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THE BIRTH CONTROL REVIEW

Reconstruction is in the air. One of the first principles of reconstruction is the freedom of women through birth control.

The Birth Control Movement is dedicated to the cause of voluntary motherhood. The Birth Control Review is the voice of this movement, which George Bernard Shaw has termed "the most revolutionary doctrine of the 19th Century."

Birth Control will abolish child labor; it will wipe out 9.i% of infant mortality; it will do away with the increasing crime of the 20th Century-abortion; it will relieve unemployment; it will free society from perpetuating the great drain of supporting institutions for the feeble-minded and the insane.

No League of Natiors, nor Government no matter how ideal, can maintain peace until it recognizes the danger of over-population and advocates the practice of birth control as a fundamental principle,

The February Number

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March, 1919 3

"THE HOUR

HAS OF THCOME"

E PEOPLE

PROLETARIANS? Men and Women of labor! Comrades! " The revolution has made its entry into Germany. The masses of the soldiers who for four years were driven to the slaughterhouse for the sake of capitalistic profits; the masses of workers, who for four years were exploited, crushed, and starved, have revolted. That fearful tool of oppression-Prussian militarism, that scourge of humanity-lies broken on the ground. Its most noticeable representatives, and therewith the most noticeable of those guilty of this war, the Kaiser and the Crown Prince, have fled from the country. Workers and Soldiers' Councils have been formed everywhere.

" Proletarians of all countries, we do not say that in Germany all the power has really been lodged in the hands of the working people, that the complete triumph of the proletarian revolution has already been attained. There still sit in the Government all those Socialists who in August, 1914, abandoned our most precious possession, the International, who for four years betrayed the German working class and at the same time the International.

" But, proletarians of all countries, now the German proletarian himself is speaking to you. 'We believe we have the right to appear before your forum in his name. From the first day of this war we endeavored to do our international duty by fighting that criminal Government with all our power and branding it as the one really guilty of the war.

" Now at this moment we are justified before history, be-fore the International and before the German proletariat. The masses agree with us enthusiastically, constantly widening circles of the proletariat share the knowledge that the hour has struck for a settlement with capitalist class rule.

" But this great task cannot be accomplished by the German proletariat alone; it can only fight and triumph by appealing to the solidarity of the proletarians of the whole world.

" Comrades of the belligerent countries, we are aware of your situation. We know very well that your Governments, now since they have won the victory, are dazzling the eyes of many strata of the people with the external brilliancy of the triumph. We know that they thus succeed through the success of the murdering in making its causes and aims forgotten.

" But we also know something else. We know that also in your countries the proletariat made the most fearful sacrifices of flesh and blood, that it is weary of the dreadful butchery, that the proletarian is now returning to his home, and is finding want and misery there, while fortunes amounting to billions are heaped up in the hands of a few capitalists.

" The imperialism of all countries knows no ' understanding,' it knows only one right-capital's profits; it knows only one language-the sword; it knows only one method-violence. And if it is now talking in all countries, in yours as well as ours, about the ' League of Nations,' ` disarma

went,' ' rights of small nations,' ' self-determination of the peoples,' it is merely using the customary lying phrases of the rulers for the purpose of lulling to sleep the watchfulness of the proletariat.

" Proletarians of all countries! This must be the last war! We owe that to the 12,000,000 murdered victims, we owe that to our children, we owe that to humanity.

" Europe has been ruined through the infamous international murder. Twelve million bodies cover the grewsome scenes of the imperialistic crime. The flower of youth and the best man power of the peoples have been mowed down. Uncounted productive forces have been annihilated. Humanity is almost ready to bleed to death from the unexampled blood-letting of history. Victors and vanquished stand at the edge of the abyss. Humanity is threatened with the most dreadful famine, a stoppage of the entire mechanism of production, plagues, and degeneration.

" The great criminals of this fearful anarchy, of this chaos let loose-the ruling classes-are not able to control their own creation. The beast of capital that conjured up the hell of the world war is not capable of banishing it again, of restoring real order, of insuring bread and work, peace and civilization, justice and liberty, to tortured humanity.

" What is being prepared by the ruling classes as peace and justice is only a new work of brutal force from which the hydra of oppression, hatred and fresh bloody wars raises its thousand heads.

" Socialism alone is in a position to complete the great work of permanent peace, to heal the thousand wounds from which humanity is bleeding, to transform the plains of Europe, trampled down by the passage of the apocryphal horseman of war, into blooming gardens, to conjure up ten productive forces for every one destroyed, to awaken all the physical and moral energies of humanity, and to replace hatred and dissension with fraternal solidarity, harmony, and respect for every human being.

" And therefore we call to you: ` Arise for the struggle ! Arise for action ! The time for empty manifestos, platonic resolutions, and high-sounding words has gone by! The hour of action has struck for the International ! ' We ask you to elect Workers' and Soldiers' Councils everywhere that will seize political power and, together with us, will restore peace.

" Not Lloyd-George and Poincare, not Sonnino, Wilson, and Erzberger or Scheidemann, must be allowed to make peace. Peace is to be concluded under the waving banner of the socialist world revolution.

" KLARA ZETKIN,

"'ROSA LUXEMBURG,

" KARL LIEBKNECHT, " FRANZ MEHRING."

• manifesto issued by the Spartacans a few weeks before Llebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were killed. Reprinted from the N. Y. Times.

THE LIBERATOR

Vol. 1, No. 13 March, 1919

EDITORIALS

T HE Peace Conference has invited the Soviet Government to " come down behind the barn," and talk it over. This is a recognition of their power, if not a tribute to their merit, and we have no doubt that with some perfectly reasonable stipulations, they will accept the proposal.

An interesting feature of the matter is that the " democratic " governments at Ornsk, Archangel, Paris and else-where, replied immediately to the Allied proposal. The " dictators " at Moscow had to consult their constituents.

Meanwhile they telegraphed to Comrade Jean Longuet of the French Majority Socialists, asking for advice as to the meaning of the Allied proposal. Comrade Longuet says that he is " touched by their confidence in him." We surmise that he was meant to be touched, and even perhaps a little bit gently pushed into the clear position where he belongs.

Bob Minor and the Bolsheviki

SEVERAL years ago the New York World fired Robert Minor from their staff and took measures to avoid any further association of their name with his. The reason was that Robert Minor had become an anarchist.

Today Minor is featured as a former member of their staff by the New York World in a sensational cablegram from Europe, in which he repudiates Nicolai Lenin and denounces the Soviet Government. He denounces them because they are not anarchistic enough, and nobody who understands the difference between Anarchism and Social-ism, or understands Bob Minor, will be unduly surprised. But the World so handles this cablegram as to let it appear that Minor was a " radical socialist," who, after going to Russia and seeing a socialist government in operation, got disillusioned and came back into the Bourgeois fold.

Fortunately for those who desire to get the truth about Russia, Bob Minor's personal integrity is above question, and he quotes actual words which Lenin spoke to him. Every one of these words is so wise, and calm, and practical, that we give profound thanks that Lenin, the socialist, and not Bob Minor, the anarchist, is in the position of leadership of the international proletariat.

Here is the principal part of the interview:

" I have just come from Moscow, where, a little more than one week ago, I had a talk with Lenin which bears materially upon the present difficulty in which the Entente finds itself

in relation to the Bolshevik Government. Previously I had talked with him casually during my stay of nine months in Russia. This time Lenin knew he was giving an interview, and he appreciated the effect it might have on the outside world. As far as I know it is the only interview he ever granted since he has been in power in Russia . . . .

" I may say it is not easy for the Bolshevik chiefs to show any spirit of compromise before the anarchist forces in Russia, which, while they are fast subsiding, yet remain much stronger than the men who are trying to rule Russia. I approached Lenin with the view of helping him to pave the way for a definite answer to the invitation to the various Russian factions to meet in conference with representatives of the Allies at Princes' Islands, in the Sea of '_Marmara. I said to him I was leaving Russia and wanted something definite to carry away. He exchanged glances with his collaborator, Boris Reinstein, the former Buffalo soapbox orator, and slowly replied:

The Russian Government would be inclined to pay its debts if by that means the war against it could be stopped.' As he spoke I wrote down the words and read them aloud. ' That is correct,' he said.

" After silence for a moment he went on : "We want peace and have proposed peace many times, but '-pausing with an expression of intense seriousness-' we are prepared to go on with the war, and are confident of victory. Our armies have had fine successes since the capture of Kazan and Samara, down to the present time. In the last few days we have heard of nothing but new victories.'

" Lenin evidently intended to rest with that, and so I approached to the second point of the interview.

"'What about the League of Nations?' I asked him. ' Has the recent entry of the Menshevik leaders into the government affected the eligibility of the Soviets for the League of Nations?'

"Lenin caught me up before I had finished, his usually mild voice becoming suddenly harsh. ` They are not forming a League of Nations,' he said, ' but a league of imperialists to strangle the nations. President Wilson is a shrewd man,' he added dryly.

" Turning to the other angle of the question he continued:

` The Menshevist Martoff Caine into the government be-cause he saw he must choose between the Russian Soviet and extreme reaction.'

` What are the Allies going to do with their troops in Russia?' he demanded. ' Do they want to support the old feudal interest here, which is comparable to the German

6 THE LIBERATOR

Dunker interests? What are the American soldiers like individually; would they be susceptible to propaganda?'

" In order to regain control of the interview, I asked:

"' What will you do if the Allies send big armies against you? '

' If they send anything short of very big armies,' he replied, ` we will defeat them.'

' And if they do send very big armies?' I persisted.

" `Then they will make a very big war,' he answered, smiling, but without mirth.

" `How soon will the revolution get to America?' was his question. The tone was confident. He did not ask me IF it would reach America, but WHEN, as if he took for granted that some day the red flag would wave in Washington. I did not reply, and he went on.

' America is a great country, great in technical achievements. Marvellous developments are possible there. The American Daniel De Leon first formulated the idea of a Soviet government, which grew up in Russia on his idea. Future society will be organized along Soviet lines. There will be Soviet rather than geographical boundaries for nations. Industrial unionism is the basic state. That is what we are building.' "

And here are Bob Minor's antagonistic comments:

" I did not agree with Lenin's idea of what he is building, but said nothing. There is no more industrial unionism in Lenin's highly centralized institutions than in the United States Post Office. What he calls industrial unionism is nothing but nationalized industry in the highest degree of centralization."

" Lenin could not afford to tell the whole truth about the entrance of non-Bolsheviki into the government, for he must maintain the intransigent front. The main fact in the new situation is that the so-called nationalization of Russian industry has put insurgent industry back into the hands of the business class, who disguise their activities by giving orders under the magic title of ' People's Commissaries.'

Anarchism is a natural philosophy for artists. It is literary, not scientific an emotional evangel, not a practical movement of men. With the spirit of the 18th century libertarians, who never saw industrial capitalism, the anarchists still think that human freedom can be achieved through the mere negation of restraint. They have no appreciation of the terrific problem of organization involved in revolutionizing the modern world. What the working-class has to accomplish is to reconstruct a tremendous and complex machine of social industry, so that besides producing an increased quantity of economic goods, it will distribute those goods to the people who produced them. They have to abolish the economic slavery involved in the present system, and until that is accomplished any conflicting ideal of freedom is a superficial impertinence. That is what the anarchists, like the liberals, find it impossible to see.

So it is not a new thing for an honest and artistic apostle of anarchist rebellion to denounce "the march of the iron

battalions of the proletariat " as " nationalized," and " centralized," and all the other bad names for good organization. When Bob Minor tells us that Lenin and Trotsky have advanced their own salaries above the prevailing wage-scale, then we will begin to listen to these old complaints.

It is a new thing, however, for an anarchist to retail his criticisms of any proletarian movement to a capitalist news-paper which will use them, as he well knows, for an attack on all proletarian movements-socialist, anarchist or trade-unionist. And to understand this, we have to know another strange fact about Bob Minor. Just before he sailed for Russia he went down to Washington for a week, and there he fell under the spell of some strong men who had been inoculated with the Wilson virus. He came back to New York full of dark and mysterious intimations that the president of the United States was only waiting until he won the war, to put over a truly monumental program of world-wide economic democratization. Only a little while after that, we saw the men who had inoculated Bob Minor with this too pervasive malady, and they were already cured and completely disillusioned. But Bob was gone then. We had induced him to put down on paper, not for publication but just for a memorandum, this great budding faith of his which surprised us so much more in him than it would have in ourselves. We still have the memorandum, and it looks sick indeed in these days of the Grand Council of the Silk Hats of Democracy.

Bob Minor needs to come home and get arrested a little.

MAX EASTMAN.

THE LIBERATOR.

A Journal of Revolutionary Progress

Editors, Max Eastman

Crystal Eastman

Associate Editor, Floyd Dell Business Manager, Margaret Lane

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS :

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

Published monthly and copyright 1919, by the
LIBERATOR PUBLISHING CO., Inc.
84 'Union Square, East New York

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at New York City pending.

March, 1919 7

Anarchist Sabotage

(We are able to add this further word, in explanation of
the Lenin Interviews, from an d,nerican observer of
Russian affairs.)

B OB MINOR in his anti-Bolshevik articles in The World talks as if the Bolshevik revolution were originally brought about by Anarchist forces, and that these were gradually subdued by the machinations of Lenin, Trotsky & Co., who are now running a kind of highly centralized state Socialism. The facts are quite otherwise-and Bob ought to know it.

When he arrived in Petrograd in April, nearly six months after the inauguration of Bolshevism, he found the Anarchists in disgrace with the revolution. Originally a very small party, their ranks had been swelled by new converts from the riff-raff of the aristocracy, who took advantage of Anarchist theories and proceeded to confiscate pocket-books, overcoats, automobiles and empty palaces and residences. The Anarchists had as a result' got the name of being simply hoodlums and thieves. Their representatives in the Soviet acknowledged this disgrace publicly and pleaded that they be allowed to conduct their own " house-cleaning."

Meanwhile, however, the real as well as the fake anarchists conducted a campaign of sabotage against the reorganization of Russia under the Bolshevik regime. They stood for disintegration, ,pure and simple; they opposed everything that made for order and stability.

They made such a nuisance of themselves that they were finally ordered out of the houses which they had taken possession of and from which they were conducting their campaign of disruption, and in an early morning battle their " Black Guards" were defeated and driven out by the Red Guards.

Bob Minor was very much disturbed over this state of affairs. An Anarchist himself, he was being lodged at one of the government hotels by the Bolshevik Government. All he did during this whole period was to draw one anti-German cartoon for the Pravda. He spent his whole time worrying about the Anarchists.

He was ashamed of their conduct, and when an American friend who was returning home threatened to tell in America how the Anarchists had behaved, he pleaded with him not to do so. " Remember," he said, " that the Anarchists in the United States have supported the Bolsheviki. It wouldn't be fair to give Anarchists a black eye by telling how they behaved over here!"

At the same time he was spiritually out of sympathy with the expanding proletarian organization of Bolshevism, and that hostility has finally pushed him over definitely into the anti-Bolsheviki counter-revolutionary movement of sabotage.

His accusation against Bolshevism-that it is merely a disguise in which the bourgeoisie have returned once more to power-is a rehash of the propaganda which appeared day by day in the Anarchist papers of Petrograd. X.

A Letter from Bernard Shaw

E sent Bernard Shaw the Liberator containing an rr account of some " Adventures in Free Speech," which contained the news'that a man had spent four days in jail in Detroit for reading his book, " An Unsocial Socialist," in the street car. Here is his answer:

You must be reasonable: you cannot have glory and liberty at the same time.

But- neither can you have revolution and liberty at the same time. Liebknecht under the Kaiser was treated with extraordinary indulgence (only four years imprisonment for rank treason in the face of the enemy) compared with Americans who ventured to stick to the principles of George Washington (imprisonment for life!) ; and the revolution had just killed him, and treated Rosa Luxemberg as the Septembrists of the French Revolution treated the Princesse de Lamballe.

Four days for reading An Unsocial Socialist is a very lenient sentence. Think of what he would have got if he had been discovered reading the New Testament! G. B. S.

Drawn by William (yapper

"Before we help Russia, we must kill the Bolsheviki F'

Lenin and Wilson

By Max

SOCIALISM is a recognition by persons of democratic mind that the essential facts and forces of mass-history are economic rather than moral or political. The socialist philosopher continually strips off the idealistic disguises by which these facts and forces are shrouded and kept out of the consciousness of people. He seems a little diabolical, a little ironical and ruthless, for that reason, but it is the ruthlessness of intelligent love. He approaches the political and literary ideal-mongers in the way that a psycho-analytic physician approaches a neurotic patient. The physician seeks to uncover simple egotistic and sex motives beneath the over-elaborated ideas which occupy the consciousness of his patient; the socialist uncovers equally simple egotistic and economic motives under the grand langauge of politics and history.

It seems to me that in the art of repressing these motives into the unconscious, and building up ideological " disguise formations,'.' Woodrow Wilson excels any other statesman that ever was born. His speeches and writings are always on a plane so far above the ordinary prepossessions of men as to suggest the meditations of a God, and yet his conduct is shrewd and opportunistic in the extreme. The sharpest possible contrast to this unctious and. Victorian mode of speech is supplied by the few communications that have come from the socialist government in Russia. In them we have the language of concrete purposes. I like to think of a personal meeting between Wilson and Lenin as a result of this invitation to the Sea of Marmora, and I think of Wilson as typifying the bourgeois world in its state of false tension, exalted and all bound up as it is in " defense-mechanism," and of Lenin' as the kind but deadly-candid physician.

Assuming for the sake of brevity that a good deal of conversation has preceded, and the major " resistances " are broken down, we can imagine the physician saying: " I notice, Mr. Wilson, a very frequent recurrence of the word democracy in everything you say. There must be a reason for that. Would you tell me what first comes into your mind now when I saw the word democracy?"

WILSON : I may say that I think of the system which prevails in my own country.

LENIN: Ah, and according to the latest census reports practically all of the visible and tangible material of your country-the land as well as the things that are on it-belong to about ten, or at the most twenty per cent. of the people. Sixty-five per cent. of them, at least, possess only five per cent. of the country. Two per cent. of them possess over sixty per cent. Is that not correct?

W.: I believe that is according to the census.

L.: And your position and income have of course placed you for many years safely among the two per cent.?

Eastman

W.: It is true, I believe, that my income has been as generous as that, although I am not a man of great property. L.: And your social position?

W.: That also is secure.

L.: Now, is it not true that to possess the earth is to possess power upon the earth? Do not these people who own your country own the newspapers, and by that means, and by setting the standards of respectability and propriety, and so influencing the schools and the churches and centers of intercourse, do they not really control the minds of the people?

W.: In a large measure, undoubtedly.

L.: Could you not say then that, except for the purely formal privilege of voting-which by the way is still denied to many women and men of the black race-the majority of the people in your country really have their destinies con-trolled by a small minority?

W.: I cannot think that voting is a purely formal privilege, but I suppose the facts are substantially as you state them.

L.: It is a formal privilege, in so far as wealth means power and influence over the thoughts of people and over their wills, and that you have acknowledged is pretty far.

W.: I did acknowledge it.

L.: When you speak, then, of defending democracy against the " poison of Bolshevism," what you really mean is defending the substantial ascendancy of a small class-ten or at the most twenty per cent.-to which you belong. Is that not true?

W.: I have to confess that you make it seem true.

L.: Only because I insist upon considering the economic relations of men as the vital ones, and I refuse to disguise them with pleasant-sounding political names. For instance, you will notice that we speak of our system as a " dictator-ship of the proletariat." That is from the standpoint of ultimate ideals the very worst name we could give it. The sound is far worse than the fact. Our proletariat already includes more than ninety per cent. of the people, and our resolute purpose is that it shall very soon include them all. Nevertheless, we were convinced that the only way in which a real, or economic, democracy could be established, was for the people who work to take over the sovereign power, and let the other people, if they wanted to participate in the democracy, go to work. And we did not care to pretend that this procedure was any more delicate or gentle than it was, and so we did not call it a " Worker's Republic," or a " Super-Democracy " or a " New Freedom," or any of those eulogistic names such as your press might have supplied. We called it a " Dictatorship of the Proletariat."

W.: May I say that I think that was a diplomatic error?

L.: Yes, but it was a material truth, and it kept our

10 THE LIBERATOR

minds clear. And here I want to give you a little advice. Always call the things that you are doing, or that you have done, by the baser names, and save the eulogistic titles for the things that you are going to do. For instance, every time you are moved to utter the word democracy, suppose you take the trouble to say, " A system in which most every-body votes, but ten or twenty per cent. of the people own the property, and the rest are hired men." Then suppose you add these words, " And in spite of the voting, the pro-portion of property owners is growing smaller and their property greater." It will take you a good while to say all that, and maybe you will want to shorten it for ordinary purposes into some such phrase as " The dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie," or something like that. But even if you have to say over the whole thing-and you may of course say it to yourself-you will find it exceedingly hygienic. You will feel a certain let-down, a loosening of tension.

W.: May I not say that I experience something of that kind already?

L.: No doubt you do, and yet you have not even begun to get acquainted with- your unconscious motives yet. You would be shocked if I should tell you that you lied to us last January, when you invited us to this conference, would you not?

W.: I am not aware that I ever lied in my life.

L.: No, that is just it. If you were aware of it, you probably could not have done it. I think that is why your confreres at the peace table asked you to write us the Ietter. They are more conscious of their motives than you are. They " rationalize " less freely. Clemenceau, for instance, could never have brought himself to utter these words-I quote them from your letter-" It is not our purpose to favor or assist any one of the organized groups now contending for the leadership and guidance of Russia as against the others."

Only an American and a Puritan, I believe, could have done that. Do you realize that about ten days before you wrote those lines, you had spoken in a telegram to Congress of the necessity of combating " the poison of Bolshevism "? And have you reflected that at the very moment when those lines arrived in my hand, American soldiers, of whom you are the commander-in-chief, made an aggressive attack upon our soldiers in the vicinity of Archangel?

W.: Yes, that is true.

L.: And those soldiers were co-operating with a little army of one thousand Russians belonging to the Tchaikowsky faction. They could have had no other motive in attacking us, now that the other war is over, except to support that faction, could they?

W.: No, I confess they could not.

L.: Then either I must believe that you would murder Russian peasants for no purpose at all, or else that you lied to me when you said you had no wish to support one faction against the other. Is that not true?

W.: When you put it that way, I confess that I do not know what to say.

L.: Then why not just say the words that are true?

You and your Allied premiers, who favor the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie (modified by an annual suffrage) and who belong to the ten per cent. yourselves, instinctively went to the defense of the Russian ten per cent. against our Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Now that the patriotic war is over, however, you find for a variety of reasons, one of which is our excellent army, and another the strong movement of the proletariat in your own countries, that it will be better for you to save your resources for affairs nearer home. And so you have decided to try to bring about the dissolution, or at least the isolation, of the " poison of Bolshevism " by diplomatic means. Is that not the truth-somewhat indelicately expressed?

W.: I think you do me some injustice. I was really reluctant to join in the invasion of your territories. I knew that it was folly from a military point of view, that the idea of " reconstituting the eastern front " was mere camouflage for an attempt to overthrow your government.

L.: You knew that was camouflage, because somebody else was putting it up, but you must learn to pry under the camouflage that sets itself up automatically in your own mind. This sentence, for instance, in your invitation to me, contains just as much camouflage as that talk about reconstituting the eastern front, although it may be more unconscious: " It is clear to them [the Associated Governments] that the troubles and distrust of the Russian people will steadily increase, hunger and privation of every kind become more and more acute, more and more widespread, and more and more impossible to relieve unless order is re-stored, and normal conditions of labor, trade, and transportation once more created, and they are seekirrg some way in which to assist the Russian people to establish order."

Now is it actually true that you and your associated premiers are possessed by such a consuming zeal for the abstract ideal of " Order "? I don't believe you are. I noticed that after you invaded our territory, and we were compelled to inflict the death penalty for treason to maintain order, you denounced us as outlaws, although you employ the same penalty even for lesser crimes. The truth is that you want to overthrow our kind of order-the new order-and reestablish the old, and so you call our kind " disorder." Isn't that it?

W.: I suppose from your point of view-

L.: You practically admit it when you speak of restoring normal conditions of labor," etc. " Normal " of course, means customary-it means like your own. And do you realize that you have 22,696 millionaires in the United States, and that these twenty-two thousand people out of ro6,ooo,ooo actually own 271/4 per cent. of your country? To us that seems monstrously abnormal, and we are fighting against the establishment of such a diseased condition in our country. We confess that we would rather have a good deal of disorder, than such an order as that. Don't you think it is equally true that you and the associated premiers would rather have disorder, than the kind of order we are establishing, which would rob you of your millionaires and

March, 1919 11

your superior incomes and social positions? I think you will find some feeling like that in your unconscious mind underlying this really extraordinary preoccupation of your consciousness with so dry and abstract a thing as " Order."

W.: I must acknowledge that you interest me profoundly.

L.: It is because I am ,telling you about yourself. Let me read you now, in the light of this acquaintanceship with your unconscious, a sentence from your address at the University of Paris:

" By what you have said, Sir, of the theory of education which has been followed in France and which I have tried to promote in the United States, I am tempted to venture upon a favorite theme. I have always thought that the chief object of education was to awaken the spirit, and that, inasmuch as a literature whenever it has touched its great and higher notes was an expression of the spirit of mankind, the best induction into education was to feel the pulses of humanity which had beaten from age to age through the universities of men who had penetrated to the secrets of the human spirit."

Will you tell me just exactly what you meant by that sentence?

W.: Well, I may say that that was-er-that was-L.: " Bunk," shall we say?

W.: Yes, " bunk "-but useful, at the time.

L.: Perhaps we exaggerate a little in calling it bunk, but not any more than you did when you called it a thought. I merely wanted you to experience again the relief that comes with laying aside the grand sanctimonious bluff in which some. of your very ordinary acts are shrouded.

The time is growing late, and I have other patients coming, but I would like to take up one more point with you before our next meeting. Your consciousness seems to be very much occupied with the idea of Open Diplomacy. In-deed, I judge from the frequency of your pronouncements in that direction that you are of an extremely secretive nature. Is that true?

W.: I fear I must confess that I am. 1 find it impossible to confide my purposes even to Colonel House.

L.: I thought so. And is it not true that no President of the United States has ever before been so inaccessible to the public, or so uncommunicative to the press, or left his associates in the government so much in the dark as to what he was thinking about?

W.: Yes, it is true.

L.: And yet you deliver your message to Congress in person, do you not?

W.: Yes.

L.: Did you ever ask yourself why you adopted that innovation?

W.: No.

L.: I suspect you do it for the same reason that you talk in so exaggerated a fashion about Pitiless Publicity, and Open Covenants Openly Arrived At, and assert so fervently

that " Just a little exposure will settle most questions." It is symptomatic of your weakness-what we call in hysterical patients an "over-correction." You would experience an extraordinary feeling of relief, I believe, if the next time you are moved to some solemn utterance about Open Diplomacy, you should pronounce these words instead: " I am absolutely incapable of public candor."

W.: Again may I say that I already experience that relief.

L.: Yes. It is because those words express the real, the unconscious thought, that lies behind your excessive assertions to the contrary. And you can see from the relief you experienced, what a tremendous sigh of relaxation and joy would go up from the whole world if the peace conference should issue some morning a communique to the following effect :

" We can not give out the substance of our discussion of yesterday because it had nothing to do with Justice or Democracy or the Rights of Small Nations. We have built up a pretense that these abstract ideas are the sole pre-occupation of our thoughts, but when we get alone we simply can't keep ourselves keyed up to that plane, and we frequently fall to dickering about questions involving the prestige of our own nations and the distribution of the chances to make money."

W.: Such a pronouncement would be more informing than some of our communiques, I confess.

L.: Yes, of course. And yet it wouldn't be informing really, because everybody knows it already. Only they all feel constrained, just as you do, to ignore this knowledge, and suppress it out of their minds, so that they can keep on talking about abstract idealism all the time. This involves a terrible nervous strain, because there is always the fear that some real thing will poke its head up through this abstract talk, and that is why, although you wouldn't be telling anything in such a communique, it would be greeted by the attendant world with a sigh of pure joy.

And then after you had issued one or two such statements, clearly acknowledging the nature of what is being concealed, you would find that both you and the public would feel courageous enough to bear the exposure of the thing itself. And you could admit the press, as we did at Brest-Litovsk, and let everybody know just exactly what are the forces at play, and which one is winning, and why.

W.: Yes, I really felt a little jealous of your Mr. Trotsky on that occasion.

L.: You never admitted that before, even to yourself? W.: I dare say I never did.

L.: Well, we are progressing. Let us meet again, and next time don't think that it is necessary to get out the type-writer and write me a long letter about Justice and Order and the triumph of Righteousness and Normal Conditions of Labor. Just send a wire that things are getting bad, and you want to meet me somewhere on an island where the diplomacy can be open without anybody's overhearing it. I'll understand.

The Senate of the Dead

WHEN all was accomplished, the last courier of the living met the ambassador of the dead.

It was on a vast, grey meadow, and great oaks towered in the distance, unstirred, And thereunder, in., the calm of the ages that rest, and the silence of ages that wait, sat the solemn assizes of the dead.

Mighty as if hewn by the bolt from a mountain of the earth to be a signal reef in the sea, and armored with beaten steel, and bare in the legs, and bearded like• a rock surrounded by black pines was the ambassador of the dead.

And short like a mortar that fires red rockets in the storm, and slim-limbed like the runners who bear fierce tidings was the courier of the living who had come from afar with the crimson passports of his wounds and the flaming credentials, of glory.

Said the gigantic gatekeeper: " Who art thou, and what seek'st thou here? Peace?

'Tis not here, for this is not the goal, but just a longer stop on the way." And the courier of the living answered him quietly, as men answer a fellow wayfarer

about the road and the wherefore of their journey:

" My name is Karl Liebknecht, and I am from Germany, and I seek to see the faces of my comrades."

" Then come with me," spoke the great shade, and put his arm about the Newcomer,

and they walked across the grey grass that closed behind them untrampled. And the Newcomer discoursed with him tranquilly, unawed, equal to him, as strangers

are when they talk ere they know each other.

II.

SAID the one heavy in armour, whose brown Iegs were wound with the latchet of

the cothurnus and who bore upon his shoulder the great aegis of Greece,

Said he to the Newcomer: " I have been waiting for thee for twenty times one hun-

dred years, ever since we, who were to die, sent the call of freedom to thy-people. They came, tall and white and blond, the axe-bearers of the North, and with them,

we swore an oath on the volcano, by the sacred fire of the earth, that we should

all be free or all die.

now thou shalt meet them dead, the tall slaves of Germany with whom we defeated the legions in Lucania and Metapontus, and with whom I fell, each on his own sword, all freed of life, the great forger of chains. But tell me,

are they free now, the living of thy land?"

Newcomer Iooked deep into the sunken black eyes and answered: " Nay,
yet, but they shall be soon, for the bugles were still blowing, and it was

daylight when I left them. But who

embrace me, a hater of war?"

The Warrior kissed him on both cheeks and said: " Call me not captain, for I became a warrior out of the weariness of war. Call me comrade. My name is Spartacus."

And they walked along combing the silent grass with their feet, and the Thracian

III.

ANOTHER shade met them on the way; huge, gaunt, ungainly-a mighty column built up with the ruins of all the triumphal arches of the ages;

And he also put his arm about the Newcomer, and bent toward him, and his short black beard, still fragrant with the young winds of the great open spaces, brushed against the smooth cheek of the Newcomer, as he whispered:

" I knew of you, and I knew that you would come, too. Years and years before you were born, I was told of you by the men of your country who helped me to clean out the shame of my own.

And The

notl still you

uprising, and the great

By Arturo Giovannitti

You will meet them all here, but though they are dressed in blue, and wear brass buttons and medals and old junk, don't be shy of them, for they were regular) fellows, not professional swashbucklers. We hadn't yet learned at that time' to fight in overalls for Liberty.

They came from Germany seeking freedom, and they brought a lot of it with them.
But, say, are they free of their lords now? Do the people rule there?"

The Newcomer rested his head under the armpit of the big man and answered: " Not yet, but the Beast has been driven out of its lair, and the banners of the people are hoist beside the cross on the tall steeples. Lead me to my brothers, Master."

The smile broadened on the thick lips of the second shade. "Don't call me master,

for I never taught anybody anything over there. Call me Abe, for that is my

name, Abraham Lincoln. I wouldn't be surprised if you had heard of me." And as they proceeded, the Commoner held him close to his heart, father-like, and

laughed and chuckled quietly, happy.

IV.

THEN; as they drew nearer to the great oaks, above which was neither light #tor darkness, nor stars nor clouds, but the infinitude unencompassed even by color,

Another came forth, whose face was white with the passion of bounden speech. And the Newcomer saw him, and rushed to him, and they were locked in each other's

arms, and the silence of the holy place grew deeper because of the thousands)

of ears that listened.

"Father," cried the Newcomer, " Oh Father, I have come as you said; I have been true to your legacy, and died where you bade me remain, poor and hunted, and cursed and defeated, but not shamed.

But it was not the Monster that defeated me, Father; it was your comrades of
yesterday, they who polluted the earth with the stench of their treason,

They who tore down the old ikons from their niches but held the foul temple still sacred;

They who made of Liberty an ignoble mouthing of vulgar words and of Revolution a mere exchange of seats and clothes!

But I fought them, Father, I fought them with your words and my own bare hands, and the night is not yet, for the cannon still roared when I came."

Their tears mingled as they embraced tighter, the tears of strong men, the dreaded force loosened upon the world,

And the Old Man murmured as he kissed him upon the back of the head: "My boy . . . my boy . . . my son . . . , " and could say no more.

But the Commoner understood, for he had held a whole race of men on his knees, and he chuckled louder, tho' his hand was spread tight on his face.

AND now they were before the Silent Assembly that sat pleasantly under the oaks-thousands of men and women, serene and undisturbed;

And more of them came forth, and surrounded the Newcomer, and asked him what news be bore.

And among them was a frail, little woman, with shaggy hair and the beauty of the ravaged, generating earth firestamped upon her wan face;

And she also kissed him and said to her companions: "I shall introduce him, and. o you shall introduce ti s other, when She arrives. Yea, this is my privilege, for he did in Berlin when he died what I did in Paris on the day he was born."

The Newcomer stared at her mutely, and she understood his silent question and said: "They used to call me the Red Virgin, but I have borne thousands of children, and you are my best beloved. Don't call me comrade, call me mother. I tore down the Column Vendome and set the torch and the petrol to the

THE LIBERATOR

Elysee, but it was not to destroy, but to give more light to the feet of the people. My name is ... . "

But before she said it, he seized her hands that looked like withered lilies, her hands; that had lighted all the lamps on all the altars of love.

And he kissed upon their palms the stigmata of his own faith as he babbled like a child:

"I know your name, sweet mother-you are Louise Michel." VI.

THEN one by one she pointed them out to him, there in the vast multitude grown vaster because of his presence,

All those whose words he had hurled as spurting bombs in the night,

All those of whose graves he had made his trenches, who had died like him, by the rope of the kings and the faggots of the priests and the stones of the' blinded mobs;

And as she named them, they rose and smiled, and some raised up their right hand„ and others bowed lowly and knightly, and others stood up at attention like soldiers, but most kissed their fingers to him.

"This is Watt, called the Tyler, who rushed through the gates of London, with the artisans and husbandmen of England, and made the king kneel before the villeins. He was murdered like you, from behind.

This one, barefooted and ragged, is Masaniello, who assembled the councils of the rabble in the fishmarket of Naples, and made the holy emperor tremble, and the pope forget his curses and remember his prayers. He was murdered like you, from behind.

That hooded one there is Bruno, who sits between Prometheus and Lucifer, the third lighter of the unextinguishable fire, who blew out the candles of the temple that men might see the greater light of thought. He disappeared in his own incandescence, burned alive.

And this little man over here, with the blinking sore eyes, he saw farther than the course of the sun. He is jean Paul Marat, the head-surgeon of Liberty and friend of the people. He was stabbed to his heart, where his life was.

And that is John Brown, who reproclaimed the Gospel of Jesus through the muzzle of his western rifle, saying that the freedom of the black man was the black powder, and so of the white man also. He was hanged.

And that is Francisco Ferrer, the brother of Socrates, who was shot for teaching the youth the secrets of the gods; and next to him Katoku, who was strangled in a dungeon, and Tolstoi, who announced the second advent and died of loneliness in the unpassable circle of glory

And many more she mentioned and pointed out to him-all, save the one with the luminous face who sat in the middle;

Until, when her sweet task was done, she addressed them all and said:

"Fathers and mothers, and ye brothers and sisters, comrades all, this is Karl Liebknecht, who stood up in the storm alone, and alone wrecked an empire of hate that hundred armies could not break. Like all of us he was defeated in the end, but like all of its he died the death that is not extinction and saved the Idea. He has come to us. Shall he stay with us? Shall he live?"

And all the Senate of the Dead answered with one voice: "He shall live!"

VII.

THEN the One with the luminous face, after the acclaim was downed, arose and stretched out his hands and spoke at last, and said:

"For righteousness' sake he was persecuted, and for it he died, and because of these things it shall be done to him as it was promised;

And great shall be his reward in the kingdom of heaven, which is life everlasting in the invincible thought of mankind.

For he shall not be forgotten, and by the memory of the living he shall live eternally.

Yea, and all those who wait and believe shall never call him dead, for there he is only silent, having spoken his words, and he is only immobile there, having done all his tasks.

But when the day of resurrection comes upon the world, as it was foretold, and the day of the final deliverance,

He shall not be among the wise and the meek and the comforters who are invoked in the grey hour of anguish and doubt,

But he shall be rather among the heroes and the doers who are simply called out by the living in the bursting dawn of the deed, and hear and answer with a shout from the heart of the storm:

Here I am, My Comrades. I am not dead. I have been marching right along with you, by your side, towards the great source and the great estuary, and lo! ye• saw me not! "

Taking the Last Trench

Every reader of the dispatches from Berlin has noted that the struggle for power between the revolutionists and the bourgeois reformers has centered in battles to get and keep possession of the newspapers. That is the essence of twentieth century revolution-to wrest the great weapons of publicity from the control of the ruling class.

16 LIEBKNECHT DEAD

K ARL LIEBKNECHT is dead, yet he was never more alive than now, when his name is running like a wind through the world, blowing dead leaves before it.

It seems years since I met him in Berlin, in December, 1914. I see him vividly now-the lower half of his dark, round face pallid in the light of a green-shaded desk-lamp, his calm mouth with the bristling mustache high up under his nose, and his dark, gentle eyes. He seemed diffident-almost shy. His hand played restlessly with a paper-cutter as he talked, shortly, waiting for my questions. The two doors to his office were open on the corridor and the meeting-hall of the district Social-Democratic headquarters where he received me. Liebknecht did not seem to care who heard him, when he answered my question as to whether he still stuck by his uncompromising attitude of hostility to the Government. . .

" What else can a Socialist do?" he asked, simply.

That was it. Granted Socialist opposition to the capitalist state, which had plunged the world into a criminal war-granted that, what else could a Socialist do but fight it to the end?

Imperial Germany, with her disciplined industry, her iron armies, her feudal aristocracy-the carefully-fostered patriot-ism of her people, the cowardice and indecision of her popular leaders; these things one man, sole ambassador in the Reichstag of the lowest, the most powerless, the oppressed, set himself openly against. There were and are other revolutionary leaders in Germany, men and women who grappled uncompromisingly with Kaiserism; but Liebknecht was on a high place, in the sight of the world-and there, while all about him bent under the terrific pressure, Liebknecht fronted the formal might of the most highly-organized power on earth.

It is the truth that whoever dares to speak shall be heard. Liebknecht was heard. The Allied diplomats and moulders of public opinion heard, and called him " pro-Ally." The German Majority Social Democrats, the Kaiser Socialists, heard him, and expelled him from their ranks. And the German masses heard him-the German armies in the trenches, the German workers in the cannon-foundries, the landless Saxon peasants. Beyond the battle-line his voice reached, and French soldiers, with feelings in which nationalism and internationalism were for the moment hopelessly entangled, spoke from their hearts and said, " Liebknecht is the bravest man in the world."

We Socialists more or less hesitantly opposed the war in our own country. But imagine a nation ten times as well-organized, ten times as well-controlled, with a ruling class ten times as intelligent, and a public convinced that this was a War of National Defense. Remember what happened to

La Follette when he dared to stand against the War; then conceive, if you can, of a Socialist member of Congress, drafted as a private in the Army and subject to military law, who would have denounced the Government ten times as violently as La Follette did-and in the name, not of Democracy, but of the poorest workers. . . . That will give you an idea of what Liebknecht did. . . .

And the people heard-so that when finally the German Government could no longer endure the assaults of this spokesman for the world's workers, it did not dare to sentence him to more than four years' imprisonment. (Do you think if the workers of America displayed half as much interest in their own cause, that Tom Mooney would now be in jail? Not a day Not an hour!)

And when at lash the Revolution came, with the Kaiser Socialists half-timorously holding the wheel, the first thing done by the workers of Berlin was to set Karl Liebknecht free from prison. He must have known, as he was drawn in his flower-filled carriage through the shouting streets, that his hour was near. He must have known-when he cried to the throng from the balcony of the Russian EmbassW, the red flag floating over him, " The future belongs to the People! "-that for him there would be no future.

The People had made the Revolution. Like the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries in Russia, the Majority Social Democrats of Germany found the power thrust into their hands-not to surrender, but to take. Liebknecht knew that Scheidemann and Ebert would not dare to take the power for the People. He knew that the People must take the power for themselves. One tyranny had been destroyed-like a flash he pointed to another-a mightier, more deadly tyranny than one tawdry Kaiser and a handful of junkers--International Capitalism.

" Did the bourgeoisie while in power permit you to have a voice in the Government? No! Then the workers must not allow the bourgeoisie 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 shall 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..."

Thus spoke Liebknecht the first day he was released.

Suddenly the Allied capitalist press changed its tune. After all, this Liebknecht was a fanatic, a fool, and-a pro-German. The Kaiser Socialists, on the other hand, seemed

March, 1919 17

to be sensible people; they wanted to reestablish order-it was hinted that they might call in Allied troops to do it.

The German masses boiled-Spartacism spread among them like wild-fire. Finally the feeling burst into the flames of monster demonstrations, counter-demonstrations, clashes, insurrection... The Independent Social Democrats wavered, threw their lot finally with the Spartacides. Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and a devoted few put themselves at the head of this spontaneous rising of the German masses.

The Ebert-Scheidemann Government, true to its " moderate " Socialist nature, combined with the German middle-class, and called in troops to put down the workers' attempt to seize the power. Let me explain what these troops were; they were regiments from the Western front, who had re-treated in good order before the enemy-uncorrupted regiments, obedient to their officers, well-armed and still full of patriotic feelings. On that front there had been no fraternization; there had been no revolutionary propaganda-for the Allied forces in France were as rigidly watched for revolutionary Socialists as for German spies.

Nor were these regiments corrupted by the Spartacides. They had not been garrisoned in the industrial cities, but carefully insulated against propaganda by the military hierarchy who wished to restore the Kaiser to power eventually, and wanted to have the force to do it with. This force was loaned to the Majority Socialist Government, under direction of generals like Von Hindenburg; for before the counter-revolution can take place, the revolution must be destroyed.

Uncertain of its own following, the Ebert-Scheidemann Government was forced to accept the help of the Kaiser soldiers, and of the White Guards of Berlin, whom it armed and loosed upon the worker and soldier masses. And the Spartacide insurrection was crushed.

Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg and a few other leaders escaped, for the moment. They had work to do. A demonstration had been necessary-something to show the People that when it came to a real struggle between the classes for the power, the " moderate " Socialists would inevitably take the side of the bourgeoisie.

The elections to the National Assembly came on. For weeks-indeed, before the Spartacus uprising-Berlin had been plastered with little posters, which said: " Kill Liebknecht! " Vast masses of the workers and soldiers refused to vote. Sporadic strikes broke out, attacks on the polling-places. The Spartacides would not be satisfied with any-thing but proletarian dictatorship-they wanted no Constitu-

ent Assembly. * * * * *

And then one day the secret service of the Ebert-Scheidemann Government found Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, arrested them and took them to the Eden Hotel. There is little doubt that the Ebert-Scheidemann Government was as frightened of Liebknecht's popular support as the Kaiser's Government had been; the Majority Social Democrats did not want to kill Liebknecht.

But the word spread around the city-passed from mouth to mouth in the cafes, the clubs, the officers' schools, the banks... The mob began to gather-a white-collar mob, a mob of White Guards, of business men, students, the privileged, panicky at the thought of how near they had come to losing their property. They swarmed, thousands of them, to the Eden Hotel. Liebknecht was gone-taken to a prison outside the city; as he passed through the lobby well-dressed men had beaten him with their fists, and respectable ladies had spit in his face...

The mob around the Eden Hotel finally burst in, and raged through the place, howling for blood. (Yes, the same savage cruelty displayed by the New York Tribune when it commended the soldiers for attacking defenseless men and women at the Madison Square Garden meeting.) They found Rosa Luxemburg-a slight, plain, little woman with a limp. And her they beat to death, throwing her body into the canal. . . (As they lynched Frank Little in Montana.)

Liebknecht was taken in an automobile along the Charlottenberger Chaussee, through the Tiergarten. He was wounded, bruised, exhausted. His guards were trusted men-several Kaiser officers and a handful of soldiers who could be relied upon to serve their masters.

It appears that while going through the Tiergarten the automobile broke down, and Liebknecht and his guards had to get out. The official story is that Liebknecht tried to escape-to hide in the "bushes" of the Tiergarten, and that his guards shot him as he ran. Curiously enough, on that fairly busy thoroughfare no one was passing at the time...

Die Freiheit, the Independent Social Democrat paper, claimed that this was a lie-that Liebknecht had been simply murdered by his guards. But the autopsy showed that he was shot in the back...

Oh comrades, does that convince you? For years the ley fuega was a Government institution in Mexico-the law permitting the shooting of prisoners who tried to escape. Political prisoners in Mexico always tried to escape-at least that was what their guards said, when they brought back a limp body riddled with bullets. Surely there are German officers intelligent enough to know that if they are going to make up a story about the shooting of an escaping prisoner, they must he consistent enough to shoot him in the back...

* * * * •

The scene is very vivid to me. It is a day of grey clouds overhead, and slushy snow underfoot. Through the Brandenburger Tor goes the automobile-and the guards grin and shout to the soldiers in the machine. Liebknecht is taken ! Now for revenge !

Liebknecht sits in the middle of the back seat, with two grimly silent soldiers, one on each side of him, their rifles between their knees. The restless mutter of the great city comes to them, the rumor of insurrection dying away in the working-class quarters, a shot or two...

In the separate seats are two officers, with their revolvers handy. They are nervous, and look from side to side. There might be an attempt at rescue... In the front seat sits the chauffeur, a soldier, and beside him another officer, who leans back over the seat to talk vehemently, in a low tone, with the officer behind.

Down the long Chaussee the automobile is speeding now. Most of the trees in the Tiergarten stand gaunt and leafless. The snow beneath them is still trampled by insurrectionists who gathered there a few days before. Through the winter trees and shrubbery one can see far in every direction.

The officer in the front seat says, " Here?" The officer behind calls attention to a horse and wagon coming slowly along. The automobile speeds on. Finally the horse and wagon are quite gone behind them. In both directions there is not a human being in sight. The wide spaces of the park are empty.

" Stop!" says the officer in the front seat. The chauffeur obediently draws up beside the curb.

" Get down ! " Liebknecht, faintly surprised, but with a premonition of the end, rises and descends, and the soldiers with him. " What is it?" asks Liebknecht. " Why do we halt here?"

The soldiers look indifferent. One officer grins, the other is a little pale.

" We are going to do away with you," says the third, brutally. " God damn you!"

The officers draw away from him, and stand at a little distance. The soldiers place themselves at equal distance from the prisoner, one behind him, the other at one side.

Liebknecht turns so as to include both of them in the sweep of his vision.

" Comrades! " he begins, in a clear voice. " You-"

One of the officers deliberately levels his revolver, and shoots. Liebknecht spins round, clutching his throat. One of the soldiers calmly raises his rifle, and shoots. Liebknecht's head snaps forward, and he crumples down. . .

Something like that is how Liebknecht died.. .

He was killed by the international capitalist class, it is true. What else could be expected? But remember! Those whose hands are red with Liehknecht's blood and the blood of the German workers are the German Majority Social Democrats-the Kaiser Socialists-Ebert, Scheidemann and the rest-who put down the workers' insurrection with the help of the Kaiser soldiers, and paid for it with the lives of Liehknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.

As for the Kaiser Socialists, their victory has been their undoing. This last lesson was needed to show to what depths " moderate " Socialism can and will descend. I am sure that Karl Liebknecht knew what his death would mean, and was glad to pay so small a price for the victory of the German Revolution...

For within the next few months, as sure as Spring, the prophecy of Karl Liebknecht will come true.

" The future belongs to the Peoplel"

JOHN REED.

RUSSIA-1919

D ARK for such long and hopeless centuries, Suddenly light-light to the utmost ends-Revealing kin and comrades overseas, A world of friends.

But the light burned too strong, and the new league Of friends became first anxious, then afraid; And put on dubious masks and let intrigue

Ply its old trade.

Dark tales, black lies and sinister reports Blotted the glow for a few base concerns. Yet, 'neath a pall that smothers and distorts, Something still burns.

Something that lives in spite of those who spread A poisoned midnight vaster than before. That calls the dying and the almost dead

To a fresh war.

Something that wakes the spark in each devout Lover of truth, and keeps the torches bright. Once more, oh flaming hearts, burn blackness out. Let there be light!

Louis Untermeyer.

A DEAD SOLDIER

BADGES and brands! Go, strip his body bare; Go, furl the flags in every littered street, That there be left no symbol of defeat! Sun and the rains of April will prepare Clothing that will become his youth to wear.

This nakedness, this rigor, is more meet

Than all your drooping banners! Let him greet Without confusion God's impartial air.

He has become a citizen at last

Oft that Great Country that rebukes us yet In silent and austere neutrality.

We can be sure his happy feet have passed The unsentineled frontier, where men forget In brotherhood the world's Gethsemane.

Leslie Nelson Jennings. PIGEONS

WHITE against the roof-tops and black against the sky, Wheeling in squadrons, the pigeons fly . . . (Like deadly planes that hover over towns aflame-Like confetti flung from windows when the peace-

news came!)

0, why must I remember what I would forget? Why wheel my fancies in that weary circle yet? War and peace-peace and war-that is all I know! Shall I never see birds as I saw them long ago?

Floyd Dell.

The Mooney Congress

By Crystal Eastman

«S HALL we call for a general strike May 1st or July 4?

" Shall we abandon all political efforts, all attempts to influence governors, presidents and legislatures and resort direct to the economic weapon, or shall we give them one more chance by sending a committee to Washington and another to the California Legislature, and in case these efforts fail, resort to the strike on a date to be fixed here and now?

" Shall we strike for the release of all political and class-war prisoners, or shall we, as a matter of tactics, strike for the freedom of Mooney alone,-with the thought that once feeling our power we can use it for anything we want afterwards?"

These were the main questions fought out at the Mooney Congress in Chicago January t4-17. No one dared to doubt the wisdom of calling a general strike,-it was the date over which the "reds " and the "machine " wrangled. It was not the ultimate use of the economic weapon that the " conservatives " questioned, but the abandoning of all the old methods in the meantime.

From this it is clear that the most cautious conservative at the Mooney Congress was a radical,-would have been a " red " at any A. F. of L. Convention. And if you have heard that the conservative forces after a lively struggle captured the convention, remember that these words " radical " and " conservative" have no fixed meaning, they are comparative terms.

On Wednesday, the second day of the convention, two members of the Italian labor commission now in this country, Carlo Bozzi and Amilcare De Ambris-who had been invited by the officers of the Mooney Congress to attend, sent an extremely polite note, saying that they would wait in their hotel until " the right time for them to come." Immediately after the usual formal motion was made to " endorse their communication and invite them to attend as fraternal delegates," a dozen men were on their feet. The first to make himself heard was Turko, a blacksmith from Seattle. " I am an Italian," he cried, " I know! These men don't represent Italian labor. They represent the most imperialistic government in the world!" . . . Here his voice, all fired up for passionate speech, was drowned in the con-fusion of fifty or a hundred men asking for the floor. First to make any impression on the noise was Batt of Detroit, waving the January LIBERATOR over his head and shouting that he had some important information for the Convention. In five minutes of near-silence he read Trachtenberg's description of the Italian Mission.

" I guess," he concluded, " that mission represents the Italian labor movement about the way the -Gompers-Spargo-Russell Mission to Europe represented us! " Then more

confusion, and out of it suddenly R. F. Dunn, electrical worker, editor of the Butte Daily Bulletin, whose speech that morning had won him virtual leadership of the " radicals," moved an amendment to the motion, that " the officers immediately wire Eugene V. Debs asking him to address the convention." This was received with a roar of surprise and joy and relief, and was carried with only a scattering half dozen " noes." And then the original motion to admit the Italian Mission was firmly and unanimously voted down.

Just before the vote was taken I heard a despairing growl from the Irishman who had moved to welcome the mission-appealing to the Chair-"Ain't you gain' to give me a chance to answer them Guineas? "-meaning Turko, I suppose. But he was lost and forgotten, even by the Chair, in the glowing demonstration of intelligent class-consciousness which claimed Debs, the indicted Socialist, and rejected the emissaries of a great capitalist government, however disguised.

This was the great moment of the Convention. I tell it now because I want to make clear at the start that there were no conservatives at the Mooney Congress.

There were a few flowery words about Wilson from the Irish Chairman, Ed. Nolan, and a sentence or two in defense of July 4th, as the day we " threw off the yoke of England," and therefore a fitting day to strike,-this by John Fitzpatrick, candidate for mayor on the new Chicago Labor Party ticket,-also an Irishman. Otherwise not a bit of flag-waving that I can recall, at a convention held not three months after " our victorious armies forced Germany to her knees," in the greatest war of the world.

As for Gompers,-he might never have been horn. I don't think his name was mentioned except in two resolutions calling for his resignation, which of course were sup-pressed in committee. Yet this was a convention of delegates from A. F. of L. unions. Credentials from I. W. W. unions and Socialist party locals were not accepted. The Railroad Brotherhoods and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America were the only unions outside the A. F. of L. that were allowed representation.

How, then, could it be intelligent and class-conscious? Or if it was, why isn't every A. F. of L. convention intelligent and class-conscious?

The answer to that question goes to the heart of the trouble in the American labor movement. It is a matter of the basis and machinery of representation.

In scHool we used to study about " pure " democracy and " representative" democracy, but they never told us about representative democracy " once removed." An A. F. of L. Convention is a delegate body-made up of representatives from other delegate bodies. It represents the union rank and

20 THE LIBERATOR

file in much the same way that the United States Senate represented the people of the United States before we had direct election of senators. You remember, by special pro-vision of the wise fathers in 1796, who feared the Bolshevist tendencies of a lower house elected directly by the people, this popular body was to be checked by an upper house,-a senate, elected by the state legislatures, two from each state. After a century and a quarter, we found that this indirect method of representation gave us almost a fixed upper house, practically a " House of Lords," corporation lawyers who held office year after year, sometimes 20 or 25 years. And so at last, in 1913, we changed the Constitution to provide for " direct election of Senators."

Almost any system of representation can get into the control of a machine. The difference between an indirect and a direct system is that with the former the machine can never be dislodged, with the latter you can once in a while, by superhuman efforts at a time of great public indignation, Ioosen the clutch of the machine.

Local 97 of the United Garment Workers, for instance, elects a delegate every year to the annual convention of the Garment Workers' International. At that convention five delegates are elected to the Annual Convention of the A. F. of L.,-representative democracy once-removed, just like the old Senate.' But it is worse than that, for the constitutions of most of the Internationals provide that two of the five delegates must be the President and Secretary! There is machine control made absolutely permanent-fitted in and nailed down.

So it is easy to see why the Mooney Congress-delegates elected directly by local unions'-differed in temper and intelligence from an A. F. of L. Convention.

One further question bothered me: Why was it also so much more radical than the conventions of the various Internationals, where delegates are elected directly by local unions? These conventions, while far less reactionary than the A. F. of L., are still as a rule fairly conservative and " regular " bodies. The answer is that the organization heads (the " machine "), in the various trades organizations didn't consider the Mooney Congress important; the local union membership sent the delegate it wanted to send. Elections were not controlled and directed in the well-known ways. It was not, in the opinion of the trade-union leaders, a Congress which threatened or affected their position in any way. So they left it alone. And the Congress was something like a 'spontaneous expression of the organized workers of this country, the first gathering of its kind. Therein lies its significance.

If we want to determine the temper of the workers in America at this moment of hasty demobilization, increasing unemployment and continuing judicial oppression, and make a shrewd guess as to what will happen in the next five years,

'A few local unions, without national or international affiliations, send representatives direct to the A. F. of L. Also some of the Internationals provide for a formal referendum on delegates to an A. F. of L. convention, but nominations are made at the International convention so that the character of the delegation is determined there.

2 Only 148 out of 1182 delegates were sent by Central Labor Bodies and State Federations; the rest directly represented local unions.

the recent Mooney Congress is our laboratory-not the formal proceedings of the A. F. of L.

* * *

The Mooney case was such an old story. It was not easy to be excited about it any more. I felt, I think everybody felt, that when the Governor of California, under threat of a general strike last December, saved Mooney from hanging and condemned him to life imprisonment, he had taken the dramatic force out of the Mooney agitation and it would be impossible to revive it. But we reckoned without Edward D. Nolan, Secretary-Treasurer of the International Workers' Defense League. Nolan is the slender fighting Irishman with uplifted boyish face,, who presided over the Chicago Convention. As a determined labor leader, friend and co-worker of Mooney's, Nolan was arrested in the Preparedness Day affair-" indicted at my request without a single word of evidence," as District Attorney Fickert boasted in the hearing of Detective Matheson,-but never brought to trial. Nolan spent nine months in jail. He came out to find the San Francisco labor leaders, powerful but treacherous, silent on the Mooney case ; the A. F. of L. formally protesting about it but doing nothing. I guess he cursed them in his Irish heart and vowed he'd get his friends out, if he had to reorganize the American labor movement to do it. Nolan had not been out of jail an hour before he became the driving spirit and directing genius of the International Workers' Defense League. This organization which has the backing of 54 local unions and Central Bodies of the San Francisco Bay District, has had full charge of the defense. Its organizers have gone up and down the land from coast to coast, addressing local unions, Central Bodies, iVlass meetings, and every sort of working-class gathering, raising money and rousing public opinion for the Mooney case, and finally calling into existence this stormy congress of 1,200 delegates which voted to organize a general strike on July 4, 1919, if Mooney is not granted freedom or a new trial before that date.

It was a great achievement. You couldn't blame them-Nolan and Johannsen and Patterson and the other organizers-for their pride in it, for their belief that the Convention was theirs, for their determination that it should not get out of their hands, that when its work was done (the work which they had created it for-the freeing of Mooney) it should adjourn and go home, and under no circumstances take action on the burning questions of the day, lest its express object should be endangered and the power and prestige of the I. W. D. L. be lessened. You can under-stand that. It is a rare organizing genius who can see the child of his dreams, perfected by his thought and labor for a certain task, seized by destiny for another-even if a greater-purpose, and see it with equanimity.

It was that inevitable organization point-of-view around which the conflict raged at Chicago. When Dunn, the

s An " old story," only if you do not know the details. Send for "Justice and Labor in the Mooney Case" compiled by E. B. Morton if you want to read a story of criminal prosecution more ingenious ana fascinating than the Dreyfus case. Price, 15 cents. Order from the International Workers' Defense League, 307 Russ Building, San Francisco, Cal.

March, I919 21

revolutionary editor of the Butte Daily Bulletin, said in his first speech, " There seems to be some danger of this defense of Mooney ceasing to be a principle and be-coming an industry," I don't think that he meant any ugly insinuation. He meant to criticize that inevitable anxious care with which people guard the existence of the things they have created, or with which they are identified, or upon which their livelihood and position depend. Many delegates came there with a great shining hope that this Mooney congress might be the beginning of the Revolution in America; others wanted the strike called to demand the freeing of all political and class-war prisoners; others, the ablest group, wanted to make it the beginning of labor organization on industrial lines. Opposed to these half-articulate demands of the delegates was the hot determination of the "machine" that nothing should be mentioned-let

alone acted upon-at the convention except the Mooney case. This conflict of purpose was evident during every moment of the convention. Watchfulness, fear, suspicion on both sides.

"We got you here-by God! you've got to do what we want, or organize a convention of your own ! This Convention will adjourn the minute the Mooney case is disposed of "-from the organizers.

" We're here-1,200 strong-the first really representative gathering of American labor. It's a great and terrible moment in the history of the world. We've got the right to take any action we want to. And anyhow, nothing on God's earth will make us adjourn without demanding 'hands off Russia,' and ' freedom of all political prisoners ' "-from thr delegates.

Which side won? Well, I think it was fifty-fifty. Briefly, this is what happened. In the first battle, over the admission of I. W. W. and Socialist Party delegates, the organization won, but it meant the exclusion of only 8 or to men, and no change in the temper of the Convention. I heard that 38 out of the 40 Seattle delegates carried both cards; when excluded as representing I. W. W. unions they offered their A. F. of L. cards, and were admitted. But they kept the red cards in their pockets and the I. W. W. spirit in their hearts, As for Socialist party delegates, they were excluded -but I heard of none going home. Apparently all who came on were also trades union delegates, and as such were admitted. So the first contest which the so-called " conserva-

tives" won was over a principle, not a reality. All the thoughtful "reds" were glad of this technical exclusion of " red" delegates, because it left clear in the public mind the fact that a gathering of " regular " trade union delegates had taken extremely radical action.

The next great battle-over the Italian mission, with the sudden test vote on Debs, already described-was a shouting victory for the revolutionary delegates present. That was on Wednesday, the second day. Thursday was a day of general speech-making, waiting for the Resolutions Committee, marking time. Friday morning's session began with the reading of the Mooney resolution from the platform by Anton Johannsen, and that precipitated the third contest. The Committee resolution was briefly this:

1st. That an effort be made to secure legislation in California which will result in the granting of new trials to Thomas Mooney and Warren K. Billings, such legislation now pending before the California Legislature.

and. That a committee be appointed to proceed to Washington in a final effort to•secure Federal Intervention in the Mooney case, as had been recommended in two separate reports filed by officials of the United States Government, therrhy removing the Mooney case from the jurisdiction of the California Courts, and placing it under control of the Federal Courts.

3rd. That the entire labor movement of the United States he requested to proceed with the taking of a vote on the question of a general strike to commence July 4th, 1919,

" Sorry F can't make a place for you. But you see a soldier gets much of his compensation in glory and in the thought that he has done his duty."

22 THE LIBERATOR

should Mooney's release not be received by that date, and to remain in full force and effect until new trials are granted or liberty is restored to Thomas Mooney and Warren K. Billings.

A four-hour debate followed. Concerning the first point nobody seemed to care, although little faith was expressed as to success with the California legislature. On the calling of a General Strike all were agreed,-that's what they had come for, to a man. The date-July 4th-was a disappointment to the Western delegates. Many came from unions which had already taken a strike vote for December 9th and were holding it in abeyance. To them July 4th seemed too many months away. In the West they seem sure of the success of the strike. As Hunter of New Mexico expressed it, " When Mr. Capitalist crosses the Mississippi after this strike is called, he'll have to grease his own hand-car! "

On the other hand, the Committee argued for time to inform the rank and file in the East, time to organize, and they were supported by some of the wisest from both groups, and from East and West. For instance, Jim Lansbury, representing 18,ooo boiler makers of Seattle, said " I've had the pleasure of sticking two $1,000 bills through the bars of Tom Mooney's cell from the Boiler Makers of Seattle. We voted 8 to 1 to go out on December 9th, and that vote holds. I tell you, the Pacific Coast would go out tomorrow. But the East is different. We've got to organize and it takes time to do it. I'm for July 4th."

The strongest argument for May 1st as opposed to July

Drawn by Joseph Pass

Kate Greenhaughl, one of the Seattle
"Reds"

4th was made by Kate Greenhaughl of Seattle, an able Socialist spell-binder, one of the " wild " ones.

" What is holding us back when the case of Mooney has gone round the world? " she asked. . . . " If we were ready for a general strike on December 9th to keep Mooney from hanging, why wait till July 4th to call a strike for his freedom? . . . July 4th is too late. . . . Demobilization will have taken place-the country will be full of unemployed-the employers will have months and months to prepare. . . . And July 4th is the Masters' day-it is the day when your Masters set you free to celebrate. . . . Why start a strike on a day Iike that? Why stop work on the one day in the year when you're allowed to stop work? . . . May 1st is the Independence Day of Labor-July 4th is a national day-May 1st is an International Day. . . . Why should we wait? . . . This is the only civilized country in the world where the prison doors are still swinging in for political prisoners now that the war is ended ! "

There was reason as well as poetry in the choice of May 1st; it might have carried if Kate Greenhaughl had made her points and sat down, and if she had not been followed by other spell-binders who got up to make a point, but became intoxicated by the chance to make a speech, until the delegates were weary and in a mood to do what the Committee suggested.

The clash over dates brought out the fireworks, but the fundamental division of practical policy that morning was on the second clause of the Resolution,-sending a Committee to Washington to try for Federal intervention as a preliminary to calling the strike.

The practical, and it seemed to me superficial, argument for leaving this measure in, was strongly put by Johannsen, speaking for the Resolutions Committee. " The idea of the Committee," he said, " is that we should go to Washington with the threat of the General Strike to give us power. It's true that there is only one law for the working-maneconomic power. But we must use the agency of the government when we can. After all, Densmore, a government agent, was responsible for the most valuable document in the entire Defense Campaign, and who knows whether Woodrow Wilson has played his last card in the Mooney case? Who knows whether William B. Wilson has played his last card? We don't want to strike for fun! We don't want to strike if we don't have to."

The practical and at the same time profound argument for resorting to the economic weapon directly, without any further parleying with Presidents and Congresses and legislatures, was made by Dunn, who moved to strike out the clause about sending a Committee to Washington. Dunn, who spoke seldom and always spoke quietly and briefly,-getting the attention of the delegates at any time as soon as they could see he wanted to speak,-was unusually quiet and brief in this argument: " We've been at this two years. We've exhausted every legal means. No further consideration is going to be given the case through legal channels,

March, 1919 23

we know it. We must use our money not for lobbying but for organization. I understand the A. F. of L. maintains a Iobby at Washington-let them take up the legal end. Not one cent of our money should be spent in appealing to the legislative bodies of this country. We need all our time and all our money to organize a general strike."

The finest speeches at the convention were made in sup-port of this non-compromise position. I remember especially Charles Nicholson, General Executive Board member of the Machinists' International, who said he spoke for his whole official family and for a union of 300,000 members. He not only spoke for direct resort to the strike, recalling the threatened railroad strike three years ago and its immediate result in legislation, but strongly suggested continuing the strike for the sake of the 8-hour day. " You talk about prisons," he said, " but do you know that conditions in prison are often better than outside? When you go be-hind prison bars, by God, you get the 8-hour day! But out-side how many of you do? Strike, call a general strike by all means, and when you strike don't go back at least until you've got the 8-hour day."

And there was R. T. Sims, the colored brother from the Municipal janitors Union of Chicago. He spoke that morning against the waste and compromise of sending a commission to Washington. They made him stand on a chair, and there was a special friendly warmth in the applause with which they welcomed him. Sims was one of the older delegates. He looked like a tired janitor, especially his feet. And despite the warmth of his welcome, I felt a little sorry for him at first, as he stood rather unsteadily on the chair facing the great crowd of his white brothers. But when he began to speak I could see that he was a master. First he told the story of the two farmers and the mad dog. The mad dog rushed for one farmer, but the farmer grabbed a pitchfork and met the dog with that and killed him. Then the other farmer who owned the dog came running up, and saw that his dog was dead, and wrung his hands and cried, " Oh dear! oh dear, dear! Why didn't you knock him on the head with the butt end of your pitchfork? Why didn't you go for him with the other end of your fork? " "Well," said the first farmer, "Why in the name of hell didn't the son of a gun go for me with the other end?"

" No," Sims went on, "it's not commissions-it's not lobbies-but the strong arm of labor, and labor alone, that will win this fight. It is not publicity we want; it is action. I have no faith in their Washington. I have no faith in their Constitutions, but I have faith in labor." Sims was the only one who spoke of the unorganized; he said he believed when the time came " thousands that never carried a card will strike too. . , . I come from a small union, but I feel that I represent my race, and I want to say that 12,000,000 negroes will be lined up on the right side." His own simple earnestness and sincerity made you for a moment believe his prophecy. And then he dedicated himself, his own life, in a few honest words,-" I have been behind

prison bars, I'm ready to go again. I'm ready to die in this fight if necessary,"-and sat down.

So the strongest and sanest, it seemed to me, both of those who spoke in the debate that morning, and of those whom I talked with afterwards, were opposed to the Washington lobby.

And they were right. Nothing could be devised which would deflect money and energy and enthusiasm away from the business of organizing a general strike better than maintaining five leaders in Washington to try for federal intervention. It sounds practical but it is profoundly impractical. It is true that the threat of a strike may force federal intervention. But the threat of a strike will be taken much more seriously-and lead much more surely and directly to federal intervention-if those in charge of making that threat come true, turn their backs on Washington and quietly get down to business. The presence of a lobby won't make Washington aware of the reality of the threatened strike. The total absence of a lobby-the complete cessation of all appeals and requests and arguments and resolutions and delegations-may.

On this point, however, as well as the date, the "organization" had its way. The Mooney resolution went through as presented. However, it was a close vote, and many agreed that a vote early in the debate would have gone the other way, that many who were worn out by speech-making, and hungry, voted for the Committee's Resolution as the line of least resistance.

On the matter of Russia and political prisoners, the Committee was wise enough by the fourth day to see' that they must concede something. Mild resolutions involving no action, asking for the withdrawal of American troops from Russia, and the freeing of political and industrial prisoners and conscientious objectors were presented by the Resolutions Committee on Friday afternoon, following the Mooney Resolution, and carried almost without debate. This was in a sense a victory for the " reds "-but nothing to boast of.

Following this, after two or three perfunctory Committee reports, the reading of the names of the Federal intervention committee, and a word of thanks to'the Chicago Federation of Labor, the Congress was suddenly adjourned. This was the real "coup " of the organizers, the only thing one cannot forgive them. To call 1,182 delegates to a Congress and adjourn them before they wanted to adjourn, before they had made any provision for a second Congress, for perpetuating and developing their new representative machinery,-that was ruthless, unnecessary, shortsighted. The International Workers Defense League, a local California organization, calls into existence a national Congress, first of its kind in American labor history. It might be expected that the I. W. D. L. would then sink itself and merge into a new nationally representative organization, growing out of the Congress. But no! Back into the bottle goes the genie. Back home go the delegates, leaving the whole future in the hands of the I. W. D. L., as before.

24 THE LIBERATOR

And yet perhaps it doesn't mat-ter. Labor in America has held a great Congress without so much as a by-your-leave from Samuel Gompers. It has voted a general strike in complete defiance of the A. F. of L. and all the sacred labor-contracts which it has sworn to uphold. That is a blow at craft unionism stronger than any other that could be struck.

The most intelligent, perhaps the most important, resolution of the whole convention-calling for the appointment of a Committee to carry on the educational propaganda necessary " to reorganize the rank and file of the American labor movement on an industrial basis as a reflection of the industrial character of production," was ruled out by the Committee as " foreign to the call of this convention." If opened up for discussion, this practical plan of action would have carried the convention. But after all, a general strike is a general strike. If Ed. Nolan and his organizers leave the Wash-

ington lobby to its own devices, and set out now to prepare the rank and file for that strike vote-if they can put it over on July 4th, all will be forgiven. A successful general strike will be the beginning of the breakup of craft unionism.

Perhaps, as Dunn said to me, " we'll skip over the stage of industrial-unionism here, in America." 'We were talking over the Convention and its abrupt ending on Friday. I had asked him what he thought of some of the leaders.

" Oh, they're all anarchists, that's the trouble,-metaphysicians. And they can justify everything they do, be-cause they don't hold with group action anyhow."

" You call them anarchists. What are you? " I asked.

" I don't know what I am. I don't call myself anything. But I'll tell you what I think is going to happen, and then you can call me anything you like. Craft-unionism is out of date, it's too late for industrial-unionism,-mass action is the only thing-mass action."

" What do you mean? How will it come? "

" Well, unemployment will increase, there'll be starvation, and some day the banks will fail, and the people will come pouring out into the streets, and the revolution will start."

" Do you think it's going to come with violence and blood-shed""

" That depends on how much the privileged class resists," he said quietly.

And this man looks as little like an agitator as-well, as Lenin does. He is strong and thick-set, with a powerful close-cropped head and a big neck, and stern bulging eyes.

He's an electrical worker by trade-now editor of the Butte Daily Bulletin, a paper owned by the Metal Trades Council of Butte. He's a member of the Montana State Legislature. And he was the one man to whom that turbulent thousand-voiced Congress of labor would stop and listen-quietly, as though they were learning-whenever he decided to speak.

During the last day's session at Chicago a telegram came announcing the decision of the Seattle Ship Workers to go out on January 21st. On the way home news reached us of the New York Waist Makers' vote to strike. A few days later came the victory of the Amalgamated-an outlaw union, cast off to die by the A. F. of L. five years ago, quietly winning the 44-hour week for 250,000 clothing workers! And now the textile-workers of Lawrence, the silk-weavers of Paterson, the miners of Butte, come forward to make industrial history again. These strikes are symptoms, just as the Mooney Congress was, of a new spirit in American labor. Where does it come from?

Everybody knows. It is no secret. Vandenbergh, a young painter and paper-hanger from Minneapolis, expressed it when he said good-by to us in Chicago:

" It's the Russian comrades who are doing it-it's the Bolsheviki. Their spirit is creeping all over the earth .. . like a,prairie fire . . . when it's all burned out the new grass will grow-I'm going back to tell my kids the Bolsheviki won!"

"Gompers carries his point," says a newspaper.

The Peace that Passeth

Understanding

A Fantasy by John Reed

Scene: The Salon de l'Horloge in the Faith d'Orsay, Paris-meeting-place of the Peace Conference. At back a heavily-ornate mantel of white marble, surmounted by a Clock, above which rises the marble statue of a woman holding a torch; by some called " Victory," by others " Liberty," "Enlightenment," "Prohibition," etc. The Clock is fifty years slow.

The dialogue is carried on by each Delegate in his native tongue-but this presents no difficulties, as all understand one another perfectly.

During the action of the play incidental music may be provided, consisting of patriotic airs played softly.

Discovered: Seated at the Peace Table, President Wilson, Premiers Clemenceau, Lloyd-George and Orlando, and Baron Makino, the Japanese Delegate. As the curtain rises there is general laughter, in which Orlando does not join.

WILSON. I had no idea the lower classes were so extensive . . . . That explains my speech at Turin. I said, " The industrial workers will dictate the peace terms . . ." (Renewed mirth. Orlando looks sour.)

ORLANDO (gloomily). Corpo di Bacco! Yes. You put me in a hell of a fix.* I was forced to suppress that speech. We almost had a revolution ! You must remember that the Italian workingmen are not educated-we have no Samuel Gompers . . .

LLOYD-GEORGE (to Orlando). Oh t say, old cock ! Don't take yourself so seriously. They're always talking Revolution-in England, too-but so long as we can keep them voting . . .

CLEMENCEAU (to Wilson, with Gallic charm). Saperlotte ! What a man ! And that League of Nations-quelle idee! At first I thought you some sort of Henri Ford .. . Who but you could have explained that Balance of Power and the League of Nations are identical?

WILSON. Yes, yes . . . May I not insist that it is the phrase we must strive to attain? The advertising business is very highly developed at home . . .

MAKINO (with Oriental suavity). Banzai! All the same Open Door in China.

WILSON (modestly). A trifling achievement. Why in America, my second campaign was won by the phrase, " He kept us out of war." (General hilarity.)

ORLANDO (pounding the table). Per die)! That's what we need in Italy! CouIdn't you make another trip explaining that Italian treaty the Bolsheviki published?

LLOYD-GEORGE (briskly). Well, gentlemen, I am re-

"Inferno di into ftxo-Trana.

luctant to interrupt this pleasant diversion, but I suggest that we get to work on what our American colleague calls " the solemn and responsible task of establishing the peace of Europe and the world." (Laughter.) I don't want to be late for the Folies Bergeres; going to the theater is another method of government which we have learned from Mr. Wilson. (He bows to the President).

CLEMENCEAU (taking his place at the head of the table). The Peace Conference will now come to order. Let the room he searched.

(The Delegates look under the table, behind curtains, tapestries, pictures, and the statue above the Clock. Orlando emerges first from beneath the table, holding the Serbian Delegate by the ear.)

ORLANDO (severely). What are you doing here? Don't you realize that this is the Peace Conference?

SERBIAN DELEGATE. But we fought in the war. ORLANDO. That was war! This is peace! (The Serbian Delegate is ejected.)

(Clemenceau drags from behind the Clock the Belgian Delegate.)

CLEMENCEAU (shaking him). Eavesdropping again, eh? How many times must you be told that this is a private affair?

BELGIAN DELEGATE. But the War was about us, wasn't it?

CLEMENCEAU. War? War? Don't you know that the War is over? (The Belgian Delegate is ejected.)

(Concealed in the folds of tapestry Makino discovers the Tcheko-Slovak Delegate.)

MAKINO (indignantly). Once more and you'll be de-recognized !

TCHEKO-SLOVAK DELEGATE. But the Fourteen Points-

MAKINO. They have not yet been interpreted. Run along now back to Siberia and shoot Bolsheviki until you're sent for! (The Tcheko-Slovak Delegate is ejected.)

(Lloyd-George appears, grasping the Rumanian Delegate by the collar.)

RUMANIAN DELEGATE. But you promised us Transylvania !

LLOYD-GEORGE (testily). In the Wilsonian sense! In the Wilsonian sense! (The Rumanian Delegate is ejected,)

(During this time Wilson is in the fire-place, thrusting up the chimney with a poker. Three persons come rattling down, covered with soot. As they are seized by the Delegates and brought forward, they can be identified as the Armenian Delegate, the Yugo-Slav delegate, and the Polish Delegate.)

28 THE LIBERATOR

ARMENIAN DELEGATE. We thought the independence of Armenia-

WILsoN (firmly). May I suggest that the Conference take note of the ingratitude of this person? At this very moment we are raising a Relief Fund in the United 'States!

ORLANDO (to the Yugo-Slav). What do you mean, butting in here?

YUGO-SLAV DELEGATE. But thousands of our people fought in the Italian Army.

ORLANDO. Well, what more do you want?

CLEMENCEAU (to the Pole). You be careful, young man, or we'll take away your pianist and give you a flute-player!

(The Armenian, Yugo-Slav and Polish Delegates are ejected.)

MAKINO (to Wilson). I think somebody's calling you.

(Wilson crosses over and opens the window. A shrill clamor of Spanish voices from the Delegates of the Central American Republic can be heard.)

WILSON (loftily). We are here to see, in short, that the very foundations of this war are swept away . . . Those foundations were the aggression of great powers upon the small . . .

DELEGATES OF COLOMBIA, PANAMA, SAN SALVADOR, NICARAGUA, GUATEMALA, SANTO DOMINGO, etc. How about the taking of the Panama Canal? Why do the United States Marines control elections in Nicaragua? Why does the American Government disregard the decisions of the High Court which the American Government set up? Why did the United States abolish the Santo Domingan Republic and set up an American military dictatorship? Nicaraguan canal-route-Brown Brothers-United Fruit Company-etc., etc.

WILSON. Nothing less than the emancipation of the world . . , will accomplish peace. (Witte a noble gesture he sweeps the Latin-American Delegates off the sill and closes the windouw).

CLEMENCEAU (wiping the perspiration from his brow). The Peace Conference is now safe for Democracy!

WILSON. Select classes of men no longer direct the affairs of the world, but the fortunes of the world are now in the hands of the plain people! (Laughter.)

MAKINO. It is worth coming all the way from Japan just to hear him!

CLEMENCEAU. Now, gentlemen, before we get down to dismembering Germany, fixing the amount of the indemnity and stamping out Bolshevism, I should like to ask Mr. Wilson to interpret some of his Fourteen Points . . . Of course we know it's all right, but there is anxiety in certain quarters .. . Rothschild telephoned me this morning . . .

For instance, will our distinguished colleague explain how in hell* he proposes to get around Point One-Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private understandings of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view?

WILSON. Well, gentlemen, are we not " openly arriving?"

• Comment diablo-Trans.

Everybody knows that we're holding a Peace Conference . . And then the word " understanding "; that means some-thing people can understand. Assuredly it is not our intention to establish that kind of a peace! (Applause from all.)

LLOYD-GEORGE. Point Two has been bothering the Admiralty a bit-Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants. It sounded to us just a leetle pro-well, pro-any-nation-except England, if you catch my meaning . . .

WILSON. May I not call attenticn to the fact that Great Britain consists of England, Scotland and Wales? " International "-do you follow me? What could be more international than England, Scotland and Wales? (Cheers and hand-shaking among the Delegates, and especially among Lloyd-George.)

MAKINO. As to Point Three-The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers, and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance. You see-our interests in China-our position in the Pacific-

WILSON. Really elementary, my dear fellow. May I not direct attention to the innocuous phrase, " so far as possible?" You and I, Baron, are aware of the possibilities . . . And while we are upon this subject, consider Point Four-Ade-

quate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will reduce to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety. Why, do you think I slipped in " consistent with domestic safety? " (The applause is absolutely deafening.)

LLOYD-GEORGE. Mr. Wilson must make a lecture tour explaining who started the War!

CLEMENCEAU. Just to clarify Point Five-about the colonies, you know-

LLOYD-GEORGE AND MAKINO. Ah !

CLEMENCEAU. Exactly what does it mean? Free, open-minded and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions the interests of the population concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the Government whose title is to be determined. Of course I take it that this does not apply to Chinamen or niggers . . .

WILSON. I think an exception might be made with regard to the negroid races and those Oriental peoples who are " in-capable of self-government," as we say at home . . .

MAKING. " Incapable of self-government "-what does that mean?

WILSON. It is the polite term for nations with large natural resources and no army or navy.

ORLANDO. Chinamen and niggers, eh? Well now-there's Albania . . .

CLEMENCEAU. Isn't there some doubt about the-erorigin of the Albanians? The lost Hittites? Were they not a slightly tan-colored people?

MAKINO. Or perhaps the Mongol invasions of antiquity . . . You were speaking of Chinamen . .

March, 1919 29

WILSON. I'or the purposes of the Peace Conference, may

we not regard the Albanians as Mongolian Hittites? LLOYD-GEORGE (doubtfully). But the Irish-

WILSON (thoughtfully). The Irish vote in New York

is not despicable. If I were to run for a third term-LLOYD-GEORGE. The Irish are very literal.

WILSON (brightening). May I be permitted to point out the idealistic phrase, " the population concerned "? 'What is the " population concerned " in the case of Ireland? The English, naturally-are very much concerned, too!

LLOYD-GEORGE (admiringly). If I had only been brought up as a professor !

WILSON. At this point allow me to call your attention to the fact that the United States is also accumulating a fewer-shall we say " adopted children "? I have accommodated you gentlemen as regards negroids and Orientals; it is only fair that you permit me to add to the list our Latin-Americans.. .

CLEMENCEAU. By all means take your greasers. THE OTHERS. Certainly, with pleasure.

MAKINO (diffidently). A delicate question, but one full of interest to my Government-

LLOYD-GEORGE. And mine-

MAKINO. The German colonies-in the Pacific-CLEMENCEAU. And in Africa-

LLOYD-GEORGE (coldly). German colonies in Africa?

Really, you must be mistaken. I don't recall any . . . MAKING. Our troops captured a place called Kiau-Chao. CLEMENCEAU. But that is in China, isn't it?

MVIAKINO (blandly). Oh no-in Germany.

WILSON. Gentlemen, we cannot return to the old ways. I have made definite statements-that is, definite for 'me. For instance, I have said, " No nation shall be robbed . . . because the irresponsible rulers of a single country have themselves done deep and abominable wrong."

(All stare at him in astonishment.)

ORLANDO. But how do you propose to do it then? WILSON (softly, with a gentle smile). The League of

Nations . . . The League of Nations will take over the

German colonies.

LLOYD-GEORGE. Preposterous ! I refuse to accept-MAKINO. The Japanese Government will not withdraw-

WILSON. One moment, one moment, gentlemen! The League of Nations turns over the colonies to agents-I have coined a word, " mandatories." You are the mandatories-

LLOYD-GEORGE. Responsible to the League of Nations? Never !

WILSON. Only in a sense. It is a Wilsonism. The League of Nations lays down certain rules for the administration of these colonies. Every five hundred years the mandatories report to the League. We are the mandatoriesand we are the League of Nations!

(The Delegates embrace one another.)

MAKINO (to Lloyd-George). And the Pacific?

LLOYD-GEORGE. We English are a sporting race, Baron. Have you a set of dice?

(Immediately all produce dice.)'

LLOYD-GEORGE. Thank you, I prefer my own. MAKINO. I am used to mine, too.

(The telephone rings. Clemenceau answers.)

CLEMENCEAU (to Wilson). Gompers on the wire. He brings you greetings from King George, and wants to know what the Peace Conference has done about Labor.

(Wilson goes to the telephone.)

WILSON. Good afternoon, Samuel. I am as keenly aware, I believe, as anybody can be that the social structure rests upon the great working-classes of the world, and that those working-classes in several countries of the world, have, by their consciousness of community of interest, by their consciousness of community of spirit, done perhaps more than any other influence to establish a world opinion which is not of a nation, which is not of a continent, but is the opinion, one might say, of mankind. Cordially and sincerely yours, Woodrow Wilson. Please give that to the press. Good-bye. (He hangs up.)

LLOYD-GEORGE (looking at his watch). Can't we hurn• along, old dears? I've a dinner engagement with half a dozen kings.

CLEMENCEAU. Point Six is, you will admit, the most important of all. The one about Russia-

(Chorus of groans, snarls and epithets in four languages.) CLEMENCEAU (reading). " The evacuation of all Russian territory." Does that mean by the Germans?

WILSON. That is hardly the meaning of the phrase. It stands to reason that if the Germans withdraw, the Russians might invade Russia . . .

LLOYD-GEORGE. It means that Russia must be evacuated by everyone except foreigners and the Russian nobility.

CLEMENCEAU (continuing) ` -and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the in-dependent determination of her own political development and national policy." Surely you don't mean-

WILSON. Certainly not.

CLEMENCEAU (continuing) "-and assure her of a sincere welcome into the clutches-I beg your pardon, my mistake-into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing." Excuse me, but isn't there a little too much " independent determination " and " institutions of her own choosing " in the document?

WILSON. On the contrary. If you will note the present state of the public mind, I think you will realize that it is especially necessary at this time to repeat this formula as much as possible.

CLEMENCEAU (continuing) ' -and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she herself may need and may herself desire." Do I understand by that-?

MAKINO. The Omsk Government is already manufacturing vodka. So far as we can discover, Russia's only other

30 THE LIBERATOR

need seems to be a Tsar-and we're arranging that as speedily as we can.

CLEMENCEAU. I see. I thought perhaps-

`VILSON. Oh, no. May I not comment on the amateurish quality of European diplomacy? At home we think nothing of putting fifteen hundred people in jail for their opinions, and calling it free speech .. .

CLEMENCEAU (reading). " The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good-will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy." That sort of thing won't go down in France. We have billions in Russian bonds-

WILSON. May I call attention to the inexpensiveness of adjectives?

MAKINO. But there are a number of embarrassing nouns. What shall we do about Russia?

LLOYD-GEORGE. There is a flock of Grand Dukes out in the hall. Suppose we ask them in.

WILSON. It is inadvisable. One of them might be infected with Bolshevism-no one seems to be immune. Who knows that even we- (All shudder). If we learned the facts about Russia they might influence our judgment . . .

CLEMENCEAU. Let us pretend that Russia is divided among warring factions, and invite all of them to send representatives to a Conference at the headwaters of the Amazon-

WILSON (nodding). You are improving. " To confer with the representatives of the associated powers in the freest and frankest way."

ORLANDO. The Bolsheviki talk well . .

CLEMENCEAU. Let them talk. There's nobody to hear them at the headwaters of the Amazon !

WILSON. This is one case when diplomacy can " proceed frankly and in the public view."

ORLANDO. But what about the other factions? CLEMENCEAU (triumphantly). Why, we arc the other factions !

(The Clock strikes five.)

LLOYD-GEORGE (with a start). Dear me! Six points already. At this rate we'll have nothing to do three days from now-nothing but go home.

MAKINO (dreamily). I like Paris, too.

LLOYD-GEORGE. Just a word about Point Seven-Belgium, you know. That clause, " without any attempt to limit the sovereignty she enjoys." Isn't that a bit strong? Of course we can't permit-

WILSON. That is another matter for the League of Nations. That is what the League of Nations is for.

CLEMENCEAU. And Point Eight-Alsace-Lorraine. I hope you haven't any foolish ideas about "self-determination " in Alsace-Lorraine?

WILSON. Yes-for all except pro-Germans. CLEMENCEAU. But the language of the paragraph is open to misinterpretation. It might create a precedent. You know,

we intend to annex the Saar Valley, where there aren't any Frenchmen . . .

WILSON. Gentlemen, you seem to have overlooked the essential point-Point Fifteen, if I may be permitted the pun. I have covered it with such luxuriant verbiage that up to this moment no one in the world has discovered it. May I not call attention to the fact that nowhere in this program have I declared against the principle of annexation?

(Frantic enthusiasm.)

ORLANDO. And Point Nine-A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognized lines of nationality?

WILSON. You notice that I have not stated which nationality . .

LLOYD-GEORGE. I must be going. What's left? CLEMENCEAU. Only Austria-Hungary the Balkans, Turkey and Poland.

ORLANDO. Give them half an hour tomorrow.

MAKINO. May I suggest that our American colleague write the statement to the press?

LLOYD-GEORGE (to Makino). And while he's doing it, what do you say to a friendly settlement of the German possessions?

MAKINO. Charmed.

(Both take out their dice and while Wilson writes on a piece of paper, they throw.)

LLOYD-GEORGE. Pair o'• nines! Baby's got to have new socks! What's this for? The Caroline Islands?

MAKINO (with Oriental courtesy). The Carolinesl Come seven! Roll 'em down !

LLOYD-GEORGE (snapping his finger). Come on-papa's watching! Choo-choo!

MAKINO. Come a-running, honey! Oh you eleven-LLOYD-GEORGE. Yours, by Jingo! What'll it be now? Kiau-Chao?

MAKING. The Marshalls.

LLOYD-GEORGE. Marshalls it is ! Rattle them bones, boy!' (They play.)

WILSON. It's completed. Shall I read it? They assent.

WILSON (reading). " President Wilson won another moral victory in the Peace Conference today. In spite of ominous predictions, his earnestness and eloquence, sup-ported by the unselfish motives of the United States Government in entering the war, completely won over the representatives of the other powers. At present complete harmony reigns among the Delegates."

(At this moment the door opens and an attendant enters.) ATTENDANT. Telegram for Premier Orlando! Very urgent!

ORLANDO (opens it and reads slowly). " Revolution in Italy completely victorious. Rome in the hands of the Sovietti." (All are thunder-struck.)

(Enter attendant.)

ATTENDANT. Cablegram for President Wilson! Very urgent!

March, 1919 31

WILSON (takes it and reads slowly) . " You are impeached

for invading Russia without a declaration of war."

(While they are staring at each other, enter another at-

tendant.)

ATTENDANT. Telegram for Premier Lloyd-George! Very urgent!

LLOYD-GEORGE (reads). " Sylvia Pankhurst made Pre-

mier. Do not hurry home." (Enter a fourth attendant.) ATTENDANT. Cablegram for Baron Makino! Very

urgent!

MAKINO (reads). " Infuriated people, unable to get rice, have eaten the Mikado."

CLEMENCEAU (suddenly). Hark! (All listen. In the distance can be heard a confused and thunderous roar, which grows nearer, and resolves itself into a mighty chorus singing the" Carmagnole," the people of Paris marching on the Palais d'Orsay.)

ORLANDO. Does anyone know when the next train leaves?

MAKING. For where? (General silence.) LLOYD-GEORGE. I feel a hankering to live under a stable Government.

WILSON. May I not suggest that there is only one stable Government now-at Moscow?

CLEMENCEAU (brightening). I know Trotzky very well. I expelled him from France. . .

WILSON (thoughtfully). My man Edgar Sisson was very intimate with Lenin. . .

ORLANDO. Is there a back way out of this place? MAKINO. But we'll have to go to work!

WILSON (cheerfully). Let us not be prematurely disheartened. Words are words in all languages-and Russians are doubtless human-and I still retain my powers of speech.. .

(Exeunt in single file through the window. The clock strikes six.)

SLOW CURTAIN

Wouldn't it he a glorious April Fool if, !after fighting four years against the German
form of government,-all that the people of the Allied Countries get handed to them
is-the German form of government ?

Ireland and the British Elections

By Hannah Sheehy Slceffington

(Hannah Sheehy Skeffington is an Irish woman known to many revolutionary groups in America. She came here two years ago to tell the story of her husband's death,-Francis Sheehy Skeffington was shot in prison without trial after the Easter rebellion in 1916. She has a rare gift of simple eloquent speech and has made her own tragedy count not only in the fight for Irish freedom but in the fight against militarism everywhere. This article, written early in January, came through to THE LIBERATOR unopened by the Censor.)

T HAT the " Mother of Parliaments," as the British House of Commons describes itself, is moribund is the outstanding feature of the recent general election. It was a " snap " election purposely hastened on by Lloyd George in the hope (which has been realized) that he and his party would be triumphantly returned. The old House having sat long beyond its appointed time, its life prolonged artificially as a " war measure " had become hopelessly unrepresentative and fossilized. Lloyd George seized the happy moment of the armistice followed by " victory " jubilations to rush the election. His election platform was simple to baldness-" Hang the Kaiser," " Make the Germans Pay " and " Rapid Demobilization."

The Coalition romped home with an enormous majority. How can it be explained? The franchise had beLn consider-ably widened, extended to most men of twenty-one and to women over thirty. The franchise is still based on property in Great Britain, one of the many remnants of feudalism still surviving in that country. For the first time absent voters were allowed to vote, the soldiers and sailors on active service being accorded the privilege, while C. 0's were disfranchised. But the privilege was rendered nugatory in most cases by red tape and official chicanery. A very small percentage of soldiers and sailors used their votes, there being a general feeling of resentment among them at the " rushed " election. Many of them, owing to change of quarters, did not receive their voting papers in time to record their vote. In many cases the soldiers received merely .the paper with the names of the candidates without any guidance in the form of election addresses or literature as to who was who, while in many cases there was strong canvassing from the superior officers who put pressure on the men to vote Coalition. Result, indifference or hostility. Many soldiers refrained from voting, many deliberately spoiled the ballot-paper by writing across it " we want to go home " or some such device, while many elected their candidate for some entirely flippant reason, regarding the whole thing as a huge game-and perhaps they were not far wrong. One major, to my knowledge, voted for a candidate called " Kelly " because he " knew several decent fellows called Kelly."

It is estimated that only about sixty per cent of the entire voters recorded their vote. Never was such a " quiet " elec

tion. It might be described in Britain as a sullen affair. The women voters, however, seem to have exercised the new franchise pretty thoroughly-in fact, this has been called a woman's election. In most constituencies women were nearly thirty per cent of the electorate, while in Irish constituencies they were usually even more, reaching often fifty per cent. In Ireland there is a much larger average of women than men. In all cases women were eager to exercise their new privilege. Lloyd George bid openly for their favor and possibly many supported him under the mistaken impression that he was mainly responsible for the granting of the vote to them. The fact of the age limit, restricting women voters to thirty probably helped the Coalition, for older women, like older men, are more usually conservative in habit of mind. In Britain the women seem certainly (from whatever reason) to favor Coalition, while in Ireland they are predominantly Sinn Fein. Had the younger women possessed the vote in Ireland on the same basis as the younger men did Sinn Fein would have won still more seats-possibly eighty, instead of seventy-three-and would in all cases have greatly increased Sinn Fein majorities. If, as the French say, " ce qui femme veut Dieu veut " holds good it seems evident that Providence in Britain is Coalition, while Providence in Ireland favors an independent Republic.

Nothing can more clearly show the inherent differences between the two peoples than the result of this election which swings Britain to reaction and Toryism and Ireland to the opposite extreme, the subversion of constitutionalism. Ireland is more unanimous for Sinn Fein and a Republic than Britain is for Lloyd George and a dictatorship. And the largest party elected to the British Parliament after the Coalition is Sinn Fein, so that, as a wag has humorously put it, if the Coalition loses the confidence of the country the King will have to ask Mr. De Valera, the Sinn Fein leader, to form a ministry, as the head of the largest opposition party is expected by parliamentary procedure to do in case the government fails.

The House of Commons when it meets (probably in the end of February) will be shorn of many of its historic figures, the casualties on all sides being enormous. John Dillon and Tim Healy go into exile (the one involuntary, the other voluntary), with Liberals of the older school

March, 1919 33

(most of them former cabinet ministers), such as Mr. Asquith, Sir John Simon, Mr. McKenna, Mr. Runciman, Mr. Masterman, labor leaders such as Mr. Henderson, independents and pacifists (I. L. P.) like Philip Snowden, Ram-say McDonald, George Lansbury (editor of the Herald), Brailsford (author of " Steel and Gold "), Joseph King, the champion " questioner." Sixteen women candidates, many of the most notable women of the hour, ran-Mrs. Despard, the veteran Socialist and femininist, Christabel Pankhurst, Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, Mary MacArthur, but all were defeated. The only woman returned is the " rebel Countess," Constance de Marcievicz, the Sinn Fein leader, who fought under James Connolly in Easter week and who was condemned to be shot but given penal servitude instead. Constance Marcievicz, M. P., is now in Holloway Jail.

One thing is certain through all these changes and uncertainties and that is that English Liberalism which wider Gladstone and Campbell-Bannerman played a not unworthy role in the past is forever gone and, as far as the present generation is concerned, it is unlamented, for it lost by its abandonment of its own principles. And its chief executioner is Mr. Lloyd George, who is mainly responsible for its undermining and subsequent downfall.

The general result of this election will be to divert progressives from thoughts of political to thoughts of industrial or direct action. Already there are signs that organized labor may yet "exercise a veto more absolute than that of the House of Lords," the weapon of the general strike. People have discovered quick remedies and short-cuts during the war, and the demobilized soldier on his return will be apt to be-come impatient of Parliamentary tactics.

In fact signs are not wanting that Mr. Lloyd George may find his overwhelming majority an unwieldy white elephant, that his triumph is nominal rather than real and not like to be enduring. The extreme Tory wing will sway the councils df the government overmuch. It is probably owing to this consciousness that the opening of Parliament is being delayed on various pretexts.

But the chief lesson of the General Election is that Ireland has put her case for self-determination and has declared with a huge majority in favor of that principle, a principle to assert which the United States entered the war. This was the one issue on which the election was fought in Ireland, whether or not Ireland desired to remain within the British Empire. The noes have it. Even the province of Ulster has returned a majority in favor of self-determination. There is, in fact, a much larger minority against self-determination in Bohemia (thirty-five per cent) than in Ire-land. In Alsace-Lorraine, out of 19,000,000, 350,000 represent the Teutonic minority. In Bosnia there is a powerful i1-'lahommedan section numbering over one-third of the entire population. In Russian Poland there is but sixty-four per cent of Poles. Ireland with her seventy per cent Sinn Fein has therefore a stronger case for self-determination than any of these small nations.

Of the newly-elected Sinn Fein members forty are in Eng-

lish or Irish jails, mostly without trial, while about a dozen more are " on the run," wanted on various "sedition" charges. Two were arrested since election, Cathal Brugha, M. P. for Tipperary, for giving his name in Irish to the police, and Mr. William Sears, Mayo editor of the " Enniscorthy Echo," for an " inflammatory " speech. The Sinn Fein election di-rector was arrested in the middle of the election campaign and interned (without charge) in England, Sinn Fein election addresses and literature were seized by the police during the campaign, meetings to select candidates were in some cases dispersed by the police as " illegal assemblies," and Sinn Fein funerals have also recently been declared " illegal assemblies " by the authorities, while the whistling of certain airs has also caused arrests and people have even been taken up for " seditious dancing " and illegal " fishing in prohibited areas." 'West Cork has been declared a " prohibited area " and it is still necessary to obtain a passport to enter any part of it. Above six hundred men and women of all classes and creeds (countesses, university professors, shopkeepers, farmers, schoolboy scouts, ballad-singers, musicians, cartoonists, lawyers, poets, stonecutters, farmers, shop-girls, editors, printers) have been arrested and held on various charges. Recently Australian and Colonial soldiers have been put under arrest by the military police for wearing Sinn Fein badges, the jails through the country are full to overflowing, and in Bel-fast recently complaints were made that the ordinary criminals were being overcrowded owing to the inrush of " politicals." At Christmas under the leadership of Austin Stack, M. P. for Kerry, the " politicals " as a protest against the ill-treatment of one of their number, Sean Dolan, 17. A., took possession of one entire wing of the prison and " held up " the authorities for several days until certain demands were conceded by the government. On Jan. 5th, " Prisoners' Sunday " was celebrated throughout Ireland, over 300 meetings being held for the purpose of calling attention to the continued detention in prison of Sinn Feiners and to demand their release. Many have now been held in custody since May last.

In general once again the recent elections have shown that Ireland on social and economic questions is far ahead of Great Britain-as far ahead as both countries are behind the rest of Europe. In fact Ireland would certainly make a much better hand at governing Great Britain than Great Britain can ever make at governing Ireland. In many reforms Ireland has already led the way. Ireland disestablished the church fifty years ago while Britain talks about doing it-sometime. Ire-land abolished her feudal landlord system many years ago after a fierce agrarian agitation and is now free of the " squire-and-parson " incubus that Britain still grumbles about. The Irish University system is more democratic than the British, especially where women are concerned. British women, denied forty years ago medical degrees and training in their own country, had both freely granted by the Dublin college, and today the women still barred out from degrees in Oxford and Cambridge have those conferred on them by the Dublin University. Ireland recently defeated

34 THE LIBERATOR

the threat of conscription by a one-day strike when everyone " downed tools" throughout the land, and thus gave an object lesson to the rest of the world as to how militarism could be successfully resisted without resort to bloodshed or violence. And when, in 1916, Ireland proclaimed her re-public she was the first nation to establish by public proclamation absolute equality in citizenship to women and to men on the same basis. Since then Russia appears to have followed her example, but the democracies of Great Britain and thlk United States have not yet democratized themselves thus far. And now Ireland is the first to perceive the futility of Parliamentariansim by pledging her Sinn Fein members to a policy of " abstention " or strike, a policy which may ere long be taken up by other progressive parties. As a witty Irish writer puts it, just as Parnell and his followers helped to shake " the House " by attending it and obstructing business, so the new Sinn Fein party may help to " bring down the House "-by abstention. Most prophets give Lloyd George's Parliament from six months to a year of life. And after that-who knows?

* * * * *

Since the above was written the situation regarding de-mobilization has already reached an acute stage. One of 'Lloyd George's points for electors was " speedy demobilization," but now it appears that this promise was not intended to be taken literally, no more than the rest of the pro-gramme and now the chief obstacle to demobilization is the government machinery itself. France has already demobilized a large part of her army on a common sense and simple plan, namely, that those first called out should be the first disbanded. Britain seems to have adopted the opposite plan -if she can be said to have any, namely, that those last called should be the first sent home. The last men to be drafted for service were called " pivotal," it being asserted that these were almost indispensable. In some cases no doubt they were, but in many it was personal " pull " or political strategy which usually worked the miracle and made them " pivotal." In France such men were called " embusques." Having succeeded in keeping out as long as possible, these men by the same methods manage to be " recalled " as quickly as possible and their recall causes much discontent in the breasts of the older conscripts.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the men are beginning to take the matter into their own hands and to disregard red tape and Parliament in favor of direct action. And this is but- a sign that everywhere people are turning aside from the talking shops and seeking salvation outside of and over the heads of Parliament. The recent overwhelming victory of the Coalition, therefore, may mean in the end but a hastening of doom and dissolution.

(We add this letter from Dr. Maloney to bring the story of Ireland up to elate.)

D EAR MR. FLOYD DELL: I have just read your wonderful article on " Irish Freedom," and am sending it out to the

Irish papers for reproduction. You have probably noted that a Soviet Govt. has been declared in Belfast, the heart of that Ulster which drew its vital force from the Empire. You have also noted perhaps that the N. Y. World, Feb. 4, reports tanks and armored cars `en route' for Belfast to reassert Imperial dominion over the new Soviet. Carson has very low visibility just at present. General French (with Gough) will not hesitate to fight the common people of Belfast although he mutinied rather than march against the Ulster Bourgoisie in 1914. The Irish Republic has appealed to the soldiers of the British Army in Ire-land asking the soldiers to go home peacefully and pointing out that the interests of the soldiery and of the Irish people are identical and inseparable. The proclamation to the soldiers winds up thus: "You enlisted to fight for the freedom of the op-pressed. Your masters have placed you in Ireland where you are the greatest menace to that freedom. If in the name of freedom you must shoot, go home to Britain."

Congratulations and heartiest thanks for the most stimulating article on Ireland I have ever seen in the American Press.

Yours sincerely,

WILLIAM J. MALONEY.

Feb. 4, 1919.

And Jesus Said-

I N a full page press-advertisement under this title, a heart-rending plea is made for help to the suffering Armenians and Syrians, who have been " pitilessly murdered and barbarously deported " from the towns in which they lived.

" Deported ?" cries this eloquent appeal. " Yes, but what a euphemism for the most heartless and relentless cruelty. Deportation means the loss of home, business property, and every personal possession. It means being driven into desert places, forced to march at the point of the bayonet until strength is exhausted; it means being refused shelter, food, drink; it means being subjected to outrage and calculated cruelty."

And the signature at the bottom of this appeal is " Cleve-land H. Dodge, Treasurer."

Cleveland H. Dodge, of the Arizona Copper Trust, to protect whose profits 1500 American citizens were deported from Bisbee, Arizona, with " heartless and relentless cruelty," with " loss of home, business property, and every personal possession," were " refused shelter, food, drink," were " subjected to outrage and calculated cruelty " and were " driven into desert places," and left there, with the tacit approval of Cleveland H. Dodge, to root for them-selves.

The Return of the soldier

Truth About Breshkovsky

The

.36

HE saddest tragedy of the Russian Revolution is just

now being revealed to the American people, in the strange and pitiful ending to the splendid career of Katherine Breshkovsky, the Grandmother of the Revolution. The woman whom once all we American lovers of freedom honored as the heroic protagonist of Russia's toiling and suffering millions, is now being exhibited to us, by a propaganda lecture-bureau financed by John D. Rockefeller and Cleve-land H. Dodge, as the mouthpiece of the interventionists and reactionaries who are plotting to overthrow Russian liberty. This, if we are not to lose utterly our faith in human nature, is a transformation which we must try to understand.

The last time Breshkovskaia was in America she bore the weight of her fifty years of struggle with Czarism; she was old and worn, but unbroken in spirit, and undaunted by the grin prospect of new martyrdom that lay before her. For she was about to return to Russia to engage again in the struggle spoken of in that saying which summed up all her beliefs-" In struggle you shall obtain your rights." She went to face once more in her old age the deadly damp and cold of the Siberian swamps. And when that doom fell upon her, and she went that last time into her lonely exile, she was indeed as she seemed, the greatest figure of our world.

"In struggle you shall obtain your rights!" For fifty years Breshkovskaia had preached that gospel to the workingmen of Russia. " The land is yours-take it! " she had urged, with what seemed then a utopian confidence in the power and wisdom of the masses. " The factories are yours -take them and run them yourselves! " And though the Russian masses seemed slow of understanding, they were be-ginning to understand. . . . And the agonizing lessons of war quickened 'their understanding, until the vast population of Russia was uplifted with a belief in the actuality of such a revolutionary change. With that change before them, a ferment of discussion, of tactical maneuvering, of preparation, began ; Breshkovskaia's own party, the party of terror-ism, split definitely, and its two wings aligned themselves respectively with the idea of proletarian revolution and the idea of bourgeois reform-two ideas between which the destinies of the future were in contest. . . . But of all this immediate prelude to the Revolution, Breshkovskaia in her exile, forbidden to receive letters or newspapers, holding communication with the outside world only by occasional smuggled letters counselling courage and hope to her comrades-of all that was about to happen she could know nothing. until suddenly the crisis was precipitated, and Czar-ism fell with a great crash, and Breshkovskaia was welcomed home to Free Russia.

The triumphal entry of Breshkovskaia into Petrograd through streets packed to see the aged prophetess of Russian freedom, was an event in which all hearts were united. But

already, there had begun the new struggle, the bitter struggle between Revolutionists and Reformers, which was not to end until the workers did achieve their rights. While Breshkovskaia, from her suite in the Winter Palace, looked out over the Neva to the prison-fortress of Peter and Paul, in whose dungeons below the water's edge she had spent three years of her life in solitary confinement-while she re-membered the terrible past and rejoiced in the glorious present, already the regime of bourgeois reform was tottering to its fall.

Bourgeois reform was seeking some excuse to delay the putting into execution of the revolutionary program of land, bread and peace which was pressed insistently by that new power, the Soviets. Breshkovskaia was drawn into the struggle. Astute politicians represented to her that if the peasants were allowed to commence taking the land for them-selves without waiting for elaborate legal action, an economic and military catastrophe would occur. And so the veteran of the revolutionary struggle went before the peasants with a neiv gospel--a gospel of delay and moderation. She who had said, " Take the land-it is yours," was now urging them to wait until the land was given to them from above.

The peasants were surprised, to say the least. . . . The Russian people' do not worship personalities; their leaders are their servants. . . . The peasants said: " The dear little old lady does not understand." They continued to venerate her, but they ceased to listen to her with an attentive ear. They wanted the land.

But Breshkovskaia's fifty years of heroic service to the cause of the Revolution meant a certain power in politics. And the politicians seized upon and exploited it. " Wait till the Constituent Assembly!" became the cry of the re-formers, who meanwhile postponed the Assembly indefinitely. And so Breshkovskaia preached delay in taking hold of industry. Never a politician, with only the good of Russia at heart, she was not political-minded enough to perceive either the swift tendency of events toward working-class control or the way she was being used in a vain effort to block those tendencies. And so she expended the great force of her prestige in the support of delay-and delay-and delay.

Meanwhile the cry of " All power to the Soviets! " became stronger and more menacing.. Milukov, the great figure-head of bourgeois reform, had been swept out of power after his first political utterance; and soon the whole Lvoff ministry fell, and Kerensky took up his sorry task of trying to bridge with eloquence the chasm between the two forces. In his precarious state, he turned to Breshkovskaia. She still represented power-and he needed all the support he could get to steady his rickety position. So he came to her each morning as to a Sybil, asked her advice on affairs of state, and listened with profound respect to her pronouncements-then thanked her, told her that she was the Savior of Russia,

March, 1919 37

and went out tormentedly to face the insoluble problems that were already promising his downfall. . . . Breshkovskaia was seventy-three years old. After her magnificent entry into Petrograd she had seen, without knowing why, her power slip from her. The workers and peasants no longer even listened to her. She had been ignored by this new organization, the Soviet, passed by in their elections; she, who had worked for the Revolution for fifty years, was being shoved aside by new, unknown people, and cherished and respected only by Kerensky. . . . She came into her own again for a brief moment when, by Kerensky's appointment, she opened the Pre-Parliament. But the Pre-Parliament itself was the last gasp of bourgeois reform. It had barely started to talk when it was closed by the Red Guard. The Soviet had finally seized " all power," Kerensky had fled, and the regime of Lenine and Trotzky had begun.

Breshkovskaia fled into hiding. Not that there was any need for her to hide, but the Bolsheviki were Kerensky's enemies and therefore a bad lot. . . . And now begins a phase in the career of the old revolutionist which would be as comic as it is pathetic, were it not that it preceded and paved the way for the final stage of her spiritual debacle. With elaborate conspiratorial cunning she eluded imaginary assassins and secreted herself in mortal terror from the Soviet government, which meanwhile knew all about her movements, had promised her friends a guard to protect her if it were needed, a