, and to deal as equals with their employers. There must be an absolute partnership between worker and employer, he said, and friendliness, confidence and co-operation must henceforth be the rule.

After all that, who could have any fears about our de-mobilization period?

It sounded so good that I went down to Mr. Schwab's Bethlehem plant to find out about it.

You must know something of Bethlehem, named after the birthplace of the Prince of Peace. It was founded in 1741 as a haven of Christian perfection by the Moravians, who represent the direct continuation of the doctrines of John Huss. The founder of the sect, it is written, " anticipated much of the teaching of Tolstoy. He interpreted the Sermon on the Mount literally, denounced war, and declared that the duty of. all true Christians was to return to the simple teaching of Christ and His Apostles." On the green hills of Bethlehem, Pa., the American Moravians hoped to be able to practise these doctrines, in sheltered peace and brotherly love, as long as America should endure.

Modern commercialism brought to Bethlehem a gigantic factory of the instruments of death, and the fortunes of war provided the crowning irony in bringing to the presidency of the whole works a gentleman with the Divine name of Grace. And this article will concern itself chiefly with the emanations of Grace in and about Bethlehem in the early weeks of the new era of the Brotherhood of Man.

I chose Bethlehem and Bridgeport as typical war industry communities, preferring to see the facts in the concrete rather than in the puzzled or fanciful outgivings of the United States Employment offices. No discourtesy is here intended to the only government agency which is attempting to handle industrial reconstruction in a thorough-going way, but it

January, 1919   29

soon became clear that this agency simply has not sufficient authority to collect reliable statistics. Whatever facts the public may be permitted to learn concerning industrial de-mobilization must be learned at the source.

It is true that both in Bethlehem and in Bridgeport the situation is complicated by serious labor quarrels still in an acute stage. But these quarrels only serve to reveal more vividly the truth of the situation. Last summer the National War Labor Board was summoned to intervene in Bethlehem to settle a threatened strike of the skilled workmen. " Upon representation of officials of the War Department," to quote the words of the Board's joint chairmen, " that conditions in the Bethlehem Steel Company were gravely endangering the successful prosecution of the war, and in order that our troops might not be left short of guns and ammunition, the War Labor Board exerted every resource to keep the employes of the Bethlehem Steel Company at work, to secure a maxi-mum production and an equitable adjustment of conditions in the Bethlehem Steel Company." What the Board did was to grant an increase in pay to various classes of employes, to order the revision or the total elimination of the famous " bonus system " then in vogue, to establish shop committees and collective bargaining under conditions which honest workingmen could accept, and to protect the rights of the employes to join the trade unions of their choice. The new wage schedules were put into effect; the shop committees were elected; the workers joined the trade unions of their choice, thanks to a well organized campaign on the part of the A. F. of L. unions, to the extent of more than fifty per cent. But rumors of peace began to fill the air, and Mr. Grace, who had accepted the original award only under the tacit threat of Government operation, began to delay. The few meetings held between the shop committees and their respective employer's committees failed to achieve anything. In some departments back pay was not forthcoming. The officials of the company somehow never got around to revising or eliminating the bonus system, to say nothing of devising with the shop committees a system to take its place.

Then the armistice came. Mr. Grace announced that the company was now " unable to accept " certain rulings of the Board, and asked that the Government examiners in Bethlehem be withdrawn, " thus permitting us to proceed with the installation of the practical, comprehensive and permanent plan of employes' representation, which is now in successful operation at our other plants."

It became apparent that " reconstruction " was under way in Bethlehem.

Now reconstruction, to a war industry like Bethlehem, means in the first instance just one thing-firing men. If the right men are fired to begin with, the industry will " re-construct " itself on the labor side without more trouble.

No one seemed to know officially about the number of men being fired in Bethlehem. Rumor said that they were going at the rate of five hundred a week, or five hundred a day; that it had already reached the figure of 5,000, that it

would presently reach 11,000 or 15,ooo. But why depend on rumor? Certain information has been officially declared to he public property.

This, for example, had recently come from the Department of Labor:

" To enable the United States Employment Service to find other employment for munitions and other civilian war workers as they are released, the Service will be consulted by the War Department and the War Industries Board before any action is taken on war contracts."

And this indicates the proposed source of the information to he transmitted to the Government departments:

" The arrangement with the War Department and the War Industries Board enables the United States Employment Service to know in advance of and to prepare for releases of men by war industries holding direct contracts. Sub-contractors are urged to notify the Employment Service of coming re-leases as far in advance as possible, in order that the employes may be placed elsewhere.

" Only through having advance information of the easing off of war industrial operations can the Employment Service adequately devote its facilities toward relocation of war workers."

But the Government Employment office was unable to say how many Bethlehem workers were being discharged. It frankly admitted that it did not know. Private employers, eager to engage the men released from Bethlehem, were denied any information. Demobilization in Bethlehem was a secret.

I asked the publicity man of the Bethlehem company upon what plan men were being discharged. He pointed to an official statement that " the governing factors will be attendance, efficiency and length of service."

" Do you mean," I asked, " that you are discharging the new and inexperienced men? "

" Well, we are discharging the men who live outside of Bethlehem, for one thing," he answered. " You. see, there is a bunch of agitators off in Allentown and they have been making trouble for us."

" How many have you discharged? Are you making any public announcement? "

" No," he replied, " we aren't making any public announcement. You see, it is all involved with this labor trouble."

There were germs of information in these few remarks. Around town they explained to me that workers who lived in Bethlehem were generally being retained by the company, and added that the company was close to the real estate interests in Bethlehem (rents have been splendid there during the war) and was itself a large owner of housing property. As for the agitators in Allentown, their presence is to be explained by the fact that until recently the mayor of Bethlehem, formerly an officer of the steel company, prohibited all union meetings within the city limits and generally treated a labor organizer as an outlaw. Later it became still more

30   THE LIBERATOR

evident in exactly what way the company's discharge policy was " involved with this labor trouble."

For the moment, however, I contented myself with the official attitude of the company as reflected in " The Booster." This fortnightly publication, richly illustrated with portraits of faithful employes, is distributed free to all workers in the plant. Its aim is to infuse boost, zip and jazz into the workers for all sorts of worthy purposes.

In " The Booster," after learning that " a reduction of the force must be made," I read as follows:

" It seems a great pity that our big family must be separated. We have all been working together for one great cause and many fine friendships have been formed among us. We trust that those who are compelled to seek their fortunes in other fields of endeavor will think of us kindly. The Booster' has been informed that the management of our great company is reluctant to reduce the force any lower than is absolutely necessary and that the utmost consideration will be given to each individual case. To those who leave us, we say most sincerely, good-bye, good luck and God bless you."

At this point " The Booster " may justly claim our more particular attention. . . . In " The Booster " you learn that " you cannot war upon kindness; all the logic of man cannot cope with the power of love," and on the same page, apropos of our post-belIum policy toward the Hun: "Treat them as slaves to the end of their days. Never give them a decent man's chance." " The Booster " does not scorn slang, but at times its diction sounds like that of Felicia Hemans. A woman worker is called " a person of the fair sex," and such persons are looked after by other persons of like sex, known as welfare workers, of whose ministrations " The Booster " says: " Nothing seems to be too much trouble, whether it is a delightful picnic along the banks of the Saucon or a visit to a home to investigate and better the living conditions, or any of the other thousand and one things that an organization of this kind is called upon to do."

How Bethlehem workers were persuaded to loan their dollars to Liberty is described in two issues. First, before the campaign, a dummy was strung up by the neck to the company flag pole bearing in his hand the legend:

"This Boob Would Not Buy Bonds."

With this as a leit-motif for the bond campaign, the " over the top," to quote " The Booster," was " accomplished in a very novel but effective way. The shop was decorated with appropriate posters, all made by home talent and very much to the point. The men were brought before the committee in gangs of fifteen by their foremen and there they listened to the urgent plea for more bonds. Each man was brought up individually and questioned. In the face of this personal appeal there was hardly a one who refused to double up." Not exactly novel, but unquestionably effective! But even at that it does not appear that the company exhausted its resources, for none of the employes was obliged to "cope with the power of love.

In another issue it is recorded that the assembled employes of the plant cheered the Reverend Newell Dwight Hillis, brought by the company to speak to them of " German out-rages and atrocities which he has seen or been told of in Europe." Since we cannot quite picture the Reverend Dr. Hillis personally inspecting a rape, we conclude that most of the atrocities were hearsay, but they seemed to have served admirably to cement the men's loyalty to their country and their bonus system. He was not, it appears, introduced to the men as the divine who defended Rockefeller's Colorado Fuel and Iron Company in shooting and burning strikers at Ludlow.

I could cull much more from " The Booster," but I can only quote a few brief lines from the poem of Lieutenant Martin Fitzgerald to the Bethlehem workers, entitled " Carry On, Mates," because it has 4 certain bearing on reconstruction.

" Carry on, pals of mine!

If there is a grievance-wait, 'old your 'and. Beware of 'ot air, and the German gold behind it. And when this bloody war is over I'll come And side by side we'll stand and see fair play and

clear up old, long-standing debts."

Now the lieutenant may now be on his way home for this purpose, but when he gets here he won't find his " mates " around to clear up any old, long-outstanding debts. For this reason: that his mates, ail the more aggressive and in-dependent of them, are being fired. During the war the discontented were referred to the post-bellum period, and now they are referred by " The Booster " to God.

First, there are the shop committeemen, elected under the War Labor Board and usually union men. Directly the armistice was signed they began to receive their " time." Protests began to pour into the offices of the Board. In one shop the two committee members, after some hesitation, presented the requests of their constituents to the management. The same day they got their " time." The Board ruled that committeemen must not be discriminated against, and must be discharged, if at all, only in proportion with the other workers. But the company was not recognizing the Board's authority at the time, and protests remained protests.

Next, there are the residents of Allentown and nearby villages who do not contribute to profits on Bethlehem real estate. The men believe that the discrimination against Allentown is an attempt to hurt the city's prosperity, because it harbors " agitators " and has a mayor sympathetic to labor. And they are sure that the Bethlehem company will find it convenient to have its workers all living in a town which is politically under its control.

Next there are the skilled and highly paid men in general, who are being discharged in excessive proportions. They are generally the better organized of the workers, and are likely to contain a far higher percentage of American citizens. That Americans are being singled out for discharge should cause-surprise to no one. The steel plants and packing houses,.

January, 1919   31

among other large American industries, have a traditional policy of " graduating nationalities," whereby the older and well established races are released in favor of the fresh immigrant types, who are likely to be divided in language, mutually suspicious and likely to accept a lower wage. It is too early to say that this policy is being pursued in Bethlehem today, but it is perfectly clear that the American trade unionist type, who has acquired confidence and the capacity for leadership, is in disfavor.

There is another circumstance attendant upon this de-mobilization which may he significant. There are printed slips going around the shops, presented by the foremen to the workers for their signatures, stating that the signer was satisfied i'with the previous conditions in the shop and is against any innovations. Is it hard to guess what will hap-pen to the man who refuses to sign?

It does not appear that the company has given any of the " consideration " to " each individual case " that was promised by " The Booster," or that " attendance, efficiency and length of service " have had much to do with it. The men are informed by their foremen point blank, without warning, that they are fired. They have no opportunity to learn any-thing in advance, so that they may register at the employment office, or to appeal, through their shop committees or otherwise, to anyone save the foreman who does the firing. The company itself does not pretend that any distinction is made between men with families and men without, and it is abundantly clear that no such distinction is made. That length of service is no protection to an employe is proved by the number of discharges of men who have been with the company six, eight and ten years. It is not possible to make the company admit that its discharges are effected with the intent of getting rid of the leaders trusted by the men, of breaking the newly established unions, and of overthrowing the Government's collective bargaining system, but it is abundantly evident that it will achieve these results if it is not blocked. It is not possible to make the company admit that it intends to create anew the old Bethlehem psychology of terrorism, but it is clear that it is actually creating terrorism -and defiance.

For the defiance is there. They are talking strike in Bethlehem. They say they have the crucial trades, such as the electricians, organized one hundred per cent and that they could stop all the wheels at any time. They are not sure that this is the time for a strike, since the company is not yet working on its new commercial orders, and might welcome a strike just now as a saving of money. But they are defiant.