Under the Cloak of
Patriotism

sinister interests are taking advantage of the war to crush the movements for larger liberty among the workers and the people.

The menace of these attacks to the future of liberty in America is not generally recognized, because the truth is not known.

The National Civil Liberties Bureau is publishing the facts in a series of pamphlets. A full set „rill be sent on receipt of 30c, single copies 3C.

Civil Liberties

The Issues

Why Freedom li afters, by Nor-man Angell.

Liberty in Wartime (The .situa-

tion in the U. S. in view of

English experience). by Alice

Edgerton.

Who Are the Traitors? (leaf-let).

Constitutional Rights in War-time (legal),

Free Speech and Free Press (extracts from the writings of statesmen and scholars).

Cases

The Outrage on Rev. Herbert S. Bigelow of Cincinnati (Oct-

ober 2k', 1917).

The `'Knights of Liberty" Mob. and the I. W. W. Prisoners at Tulsa. Okla. (Nov. 9. 1917).

The Case of the Christian Pacifists at Los Angeles, by Nor-man M. Thomas.

The Truth About the I. W. W. (Facts in relation to the present trial).

The Conviction of Kate Richards O'Hare,-and North Dakota Politics.

Liberty of Conscience

War's Heretics ((I plea for the conscientious objector), by Norman M. Thomas.

The Conscientious Objector in the United States (all facts to date).

Note:-These pamphlets deal solely with the protection of American liberties In war-time. They are not colored by any "ism" or propaganda.    

Cut this out and mail to

National Civil Liberties Bureau 70 Fifth Ave., New York City

full set

Send   to those checked

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'1'11E DRAMATIC WORKS OF
GERHART HAUPTMANN

[AUTHORIZED EDITION]

The life-labor of the greatest living dramatist is now available in a translation of which the London Times

says:

"The English reader will suffer little or no disadvantage from his inability to read Hauptmann in the original. . . The translations . -are quite masterly, and handle the complicated difficulties of Silesian and Berlin dialects, with all their gradations, in a manner showing excellent judgment and a tine sense of what is just and fitting in the use of language:.,.

ruder the editorship of Ludwig Lewisohu this
Incomparable contribution to stage literature is
presented in seven volumes, comprising 24 plays
and seven biographical and critical introduc-
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An interpretation, at once scientific and eloquent, of poetry in life, and its relation to the poetry in literature.

ENJOYMENT Of POETRY

By MAX EASTMAN Editor of The Liberator

Formerly Associate in Philosophy
at Columbia ytii'rrsity, Author of
"Child of the k1 rnaetons" and Other
Poctms, etc.

$1.25 Postpaid

Offered by Charles Scribner's
Sons through The Liberator
Book Shop.

In the

Heart of Russia

Alone!

S HE was a charming America. girl-and the love of adventure ran strong in her veins. So she left the land of moonflowe.rs and cherry blossoms, and traveled alone across the dreary, trackless Siberian steppes-into the grim and war-torn heart of Russia. And there she found-

But the remarkable things she found-the amazing experiences she had-you can read about in a tale that is like the incense burning in a great Russian cathedral.

Miss Amerikanka

By Olive Gilbreath

But you would never have had this story except for a fortunate circumstance. Olive Gilbreath herself \vent to China to he a bridesmaid-and then-on a strange impulse-through Siberia and Russia. And out of that trip grew this romance that started when the Chinese Express whirled through the desolate wilds of Siberia. It tells of Russian aristocracy from the inside-of a German intrigue and the tragedy that followed-of the strange, passionate love of an American girl and a simple-soiled Russian nobleman.

Get your copy at your bookseller's to-day, and lose yourself in the spell of this fascinating story.   $1.4o.

HARPER & BROTHERS, Established 1817

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Cornelia Barns Howard Brubaker K. R. Chamberlain Hugo Gellert Arturo Giovannitti Charles T. Hallinan Helen Keller

Ellen La Motte Robert Minor

John Reed Boardman Robinson Louis Untermeyer Charles W. Wood Art Young

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THE LIBERATOR

EDITOR, Max Eastman
MANAGING EDITOR, Crystal Eastman
ASSOCIATE EDITOR, Floyd Dell'

Published Monthly by the

L1BERATOR PUBLISHING CO., INC.

34 Union Square East,
New York City

Copyright, 1918, by the Liberator Publishing Co., Inc.
34 Union Square, New York.
Application for entry as second class matter at the post office
at New York City pending.

Editorial Announcements :

IT After two months of suspense, we have through the courtesy of the State Department succeeded in locating John Reed. This assures the continuation of his vivid first-hand accounts of Russian developments. His next article will contain a character-portrait of Leon Trotzky.

Morris Hillquit has asked us to give him another month for his article on The International Situation.

The article by James Weldon Johnson on What the Negro Is Doing for Himself has unavoidably been postponed to the June number.

K. R. Chamberlain

To day

THE LIBERATOR

Vol. 1, No. 3   May, 1918

Editorials

CARL SANDBURG sends me this quotation from

the letters of Thomas Jefferson. It voices an ideal-ism that is the brightest thing in our political history, and that shone hard through times of trial for those who put their faith in revolutionary liberty.

"The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest (the French Revolution) and was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood? My own affections have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this cause, but rather than it should have failed I would have seen half the earth desolated; were there but an Adam and an Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than as it now is."

The thing we have most to be thankful for is that a reflection of this ardent spirit shines today in Washington. A great revolution looks to us again across the seas for sympathy. We have given it. And for recognition. Shall we not give that?

The Labor and Socialist Conference

• IN the "Memorandum on War-Aims" of the inter-

allied labor and Socialist conference at London* there is not only more wisdom than in any document yet issued on the war, but there is also a practicality and a tone of confidence that are the expression of active strength. Two astonishing reflections came to me after I read that memorandum. First that the war has almost completely identified organized labor in the allied countries of Europe with the Socialist movement. And second that the war has compelled the Socialists to think. In this meeting at London the distinction between "Labor Men" and Socialists was lost and for-gotten entirely; and in the wisdom of its "memo-

"Published in full by The New Republic.

randum," although the theoretic principles of Social-ism contributed the intellectual frame-work, the language is practical, active, and of immediate application. It shows that judgment is being used about concrete problems, and not merely deductions made from abstract ideas. Combined with the Program of the British Labor Party, upon which we commented last month, this memorandum outlines a future for the world to which every man and woman of revolutionary hope must give hand and voice and effort.

The New Solidarity

NOT only did socialists and labor men unite in the

Inter-Allied Conference at London, but socialists who have been anti-war united with those who have been pro-war, in this final fight for international and industrial democracy.

The basis of this renewed solidarity is clear enough. The hypothesis of international working-class revolution against war was tried out by Lenine and Trot-sky, and it failed. Whether it failed entirely because of the backwardness of German and Austrian working classes, or partly also because of the attitude of Allied governments, has become an historic question. It failed. As a result of this example, however, the British Labor Party gathered strength of revolutionary conviction, and now promises a new drive in the same direction modified by the Iesson of that experiment. And moreover Woodrow Wilson, with messages to Congress that have shocked the Allied imperialists and astonished the world, has practically taken the leadership in international diplomacy of the British Labor Party. It was inevitable that these developments should draw together those socialists who were sincere in believing that the revolutionaries of Germany would act if given an opportunity, and those socialists who were sincere in not believing it.

In America, as well as in Europe, there is evidence

6   THE LIBERATOR

of such a drawing together of socialists. Indeed I can see no important -obstacle to it except the attitude of John Spargo, who unfortunately occupies a strategic position at the present juncture, having gotten astride of a newly and hastily created political party. Spargo is evidently afraid that he will lose his seat if he does not perpetuate the division and stir up all the personal rancor out of it that he can. I impute such ignoble motives to him, only because I can think of no other human motive adequate to explain the willful slander and falsification of fact in the interviews which he is feeding to capitalist papers.

"Of course," he says, "the socialists who are now recanting their position have to find some excuse, and they are saying that the change is justified by the changed conditions in Russia, by the President's insistence on democratic principles and by the action of the British Labor party in supporting the war. This is the veriest camouflage. It is a form of intellectual cowardice of the most craven kind. The Russian revolution was a fact when the St. Louis convention met. Russia's needs were discussed at the convention and by the committee which formulated the policy that was adopted."

"The statements of our war aims by the President in recent addresses are no more definite and direct in their democratic assurances than were the addresses which had already been made before the St. Louis convention met."

"Finally, the British Labor party was backing the war a year ago, just as it is today. There is, therefore, not an atom of justification in fact for the excuses offered by these socialists for their change of heart and mind. The truth is that they have come at length to recognize that the American people repudiate their stupidity. Through their dense ignorance of America and American principles a glimmering ray of under-standing has at last penetrated."

"The repentance is; so far as I can judge, as insincere as it is belated."

These sentences are printed in quotation marks on the editorial page of The New York Tribune. Every statement contained in them is false, and every emotion conveyed by them is petty.

The Russian Revolution that has affected our minds

-the Proletarian Revolution-was not a fact when the St. Louis Convention met.

The President's statements are more definite and direct than they were last spring and summer, and if Spargo doesn't know it, the Allied imperialists do know it to their woeful astonishment. Also Spargo does know it.

The British Labor Party has changed its way of backing the war from that of a confused patriotic re-form body to that of an active internationalistic social revolutionary power, since a year ago. Spargo knows that too.

The anti-war socialists have not "come to recognize that the American people repudiate their stupidity." As Spargo is well aware, the "American people" know nothing about the science of society and history which underlay the hypothesis upon which they decided to act. A shallow heart may crow over the failure of the Bolshevik experiment to succeed; every steadfast mind will give thanks that some man among those who have so long preached it, had the scientific courage to carry it through.

The Socialists are sincere, and there is nothing in the remainder of Spargo's article, which I do not quote, to prove their insincerity. It is a sophistical attempt by speaking of them all as a single individual to make them look false because one does not agree with another.

If anyone can explain this spitefully untruthful attack by John Spargo upon men whose integrity of mind and heart he knows and has trusted for years, in a more understanding way than I have, I hope he will write to me. I have to think Spargo is afraid that the solidarity of social-revolutionary forces, which is bound to come in America as it has come in England, will not yield so much pleasure for his personal egotism as the present situation which plays him up as the puller-in for a new political side-show.

Flavors of Sedition

AT the time when this editorial is read some of my
best friends and I will be on trial for sedition and
disloyalty to the republic. The specific charge against
us is that, in publishing our opinions in a magazine
called The Masses, we did feloniously and maliciously

May, 1918   7

and not respectably conspire to discourage enlistment in the armed forces of the United States. The extreme penalty for this crime under the espionage law is 20 years and $zo,ooo fine. Some of us have 20 years, but none of us has ten thousand dollars, and so we do not expect the extreme penalty even if we are convicted, but it is worth while to note that we stand in jeopardy to this extent, because it demonstrates very lucidly the importance of being respectable.

Indictments are almost always drawn up by people with a limited understanding of the nature of crime, and although they gather together all the words they can think of which mean bad and terrible, they rarely hit upon the combination which exactly expresses that quality in an act which brings it within the condemnation of the courts. Thus I think that in adding the words not respectable to our indictment T have made a discrimination that is really essential to the conduct of the case. I am sure that Mr. Barnes, in pondering the prosecution. is dismayed by . any residual atomic shreds of respectability that may crop up in the personal history of any of the defend-ants. And Mr. I-Ii.llquit on the other hand, if he takes my advice, will diligently collate all the circumstances tending to show that whatever the defendants did, and however feloniously and maliciously and heinously and nefariously, was done in a very bath and atmospheric pressure of respectable associations and connections. Only in this manner can he get the case elevated to that plane where the indictment will seem to have been a mistake-as it would be a mistake, for instance, to indict under the same statute the Editor and certain heady contributors of the Metropolitan Maganrne.

I was sincerely dismayed the other day when our most esteemed and accepted journalist, William Hard, published in the Metropolitan an article showing that America is not honest in her profession of anti-imperial war-aims, that she is in fact imperialistic. and so diabolically imperialistic that the German Kaiser would be moved to envy and admire, and that he might express his admiration, as at least he does in the fancy of this article, by pinning a "double-headed eagle" upon President Wilson's breast   I was dismayed, I say, to see that some perfect automaton in the Post Office department. after reading this malicious and felonious

and heinous and nefarious but respectable article, which would be more likely to discourage enlistment than all the articles and pictures ever published in The Masses put together, promptly issued a mandate to the New York Postmaster ordering its exclusion from the mails. He was acting of course upon a very stupid and literal deduction from the exact words that were used in the exclusion and indictment of The Masses and other socialistic publications. I am compelled to think that his brains must be made out of machinery, for I do not know of any case in which anybody but a professor of formal logic ever conducted his reasoning in so ineptly consistent a manner. He was, to my infinite relief, and the relief of every person of cultivated feeling, promptly over-ridden by his superiors, and a second mandate dispatched to the New York Postmaster "explaining that although the first communication might have been "so unfortunately worded as to fully warrant" such action, nevertheless there was of course no intention of the Post Office department to exclude the Metropolitan from the mails. Thus it became evident that however stupid the sub-ordinates may be, who draw up indictments and dispatch automatic communications from the capital, the proprieties of justice are understood by the administrative officers of the republic. And the respectable felonies, that enliven the pages of The Metropolitan, and the Kansas City Star, and Collier's, and the news-papers of William R. Hearst, may continue with impunity, as they should do of course in a society whose ultimate and really admired ideal is respectability.

MAX EASTMAN.

DISTINGUO

FREEDOM, yes, but a Freedom combed and curled, A safe, tame Freedom, eating from the hand, A Freedom which will lie down at command, Not this wild wench whose scarlet flag unfurled Threatens our cozy, comfortable world With voice like thunder echoing through the land, Who tramps the highway with her ragged band Of va-nu-pieds from the depths upwhirled. God save us from her-We've no use for kings, Crowns are obnoxious, scepters are taboo, But lawyers, plutocrats, are sacred things. Touch not the Black Coat, lest you should undo The very woof of life and fling destroyed, Our spinning earth to chaos and the void.

Lizinka Campbell Turner.

8   This and That

takes all kinds of people to make New York, including

those who are calm under the perils of democracy but draw the line at spoiling the grass in Central Park to make Liberty Loan trenches.

OUR best wishes to Wall Street in its new campaign against the wildcat concerns. Among the speculator's inalienable rights is that of losing his money to regular, respectable people.

ITHAT movement to curb luxuries for the duration of the war might be called "The Deelight Saving Act." N pinning some new tinware upon the Crown Prince, the Kaiser telegraphed : "I am convinced that the brave and war-proved regiment will always be worthy of its princely Chief."

The headline man missed his chance: `"Kaiser Damns Army with Faint Praise."

MOST of the German papers have been quoting with cynical glee from a writer in the New York Times who said we must take Mexico for reasons of military necessity. Thus the Times, denouncing democratic-minded people as unpatriotic, sticks a knife into its Uncle Samuel's floating ribs.

THE 7'ageblatt says the New York Times "represents public opinion in America." What hope is there for a people who are as superstitious as that?

RUSSIA'S sentiments on Germany and Japan seem to be, "I could be unhappy with either, were the other dear charmer away."

NELSON MORRIS, the meat packer, testifies that $8oo a year (with two pairs of shoes apiece), is plenty for a workingman's family of five. His employees, he says, think more of the present than of the future-a touch of gayety that is needed in this all too sombre world.

THE House investigation shows that the navy has done its duty with great efficiency and skill. This is sad news for the Navy League, which is carrying on a private little war with Secretary Daniels.

JAPANESE has discovered that America's secret am-

bition is the annexation of Kamchatka. (Business of digging up the old geography to discover where, if any place, Kamchatka is, or are.)

'THE Supreme Court of Indiana has declared the state-

wide prohibition law unconstitutional. The same court recently saved the people from a woman's suffrage law. Indianians might put in an order for a little of that sel ['-determination everybody is talking about.

POKER winnings are taxable, the Internal Revenue Bureau rules, but losses may not be deducted from incomes. Per-sons with no military tastes may patriotically devote their evenings to increasing the public revenues,

COLLECTOR EDWARDS of the Wall Street revenue office says the war tax hits the rich hard; John D. Rockefeller may have to pay 38 million dollars on an annual income of sixty millions. How is John D. expected to make ends meet with only $415,000 in the envelope on Saturday night?

CHARLES E. HUGHES is president of a new society to promote closer relations between this country and Italy. Well; maybe he will have better luck as a harmonizer than he had in California.

THE Prussian government has broken its promise of universal secret suffrage and is substituting a crooked scheme of plural voting. Obviously any people who would continue to put up with that kind of government deserves to have it.

PRESIDENT LOWELL of Harvard says that professors should be allowed to tell the truth as they see it, without restraint, on any subject, in the class-room and out, in books and in periodicals-in short, that institutions of learning are in some way related to the diffusion of knowledge.

THE alacrity with which politicians of both parties are climbing upon the suffrage bandwagon suggests that we will have a new slogan for the coming campaign: Votes From Women !

HOWARD BRUBAXER.

INTO GREEN PASTURES

FIELDS where sunshine warms green grass, And the careless breezes pass-Here, out of the crowded slum, Women, men, and children, come!

But their steps are halted then By the jeers of Business Men: "Enter not-we paid the price. Do <