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She belongs to the poultry yards of the Llano Co-operative Colony. All livestock, lands, tools, industries, etc., are collectively owned, democratically managed by those who work_ Equal wage, free hospital and doctor, equal rights, mothers' and old age allowance, equality of opportunity are established_ Rent and profit are abolished. The colony collectively owns hotel, store, theater, peanut butter factory, shoe shop, printshop, gardens, sawmill, potato dryer, butchershop, magazine, public open baths. Education and entertainment are free. Children are taught trades. Join your comrades NOW. Own your own job. Live the things you believe with comrades who believe as you do. Let your comrades in the colony tell you all about the success of their practical plan and about Co-operative Farms for those who want individual ownership with co-operative advantages. Write today.

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By Maxim Gorky

THE victors, who a short time ago, proclaimed to the whole world that they were destroying millions of men for the victory of justice and the happiness of all peoples, have now forced the conquered German people to accept the terms of an armistice which is ten times harder than the Brest-Litovsk peace and which threatens the Germans with inescapable hunger. From day to day the cynicism of the inhuman policy of the imperialists becomes clearer and threatens more and more openly the peoples of Europe with new wars and fresh bloodshed.

President Wilson, who yesterday was the eloquent champion of the freedom of peoples and the rights of democracy, is equipping a powerful army for the " Resto= ration of Order," in Revolutionary Russia, where the people have already realized their lawful right to take the power into their own hands and are striving with all their might to lay the foundation for a new political order. I will not deny that this constructive work has been preceded by an often unnecessary destruction. But I, more than anyone else, am justified and in a position to explain, that the cultural meta-morphosis which is going on under particularly difficult circumstances, and which calls for heroic exertions of strength, is now gradually taking on a form and a compass which has up to the present, been unknown in human history. This is not an exaggeration. But a short time ago an opponent of the Soviet government and still in many respects not in agreement with it, I can yet say, that in the future the historian, when judging the work which the Russian workers have accomplished in one year, will be able to feel nothing but admiration for the immensity of the present cultural activity. . . .

Is it because of the slight transgressions of the Russian Revolution against humanity, is it because of the lack of high-mindedness on the part of the Russian workmen towards their conquered class enemies, that the imperialists of Europe and America are taking the field against Revolutionary Russia? No, the case is not so beautiful or so idealistic as the papers of Europe, France, America and Japan represent it. The matter is much simpler. The imperialists of the three continents fear the operation of the new influences which may hinder the fortifying of political conditions and institutions that can strengthen their power over the wills of the people; conditions, in consequence of which a'smalI minority disposes of the wills and lives of the majority, that minority which evoked the senseless, bloody battles.

One would think that all sensible and h o n o r a b l e men must see clearly the hypocrisy and the stupidity of the foundations of the capitalist system. It seems as if this were the time to convince all honorable and thought-

ful men that capitalism has lost its constructive force and is a relic of the past, is a hindrance to the development of world culture, that it calls forth enmity between individuals, families, classes and nations and that the beautiful dream of the great brotherhood of nations cannot be accomplished as long as the irreconcilable struggle between labor and capital still survives. I do not deny the services of capital to the working portion of humanity, out of the flesh and blood of which it created the bases for a transition into a new, perfect and just order of society by means of Socialism. But now that the damnable war has disclosed the complete shabbiness, inhumanity and cynicism of the old system, now, its death sentence has been pronounced. We, Russians, a people without traditions and on that account bolder, more rebellious and less bound by the prejudices of the past, we have been the first to tread the path which leads to the destruction of the outworn conditions of capitalist society, and we are convinced that we have a claim on the help and sympathy. of the proletariat of the entire world, and also of those, who, even before the war, criticised sharply the present conditions of society.

If this criticism was honest, then all honorable men in Europe and America must recognize our right to shape our destiny in the manner we think necessary. If any of the intellectual workers take a true interest in the solving of the great social problem, they must protest against those who strive for the reestablishment of the old regime, who wish to destroy the Russian Revolution by the shedding of Russian blood, to subject Russia to their rule in order later-to exploit it as they exploited Turkey and other countries, and as they are now preparing to exploit Germany. This is the true wish of the imperialists. This is their sacred task.

The leader of the campaign against Russia is Wood-row Wilson. The torch of the Russian Revolution which throws its light over the entire world, is held firmly by the hand of Lenin. The proletariat and the intellectuals will choose which one represents their interests most nearly, the representative of the outworn, life-destroying minority rule, or the leader and teacher of new social ideals and emotions, who is the embodiment of the beautiful ideals of the workers -of freedom of labor among all peoples. . . .

Existing under the menace of conquest by the robbers, they proclaim to the workers and to honorable men in all the world: Follow us to a new life, for the creation of which we are working without sparing ourselves or any-thing or anyone else. For this we are working, erring and suffering with the eager hope of success, leaving to the just decision of history all our acts. Follow us in our struggle against the old order, in the work for a new form of life,. for the freedom and beauty of life.

THE LIaE1ATou, a monthly magazine, June, 1919. Twenty cents a copy, $2 a year. Vol. 2, No. 6, Serial No. 16. Published by The Liberator Publishing 0o., 34 Union Square, New York, N. Y. Application pending for entry as second class matter at the post office at New York, N. Y., under the Act of March, 3, 7879.

THE LIBERATOR

Vol. 2, No. 6 (Serial No. 16)

EDITORIALS

IF there had been no disinterested idealism introduced into the war by Woodrow Wilson, and the Allies had simply proceeded to " lick " Germany in a straightforward fashion, the terms imposed upon her would no doubt have been extremely severe. The victors would have taken away all of her non-European territory, and probably about a quarter of her European territory, reducing her empire from 1,236,-600 square miles to about 16o,ooo square miles, They would have robbed Germany of her navy, demolished her army, deprived her of the right to build a new navy or organize a new army, razed her principal fortifications to the ground, and prevented the rebuilding of them, emasculated her national stronghold, the Kiel Canal, taken a bloody vengeance upon some of her military and political leaders, stolen her marine cables, stolen her merchant marine, deprived her of the freedom of the seas, placed her under heavy economic disabilities, exacted money payments to the extreme limit of her productive ability over several generations, and united in a League or Alliance to perpetuate their ascendency and the subordination of the rest of the world. In other words, they would have reduced Germany from a first-class to a second-class power for all time. And the bulk of the advantage, both in territory and in world-control, would have gone to England. There is no doubt that some such cynical and irresponsible butchery of one empire in behalf of another would have been perpetrated, if it had not been for Woodrow 'Wilson's disinterested ideal-ism.

But that is just a summary of what has happened with Wilson presiding over the job. So what did his disinterested idealism amount to? It amounted to a heroic determination to surround himself and the general public with a blinding vapor of self-righteous emotion all the time that the job was being done. That determination he carried out. That is his contribution to history.

The International Class Struggle

I N this ultimate exposure of the piratical purpose at the heart of the war for democracy, how happy are all the revolutionists who oppose it-and how humbly penitent, if they ever failed or faltered for a moment in loyalty to the great truth that it was entrusted to them to know! Let

June, 1919

there be no more failure and no more faltering. These imperialistic pirates who have ripped open and mutilated the wounded body of the German nation after surrender, are at the same time engaged in the cold-blooded murder by starvation of hundreds of thousands of men and women and little children in the towns and cities of European Russia. They are starving them because that is the only way they can prevent the truth that has been demonstrated in Russia from becoming known to the whole world. And while they are starving them, they are supplying arms and ammunition and soldiers to the few remaining minions of the Czar and of Big Business to shoot them down. And they are raiding and slaughtering the people of Hungary in the same deliberate manner and for the same desperate purpose. Remember with what horror we read only a year ago that the Germans were " closing in on Petrograd " and " plunging toward Moscow " in violation of an armistice and of the rights of a defenseless nation? Remember how these Germans were played up in the papers as dishonorable robbers and butchers of men, until even some of us socialists who ought to have known better, were almost ready to enlist against them under the colors of the Allies? And now in the same columns of the same papers we read that the Allies are " closing in on Hungary," the Allies are " plunging toward Budapest," in violation of an armistice and of the rights of a defenseless nation. Do we have to be instructed that the Allied Governments, too, are dishonorable robbers and butchers of men? It is all very plain now even to the mind of a child. The war for democracy, the war that we who love the people of the world and care about their peace and freedom and happiness, have to wage, is the war between the Communist International and the League of Imperialist Nations. The line is so clearly and fearfully drawn that there can be no doubt and no confusion in the heart of any socialist any longer.

We cannot treat with these, the murderers of our comrades. We cannot send delegates to them to plead and persuade, to beg for amnesties for our prisoners, to pray for the incorporation of social reform measures in the constitution of their League of Nations, as the Berne conference did. It is time for all pleading and appealing and associating our-selves with these governments to cease. It is time for us, in every act of our organization and in every word from our press and our platforms, to wage the class war against them.

That is the reason why the entire Socialist Party of

i THE LIBERATOR

Italy, through its executive committee, has withdrawn from the old international which organized the Berne conference of Social Patriots, and affiliated itself with the third inter-national summoned by the Soviet Government in Moscow.

That is the reason why the Socialist party of Switzerland, although the Berne conference was held in their own capital, refused to send delegates to that conference.

That is why the Socialist parties of Serbia, Rumania, Denmark and Norway refused to send delegates to that conference.

That is why Loriot, the spokesman of the Left Wing of the French movement, denounced the Conference, saying:

" You have come together not for the purpose of finding a Socialist solution for the tragic problems that have followed in the wake of this greatest of all capitalist crimes, but for the purpose of finding some sort of justification for the governmental, nationalistic, chauvinistic nee-war-Socialism that flourished upon the ruins of the Socialist movement after the outbreak of the war.

"You are here, not in order to give expression to your determination to fulfill your Socialist ideals, but in order to document the agreement of the International with the policies of Wilson, the representative of American multi-millionaires.

" You have met, finally, and above all, to condemn the tremendous struggle for freedom that is spreading out from Russia all over Western Europe. . . ."

That is why the socialists of the Left Wing in almost every other country have their own organization and their own spokesmen and their own press, through which they have repudiated the Berne Congress and the old international which organized it.

And that is why at last, even in the United States, we have a Left Wing, with its own organization, and its own spokesmen, and its own press. We know that the international class struggle is being fought to a finish in Europe, with all the weapons and forces of propaganda that are available on either side. There is no middle ground left. Every thinking man and woman there is either for the revolution or against it. And every one here too. And we are for it, and we can not tolerate the silence of the official party in this the most critical hour in all the history of the revolutionary hopes of mankind.

The Last Excuse

THERE have been three pale ghosts of reasons advanced for Allied intervention in Russia: First, it was necessary to " reconstitute the eastern front " against Germany. Germany is vanquished, the eastern front is west of Poland, and this pale ghost is fled.

Second, it was necessary to " extricate the Tchecho-Slovaks from Siberia." The Tchecho-Slovaks have been offered free transportation home to their own country by the Soviet Government, and two thousand of them are in jail for refusing to fight the battles of the Allies. This ghost is making but rare appearances.

Third, it was necessary to re-establish " democracy," which had been overthrown in Russia when the Soviet government dissolved the Constituent Assembly. Now comes the news, in a letter from Maxim Litvinoff, that " the committee of the Constituent Assembly has proposed to the Soviet Government an alliance for joint action against Koltchak"

Thus vanishes the last pale ghost of a reason for invading Russia. But Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson and Clemenceau and the Mikado-champions of democracy, champions of the Tchecho-Slovaks, champions of an " eastern front " four thousand miles from the enemy, champions of any bundle of the old clothes of a dead pretense that will cover their naked imperialistic designs, continue to ship arms and ammunition and soldiers to Koltchak to do murder in support of the corrupt and bloody regime of the Czar.

An International Civic Federation

GOMPERS has crowned a brilliant career in the misguidance of labor by getting incorporated into the treaty of peace a provision for an International Civic Federation. It is to consist, first, of an annual conference of four representatives from each state, two from the government and one each from the employers and the workingmen-leaving labor in a safe minority of one to three. Then there is to be also an international labor office " to collect and distribute information throughout the world," and this is to be under a governing body consisting of twenty-four members, twelve representing the governments, six the employers and six the employes-leaving labor in a safe minority of six to eighteen. And these eighteen can reject any delegate that they don't like, so that if the workers of some country should ever happen to send up a real man, he wouldn't even be allowed to come in and make a noise, to say nothing of exercising an effective franchise. Intelligent working men will have no more to do with the International Civic Federation than they have had with the National one.

There is also included in this treaty a Labor Charter or Declaration of Principles, of which the eight hour day and equal pay for men and women are the only ones which have a definite meaning-and these are subject to " exceptions necessitated by differences of climate, habits and economic developments." Especially-we should say-habits. In other words these principles are to be adopted where the working-people have the strength to enforce them, and not where they haven't.

" The charter," says Sylvia Pankhurst in her valiant little Worker's Dreadnought, " bears a striking resemblance to that adopted by the Government Socialists at Berne. We should not be surprised by that fact; it is not a chance coincidence. The approved policy of all Government Socialists, and of the weaker reformist Liberals, is always to find out what the Government means to give and then to ask for that. . . . A poor programme, but all that the League of Nations has to offer the workers, to prevent them turning

June, 1919 7

to Bolshevik Socialism, which will make the workers the rulers of the world and its destiny."

Feminism

T O all true rebels it is understood that those who do not possess economic privilege or physical prowess must win liberty and the equal rights of life by some kind of militant solidarity. Therefore the hearts of rebels the world over have been with that small group of women fighting for the rights of their sex in Washington the last four years. They are the only Americans who kept up the banner of revolt throughout the reactionary hurricane of the patriotic war. They know that they will have to keep it up through all wars, and through peace and reconstruction-and through revolution too. For the right of women to be as free and as happy as men is a right not included under, and automatically provided by, any of the other conditions of democracy. It is a right that women, conscious of their sex and the problems of their sex, must imperiously take and establish for themselves.

With those revolutionists, therefore, who condemn the rebels of the Woman's Party as " fighting on a side issue," we have no sympathy. It is their own issue, but it is not by any means a side issue in the progress of mankind towards liberty.

We do think, however, that these women could deploy their forces in a way that would bring a more substantial and lasting victory to their own cause. They are spending their precious talents of organization and revolt in winning a place in the political government, an institution that is crumbling and whose power is of the past. And while they so brilliantly and beautifully assault this decaying fortress, the great forces of the future are assembling and gathering momentum, and they are missing the place of vantage in those forces.

The American labor movement is more anti-feminist than the American government. And it is the government of the future. Assuming that this future is not too distant, would it not be more far-sighted to seize a place of power in the American labor movement than in the senile and bankrupt institutions of the ruling minority that it will displace?

At a meeting of the famous strike committee of the " Seattle Revolution," I heard some of the men who lead the left wing of the American Federation of Labor talk about their wives.

" I want to ask the brothers here," said one of them, " if any of them thinks that, aside from what he might have done, his wife would have held out for another day even if we could have won our demands? "

"Nam!" was one answer. "Ask 'em what the women are good for anyway!" was another, which brought a derisive laugh, and settled the matter finally for a good many of those present. That was in a state in which women have enjoyed political citizenship for a number of years.

I recalled a speech I heard Bill Haywood deliver in the Paterson Silk Strike years ago, in which he told fifteen thou-

sand men and women assembled together in a meadow that somebody had suggested to him that they should send away the women and children and let the men continue the strike: " I say send away the men and children, and let the women continue the strike. You will be more likely to win it!"

In the conflict of these two attitudes in the labor and socialist movements the big battle of feminism is being fought. The battle at Washington, authentic and inspiring though it be, is little by comparison.

Some of the big generals are in the little battle.

Dreadful Bombs

A BOMB was mailed by some criminal patriot to Ex-Senator Hardwick of Georgia, one of the few " wilful men " who stood behind La Follette in the United States Senate throughout the war, a man who is about as near radical as a Senator can come. The bomb exploded in his house, injuring his wife, and blowing the hands off of a colored maid.

Some other criminal patriots, who are trying to get public opinion behind their own attempts to destroy radicals, read about it. " Fine idea! " they said. " Only it should be worked the other way. The bombs should be mailed to the reactionaries, and discovered in the Post Office. Then every-body's sense of security and decency will be outraged, and we can do anything to the reds we want to ! "

So a couple of dozen nice, respectable, delicate bombs were manufactured, wrapped like the one that went to Senator Hardwick, set up on a shelf in the Post Office,' and discovered. They were manufactured by a man so careful and so expert in chemistry and general mechanics, and the diabolical art of wrapping up packages in brown paper, that nothing Iike them for elegance and efficiency was ever seen. But at the same time the man who manufactured them and wrapped them up was such a blundering damned fool that he mailed them without enough postage to carry them through the mail! That is how they came to be " discovered."

They were addressed to all the people that a most ignorant and superficial outsider might think would be chosen by revolutionary labor as the ones to get rid of. They were not addressed to the people that revolutionary labor would like to get rid of. One was addressed, for instance, to the Immigration Commissioner, Frederic C. Howe-obviously in revenge for the deportation of I. W. W's. But everybody even remotely in touch with the matter knows that Fred Howe did everything in his power, short of resigning his office, to prevent those deportations.

Another strange thing is that two or three of these bombs did have the proper postage on them. The assassin must have been drunk or extravagant that morning. And these two or three have been rattling round the country quite a good deal, with several curious people taking a peek at them, but none of them has even so much as bit off a postmaster's finger. In one case we are told that the " mercury had so eaten into the detonating device " that the bomb was just

8 THE LIBERATOR

on the point of exploding when it was opened. In another we learn that the bomb was not opened at all and that it still resides in a room in one of the public buildings in San Francisco-the " mercury " gaily devouring the detonating device the while! A third bomb, being regurgitated through some obscure self-protective instinct from the maw of the Post Office, was returned according to its label• to Gimbel's Department Store, in New York, and there it fell into the hands of an old man who wrestled around with it for a while, and finally laid his teeth into it and got it open, with-out overthrowing the republic or even interrupting the tranquil flow of profits over the novelty counter.

We heard one of the gentlemen to whom the bombs were addressed remark that they seemed to be so nicely and charmingly constructed, that he thought he would go down with the additional postage and get his for a souvenir and emblem of his dangerousness to the cause of revolution.

Lenin the Communist

HERO-WORSHIP of Lenin is a very different thing from revolutionary socialism. And yet Lenin is in the position of leadership, and he not only leads, but in his mind and character he typifies the proletarian revolution-its scientific spirit, its abandonment of ideologies and stage-eloquence, its inflexible will, its simplicity, and courage, and generosity, and consecration. Therefore a slander against Lenin is an offense to all revolutionists, and it is surprising to find such a slander in Pearson's Magazine. Frank Harris is not a scientific socialist, but he is a good literary rebel, and he is enough the man of the world to know that this exceeding prig and little political Oscar 'Wilde portrayed in his May issue as " Lenin the Aristocrat," could not by any caprice of destiny have become the leader of a proletarian revolution.

Harris attributes his information to a man who says that he worked with Lenin in Switzerland, and knew him so well that Lenin intrusted him with complete power of attorney on his departure. And his information is-to put it briefly-that from insisting upon " Lily of the Valley " perfume, and changing his silk underwear some five times a day, to flirting with handsome Junker girls from Berlin, and despising the smell of the masses-Lenin has all the attributes of a smooth rich fatuous egotistical Russian noble snob with personal magnetism. The picture is so elaborately akin to the idea which certain infants and infantile hot-house spinsters and side-board ninny-whoops have of the nature of a " great man," that I almost think it is a sincere creation. I think Frank Harris interviewed a man who really did think he had been intimate with Lenin, and if the interview had lasted a little longer he would probably have admitted that he is Lenin. I was on the trail of such a lunatic myself the other day, but by good luck I missed him and arrived instead at the Soviet Bureau, where I had the pleasure of showing Harris's article to a Russian Bolshevik, one of several in New York who actually worked with Lenin in Switzerland.

He was the organizer there of a Russian Workingmen's Union. It was not necessary to do this, because the article contained internal evidence that its statements were not true. For instance, this " intimate friend " says that he " had to translate many passages from Wilson's books for Lenin," whereas it is well known that Lenin reads, writes and speaks English with the utmost fluency. But it is interesting to have these facts from an authentic source.

Lenin was not of noble birth. He had no income. He lived, as Trotsky did in New York, on the small earnings of revolutionary writings and lectures. It was his principle never to sell anything to a capitalist paper, and he never did. When Bebel favored giving higher pay to editors than other Socialist workers, Lenin-an editor-opposed it. He lived in a simple house with his wife-also a veteran of the revolution-who acted as his secretary, and to whom he was altogether devoted. He worked at a plain uncovered table in an ordinary kitchen chair, and he was accessible to anybody who wanted advice. Indeed he would leave home and go any distance to explain a point-no matter how trivial-to any group that was working for the revolution. Unlike Plekhanoff, who dressed as a rich man and always lectured in evening clothes, Lenin wore the clothes of a workingman. He liked soft-collars and usually worked with his collar unbuttoned and no neck-tie (and no $i,ooo pearl in his neck-tie!) and like all men of great concentration he was " absent-minded " and did not always notice when his coat was torn or minus a couple of buttons.

My informant has known Lenin for fifteen years, and worked for his principles for twenty, but he admits that he doesn't know as much about Lenin's underwear as Frank Harris does.

What he does know about him accords with this story attributed to the members of the recent American Commission to Moscow. People are always trying to get Lenin to eat more food than is allotted to him as his share in the scheme of distribution, but he won't accept it. He saves what he has sometimes, however, and puts it away in a bureau drawer, and if somebody sneaks in and adds some-thing to it there, he is too preoccupied to notice the difference, and he eats all there is.

It was upon the question of militant organization that the Russian socialists split in the year 1903 into Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. Lenin wanted no members admitted who were not revolutionary socialists willing to work under the control of the central committee. He wanted the press controlled by the committee. Martov wanted to admit anybody who would declare himself a socialist. Plekhanov was with Lenin at that time. Trotsky tried to bring the factions together and Lenin attacked him. Lenin never cared how many or how few people he had with him. He didn't seem to notice it. He always stood to his principles, and although he seems today to be a master of revolutionary tactics, it is only because he never did anything, and never could do anything, to get people to follow him, except tell the truth and ex-plain it.

June, 1919 9

Events of May Day Popularizing the Constitution

ON May day of 1919 the American Socialist Movement received its baptism of blood. For many years May day on the continent of Europe has had more the character of a ceremonial sacrifice than a Sunday School picnic, and that has been one of the reasons for the more militant spirit of European Socialism. We shall now see this militant spirit arise in America.

In every case the blood was shed as a result of unprovoked aggression upon peaceful parades or assemblages of Socialists, or upon the offices of Socialist newspapers. Several thousand crimes were committed against socialists; none, according to the papers, were committed by socialists. Yet the unanimous conclusion arrived at on the day following by the papers as well as by the wise men at Washington, was " More Drastic Legislation Needed To Curb Reds."

Of course the result of this placing of Socialists and their papers beyond the protection of the law, will be that editors and others who have a certain amount of vigor and prudence will prepare to defend themselves against criminal marauders with lead-pipe and fire-arms. It seems unfortunate that a civilized government even though it is firmly in the control of capital, cannot summon up enough sporting-blood to give some elementary routine protection to both sides of this struggle.

We learn from one who helped to organize the Cleveland May Day parade that " every man who carried a red banner was a uniformed soldier from over the seas, and the man who planted the banner on the grand-stand, and resisted when he was ordered to drop it or take off his uniform, had seen four years of service and received eleven wounds in the ` war for democracy.' "

THE members of the National Security League announce a campaign to "popularize the constitution." They little know how popular the constitution has become since it was suspended for the duration of the war and after. American citizens were conscripted for service on foreign soil in violation of the constitution; the powers of Congress were taken over by Woodrow Wilson and by Committees of big business in violation of the constitution; American officers have accepted titles of nobility from the British king in violation of the constitution; anti-war agitators were denied the writ of Habeas Corpus -in violation of the constitution; conscientious objectors were tortured in prison in violation of the constitution; the I. W. W. was deprived of the rights of a defendant through a conspiracy between the Post Office and the Department of Justice in violation of the constitution; agitators of Bolshevism are being deported to Europe in violation of the constitution; Eugene Debs and hundreds of other social idealists are in jail in violation of the constitution; Woodrow Wilson is waging his private and personal war against Russia in violation of the constitution; Nlollie Stimer and her associates have been condemned to spend twenty years in prison for questioning the divine right of Woodrow Wilson to ship American citizens half way round the earth to be murdered in this war in violation of the constitution. The constitution is popular. It is more popular than it deserves to be. The National Security League has the rougher task of popularizing the dictatorship of a ruling class of less than ten percent of the people, who after perverting to their purposes all the other forms and safeguards of political democracy have at last laid violent hands on the constitution itself.

MAX EASTMAN.

Freedom of the Seas

May Day in Ft. Leavenworth

By a Socialist C. 0

WHILE Cleveland was having its fatal May Day demonstration and while other free American cities were engaged in bloody rioting and fighting between citizens and police, with soldiers pitching in on both sides and shavetail ex-officers going into "action " for the first time, the militant Socialists imprisoned in Fort Leavenworth were observing the international revolutionary Labor Day under U. S. military sanction.

The open air red flag parade was witnessed by a crowd of soldiers who offered no opposition but viewed it with apparent approbation. The one day stoppage of prison work by the celebrants met with the approval in advance of the prison authorities who made special arrangements to permit the rebel group to assemble and observe the day. Civilians and Q. M. sergeants and children on their way to school looked with amazement on the unprecedented prison scene as it unfolded itself behind the double lines of barbed wire surrounding the stockade-annex of the Disciplinary Barracks.

The sensational feature of the day that will make it a bright red memory for the amazed officers, the grinning soldiers and the triumphant laborites was this grand parade through " Wire City." It formed in front of the Bolsheviki Barracks, as the Socialist prison quarters are jocularly called, right after dinner. Red flags and banners were distributed among the 90 or 100 marchers. The winter hoods issued by the prison clothing department and lined with flaming red flannel were worn turned inside out. The covers of the Liberator bearing pictures of Lenine and Lincoln (Liebknecht's had been lost) were tied on brooms and borne aloft as sacred emblems. The Russians, as citizens of a bonafide revolutionary country, held the place of honor, leading the parade and chanting the Revolutionary Dead March and other Bolshevik songs. Then came Italian Socialists and Anarchists, American Socialists and aliens and Pacifists and, bringing up the rear, the handful of I. W. W.'s.

In and out between the stockade buildings the remarkable demonstration proceeded while sentries looked down dumb-struck from the watch-towers and the guards on duty within stood passively by. After the parade was half over, it re-versed itself so that the I. W. W., starting up their songs, led the rest of the procession until it disappeared within the Bolsheviki Barracks. One soldier was observed leaning out .of a window-the guard's barrack, waving a red ribbon. Many others cheered and applauded.

Suddenly the soldiers hushed and the deferential demeanor a soldier learns to display before his superiors indicated the appearance of officers on the scene. From the Bolsheviki Barracks came deafening cheers for the revolution, for Karl Marx, for Eugene Debs, for Lenine, Trotsky and Liebknecht. One of the " agitators " responsible in large part for arrangements went out and met a lieutenant-colonel, a captain,

a lieutenant, several corporals and a number of buck privates.

" This must be stopped. I feel that you men have abused the privilege I gave you," declared the senior officer. He was smilingly assured that there would be no more disturbance, since the parade was over and the rest of the program was chiefly speech-making. He was informed further that there had been no thought of abusing any privileges since permission had been given to " observe the day," and no May Day anywhere could be properly " observed " without red flags and a parade. The celebrators were so hilarious and also so completely satisfied with the success of their demonstration that they were content to let matters rest. Speeches were made, discussions went on and a general rejoicing was everywhere evident.

The program as posted on the bulletin board in the morning read (names omitted) :

9 a.m.

" The International," by all Revolutionists.

" Dead March," by Russian chorus.

Address: " Karl Marx," by

" The Red Flag," by all Reds.

12 noon.

Open Air Parade Through Wire City.

" Hold the Fort," by I. W. W. choir.

Address: " The First of May," by
" Stung Right," by all Reds.

6 p.m.

Open Air Singing Between No. 6 and No. 7 Barracks. I. W. W. vs. Socialist-Quoits Contest.

Address: " The American Way," by
Discussion of Revolutionary Methods.

2. 3. 4.

t. 2. 3. 4.

5. " The Marseillaise," by all Reds.

The panic of the officers caused the remainder of the singing to be omitted, and a delay in supper forced postponement of the Wobbly-Socialist horseshoe throwing contest, but the speaking gained in nerve and spirit, and as reports drifted in of the glad surprise with which the other prisoners heard of the affair and of the helpless consternation among the authorities who had to recognize that nothing unlawful had occur-red, the memorable day drew to a jubliant close.

Permission for the observance had been won by reminding the officials of similar permission granted to the Jews for commemorating Passover and the like, indulgence granted to Seventh Day Adventists and others. And it was not stretching the truth at all when the representatives of the militant Socialists said to the executive officer what all revolutionaries can proudly say: " The First of May, May Day, is the most sacred day in the year to us, as sacred as Passover to the Jews, as Christmas to the Christians, as the Fourth of July to nationalistic Americans. May Day is our international revolutionary memorial day."