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IRELAND

A STUDY IN NATIONALISM

Francis Hackett

The facts in the Irish case (especially the economic), the explanation of the facts and a way of reconstruction. It is critical, impartially informative and enables the reader to judge for himself. The chapters are grouped under the general heads of Causes, Consequences and Remedies.

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American Liberties

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Exodus---17

II. "And it came to pass, when Moses held up his a stone and put it under him, and he sat thereon.

hand, that Israel prevailed; and when he let And Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the

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THE LIBERATOR

Vol. 1, No. 5 July, 1918

Editorials

BOTII upon the side of the opposition and upon our

own side, we are suspected of a certain amount of camouflage in what we say editorially in THE LIBERATOR. A humorist in the Evening Post was very genially amused at what seemed to him a sudden appreciation in our May number of the strong points of President Wilson's character. No doubt he never read any of our writings in The Masses but merely accepted a newspaper impression of what they were, and I was genially amused at him when I reflected that those paragraphs in my article which dealt with the President's character were written in the spring-, of 1917.

We do not expect to convince the newspapers or the Post Office of anything, but we do expect our readers to understand that we are not saying things in this magazine that we do not think arc true. We have kept afloat so far in spite of the difficulties that lie in the way of a Socialist press, but when it becomes necessary to paint pictures on the outside of our opinions, we are going to sink.

Socialist Leadership

LEADERSHIP of the social revolutionary move-

ment in this country is in the hands of the Socialist Party as never before. It is for the time being a purely political movement. Socialist action in the industrial field has become practically impossible. The opinion that German victory would be a disaster is (as it always has been) almost universal among American socialists. Today the Allied Armies are fighting to prevent a German victory, and the Socialists, what-ever they may think of Allied diplomacy in the past, and whatever their judgment upon the historic ques-

tion of American participation, will do nothing which might retard that fight.

The instincts of men incline them to unite in war-fare, and only a clearly out-standing conception of duty or of interest to the contrary can withhold them. The growing menace of a Prussian victory, the in-creasing power of labor and internationalist elements among the Allies, the President's peace terms, the German invasion of Socialist Russia, the refraining of the Allies from such invasion, and the Lichnowsky revelation of Germany's original war-purpose, have served to confuse or to remove altogether any such outstanding motive among the majority of Socialists. And thus by a combination of natural instinct with the logic of events, a certain degree of "sacred union" has come into existence in America, as it did in Europe, even though the adminstration upon its side stoutly declines to accede to it.

Even our educational arm is in half suspense. It has become a high crime to swear at the government, and a soap-boxer who can't swear at the government, is for all practical purposes paralyzed. There is a language of crimson belligerence in which the Socialist propaganda has always been conducted, and as this propaganda' was never before heard of by certain members of the President's cabinet, they naturally assume that it is concocted for the express purpose of blocking the war program. The only safe place to pray or make a stump speech is in your own chamber after having shat the door.

In these circumstances there is only one thing left to do-elect individuals that are socialists to Congress. Elect them on a platform of socialism.

The platform at Saint Louis was not adopted for these elections. It was not adopted in these circumstances. It bears no relation to a world in which there exists a soviet republic in danger of annihilation from

6 THE LIBERATOR

four quarters and calling to us for four kinds of help. It bears no relation to a war in which the international peace terms proposed by that republic have been em-bodied in the organized war program of our country. Let it stand-with its faults and virtues-as a monument of our sincere truth to the principle of inter-nationalism as we conceived it to apply at that hour. Our business now is to draft a platform for the congressional elections-a platform that will make clear that we stand for the revolutionizing of all industry along the lines outlined in the abstract by the British Labor Party, and being put to the test of extreme experiment by the ruling proletariat of Russia.

For my part I advocate in that platform a generous recognition of the statement of war aims that President Wilson has dictated to the allied countries. I should like my record and the record of my party, in having opposed the war when we did not know, or have any basis on which to guess, what its concrete aims were, to stand as a guarantee of the vigor and independence with which we will hold out for the material realization of those aims now that we do know what they are.

They have been more fully developed, and developed with more disregard of diplomatic precedent, by the British Labor Party, which is convinced that these aims can only be realized through the solidarity of the working classes of the world. I believe that the Socialist Party of America should join the British Labor Party and the Socialists of France and Italy and Belgium in endorsing President Wilson's war-aims, and developing their implications.

On the other hand, in this country, I think we should lift up the banner of Free Speech and electrify our campaign, as no other party will sincerely do, with that immediate national issue. That America, while taking the lead in the statement of democratic war aims, should fall behind every one of her Allies in the defense and preservation of her own democracy and her own liberty against the encroachments of military hysteria, is an ominous thing that free men can fight even while they are fighting the German imperial power. And this fight for the right to speak must be won every morning, if our civilization is ever to be

understood, and industrial self-government to take the place of that political working-model that we call democracy.

Too Simple

IN the days of Mark Twain life used to consist of

"one damn thing after another." Today it consists of every damn thing at once. There never was so complex a situation in the world-never a situation in which it would be more difficult to speak general truth with assurance. In such a situation most people who have to talk and write, and maintain a reputation for holding opinions, make some artificial and false simplification of the facts, and by ignoring every de-tail that contradicts it, become more cocksure and convinced of themselves than ever: They set up a little autocracy in their own brains, and suppress the voice of any fact or idea that shows a disposition to rebel.

The editor of the New York Tribune conducts this kind of a government within himself, and I think he has a hard time of it. I infer this from the fact that he is always trying and sentencing people under the espionage law. Almost every morning he gives one or two of us a 20 year sentence for disagreeing with him. And when a man is as busy condemning other people as that, you can be sure there is something of what he condemns in himself. The Tribune editor has occasional wayward impulses to recognize the reality-the unspeakably complex reality that con-fronts the mind of man today-and he is sincerely alarmed lest these impulses get the upper hand, and spoil his facility as a purveyor of smooth and durable bourgeois opinions.

The Silver Chord

A FROSTY silence, blank as the wide spaces

Of drifted snow, broods on the brilliant air. Green lakes of ice lie in the white embraces

Of windswept meadows, under skies as bare. Beyond, shrouded in smoky rose, the hills.

A pale bright sun, enmeshed in sombre boughs, Threads these with ruddy haze. And quiet fills

The hollows where the shadow-bringers drowse. Quiet is resonant as some deep bell;

Beauty like music echoes in the brain.

The snow-lit clarity is palpable.

Here is profound appeasement-here is pain. Only the infinite impersonal moves

So poignantly the finite heart that loves.

Babette Deutsch,

July, 1918 7

FROM BAD TO WORSE

OWING to the Republican Party's present place in the v shade, it may he assumed that the Roosevelt-Taft peace was without annexations or indemnities.

THE President properly says, "politics are adjourned." But the administration should remember that in indulging in a meat scandal they are encroaching upon a Republican prerogative.

THE merger of the express companies under government partnership is an admirable move to eliminate the wastes of competition and has the added merit of being scarcely more than three-quarters of a century late.

THAT Minnesota soldier who got 15 years for refusing to be vaccinated may regard himself as an excellent ex-ample of what the President saved us from when he squashed the court martial bill.

IT is improperly charged that the newspaper publishers
were over-zealous in their opposition to the zone postal
provision. All they said was: "Woodrow, spare that tree."

AMONG life's little ironies is the way our "patriotic" press supports the White, or pro-German government of Finland against the Reds. They might be called the Pressians.

"PRUSSIAN electoral reform," says the N. Y. Evening Post, "is hanging in the balance " Yes, but the trouble is, it is hanging by the neck.

ANTI-SUFFRAGE organizations have gone out of business in New York and in Great Britain, but the New York Times will go down with its boots on. After studying the enrollment statistics it finds that New York women are no more zealous in the public service than men.

WIT'S sorrow over this discovery suggests the Kaiser's regular Monday morning weep over the desolation in France. ALL STREET says that McAdoo's increase in rates is a post-mortem vindication of the railroads. The people will not object to any kind words about the departed as long as they are sure he is departed for good.

AS we understand the aspirations of the Czecho-Slovaks and the. Jugo Slavs, nothing is to be left of Austria but the smell.

TIDE admirers of a major general who is not so prominent 1 as he used to be, seem to think that the government's motto is, "knock Wood."

PRESIDENT Wilson has decreed that Congress shall stay in Washington all summer and try to think. Congress-men got exemption from the supertax but not from the anti-loafing order.

THE peevish chairman of the Ways and Means Committee thinks that Washington in the summertime is too hot for Kitchin work.

GOING from bad to worse-

DELAYED reports from the Britishers who plugged up Zeebrugge indicate that they had a corking good time, HOWARD BRURAT<ER.

CULTURE

"Oh, Mamma, see the air-plane!"

"Evangelina, how many times must I tell you not to point !"

The Score Board

ANOTHER run goes up. A thousand throats Are torn with jubilant and raucous cheers. God's in His heaven again; the gray sky clears, Swept by this burst of bright, ecstatic notes. The brassy summons of a bugle floats

Through the wide square, and falls on heedless ears.

The crack of ash is all that each one hears As, deaf to war's old trumpeting, he gloats.

An old, blind beggar squirms among the crowd

Asking "what score" and "who's at bat up there?"

His nervous hands drum on the empty cup. The bugle grows insistent. But a proud

Thunder of mightier music splits the air

Triumphantly. Another run goes up !

By Louis Untermeyer.

SELECTING A PERFECT JURY

By Arturo Giovannitti

OF all the radical organizations in the country, the I. W. W. seems to me the luckiest. Unlike other opposition bodies that must continually distill their brains to find some-thing to do in order to survive, the I. W. W. has never had, and perhaps never will have, to worry about its job. When-ever a war, or an earthquake, or any cataclysm takes place and the I. W. W. returns to the tenderer feelings of charity and piety, and begins to be alarmed by the terrible doubt that perhaps there is something good and decent about the management of the universe-somebody steps in, yanks it off its brotherly embrace of the "common cause" and tells it persuasively that everything is truly and positively rotten -thereby throwing it back into its old corner to fight savagely against everything and everybody.

Sometimes it is a chief of police who, being terrorized by the idea that the I. W. W. might join the army in a body, stops their agitation for a 17 hour workday for all children below 5 and all adults above 93. Sometimes it is the Post Office that stops their papers for openly advocating treason in the form of a raise in wages, and thus returns it to the pleasanter pursuit of raising hell. Some other times patriotic and law-abiding citizens drive hundreds of its members into the. desert for being caught in flagrant possession of Liberty Bonds while on strike. And some other times when it is disturbingly quiet, and therefore under strong suspicion of having been converted to the cause of Allied democracy, a bunch of Christian gentlemen dispatch one of their best leaders to plead that cause by lynching one of its favorite organizers with a rope.

This time, just when the German drive into Russia had about conclusively and definitely convinced all radicals that the Kaiser must be kicked off the earth, and the I. W. W. was on the verge of disbanding under the old name to re-constitute itself into a patriotic legion and fight for God and Country, Mr. Gregory promptly intervened and saved it from self-destruction by bringing the whole bunch to the dock.

And thus, while every other revolutionary organization is up in the air worrying itself into a state of comatose at the thought of its uselessness outside of the battlefield, the I. W. W. through a special dispensation of the Department of Justice, finds itself again in the old field and can go serenely along the old accustomed paths of opposition, with-out losing a tittle of its self-respect.

Where does this extraordinarily lucky misfortune of the I. W. W. come from?

The answer is very simple. It is not the creed of the organization, it is not its action, it is not even its reputation -it is just the mystic power of its cryptic name, the dreadful abracadabra of the three letters that compose it, and which now twelve men good and true are called upon to battle against and exorcize. One wonders truly what would -become of this trial if the I. W. W. had spelled its name with an innocuous X and two meek, law-abiding Qs!

* * *

This is what I was thinking on April 1st, the only inter-national date still observed in universal reverence to the

fundamentals of human nature, when I entered the spacious courtroom of Judge Landis in the Federal Building in Chicago.

As I took my seat among the defendants that were out on bail (for I also was a defendant and, alas for my boardand-room bill! a misguided friend had got me out on bail), a strange feeling suddenly crept through me. I tried to analyze my emotions and felt terribly perplexed at the absolute lack of them. Be it said humbly and meekly, without boastfulness or irreverence, I -felt neither awed nor impressed. Worse still, I felt a disquieting unappreciation of my own importance. What was I doing there, and what, indeed, was everybody else doing? Everything looked so unreal and so out of place, just because everybody was so familiar. I felt miserably at home.

Here was Bill Haywood, there was George Andreytchine; over there Charles Ashleigh, Vincent Saint John, Jack Law, Ralph Chaplin, Francis Miller, and then-Wobblies to the right of them, Wobblies to the left of them, Wobblies as far as the eye could see. Why, it did not look like a trial at all, it looked like a convention.

There was nothing staid and solemn and dignified about the whole affair-nothing exciting or mysterious-not even the hope or dread of a sudden revelation, and, alas': not even romance the only girl indicted with the bunch having been hurriedly rushed out of the case.

How different it would have been if instead of 115 ordinary looking men there had been five or six German spies, Standard Oil magnates, or Reno divorceables-anything or anybody but I. W. W.s, these incorrigible saboteurs of all proprieties, these upsetters of all etiquettes, these spoilers of all rituals !

Instinctively one felt that, in spite of the tragic possibilities of the case, the boys' mental equilibrium had not been altered in the least; they were no more concerned about this trial than they had ever been about anything of normal importance in their lives, sickness, or recreation, or house moving. They were there quietly and simply as they might have been in any other place where the common affairs of men are discussed and settled. The lure of the sunshine outside the courtroom was strong upon all of them, but the call to duty was stronger.

Temporarily at least, this magnificent vagabondia, forever on the quest of the dream, has been caught in the meshes of the great American snare of all the joys and beauties of life, "business before pleasure."

When in the course of the rollcall, after a few polite "Here, sir's !" and a few formal "Present's," Reddy Doran thundered in a stentorian voice "On the job!", the keynote of the whole ceremony was finally sounded and the entire show was explained. Indeed, the I. W. W. was on the job, on the biggest and hardest job it had ever undertaken.

* * *

As soon as the examination of the prospective jurors began, the real importance of this trial became apparent. The examination, the purpose of which was solely to discover twelve fair and impartial men, regardless of whether they

July, 1918 9

had any acquaintance with the law, soon became a test of the mentality, the intelligence and the education of the aver-age American people. After a few questions had been asked, the veniremen themselves realized this, and grew nervous and uneasy, some looked as wretched as if they themselves were an trial.

The prosecuting attorney was chiefly concerned about their loyalty, their family tree and their pocketbook. He asked them all sorts of impertinent questions-what business they were in, how much property they owned, what banks they dealt with, whether they ever owned a dachshund, were fond ofsauerkraut, and related questions of equal moment. It seemed from what he asked that the prerequisite of the ideal juryman is to be a substantial citizen, a shrewd investor, and an arrant ignoramus of the great social problems of today.

Chief Counsel for the defence was George Vanderveer, a keen-eyed; sharp-featured man always on the qui vive. He was very courteous, almost suave-a strange incongruity for one who has the reputation of a legal bulldog. It made me smile to hear such a hawk chirp and twitter like a starling for fear of disturbing the mental placidity of the squirming and perspiring jurors. It reminded me of the amazement I felt the first time I saw a formidable looking bagpipe and suddenly heard issuing from it a gentle lamentation instead of some extraordinary bellowings.

The questions Vanderveer asked the jurors would make a good examination paper for the average student of economics to flunk through. He was less concerned about their bias against Socialist movements than about their true knowledge of them. As I followed him attentively hour after hour and realized how ferociously erudite he was, I thanked my good luck that I shall never be called to serve on such a jury. My respect for lawyers has considerably increased since I heard Vanderveer-also my determination to keep away from them.

Naturally most of the veniremen had never heard of socialism, Karl Marx, surplus value, the minimum wage, the instinct of acquisition and the fallacies of bimetalism-but the few who had, were promptly challenged by the prosecution. One of` them, a young man of thirty, had all the qualifications for a lord chief executioner of the I. W. W.; he employed labor, he belonged to the middle class, he was an old fashioned democrat-better still he had studied political economy, and best of all he had studied it in Germany; where political economy shoots strikers and puts anti-militarists in the penitentiary.

The defense passed him on his single statement that he believed in the right of workingmen to organize-but the prosecution challenged him peremptorily for no other apparent reason than that he was not ignorant enough of the subject he was to pass judgment upon.

However, after six days of grilling and arguing, it was obvious that the rest of the unexamined veniremen who sat in the back of the room were becoming interested. They no longer wore the hunted look of a hunch-backed, lame and one-armed volunteer who is about to appear naked before the examining board. They had caught strange and disturbing phrases on the wing as they fluttered around the big room. Mr. Vanderveer had managed to inform them that there was such a thing as a labor question involving a class struggle and a fundamental change of the social fabric and that the most important interests of the most regular human

beings are involved in it. They were getting educated-worse still they were beginning to enjoy the prelude before the curtain went up.

The prosecution had used three challenges out of six, and it was clear that it had to use the other three the same way. The defence had only used one out of its ten challenges. It looked had for the forces of light and justice, for obviously the jury was learning something that no impartial jury ought to know. It had delved somewhat deeper than a judicial mind ought, into the profundities of socialism, syndicalism, industrial unionism and all such other isms, whose chief idea is that no man ought to mind only his own affairs and leave well enough alone. Intelligent people, people with 'even a faint understanding of the question at issue were not wanted. This was not to be a debating society, an academy of savants leisurely and serenely discussing ideas (even though ideas and not .facts were on trial)-it must be an old-fashioned legal brawl between two sets of barn-storming lawyers, with twelve dozing men deciding for the one that howled the loudest and knew the least about the subject.

The prosecution felt (and if it did not openly say so, it acted on this feeling) that to know anything about the I. W. W. was to sympathize with it, and perhaps it was right. It would have challenged old John D. himself, if that palladium of all our liberties and morals had been studying the literature of the I. W. W. and socialism. Imagine how it could proceed with a panel that had never heard of such things before, and had now found a thing or two about them, not from the testimony of detectives and spies, but from the very lips of the defending attorney, with the gracious per-mission of Judge Landis.

And so at the right moment some talesman declared, upon being questioned, that someone had asked him over the telephone whether he was going to vote the socialist ticket at the election of that week. That-triumphantly declared the prosecution-was proof conclusive and absolute that the I. W. W. had been tampering with the jury. Whereupon it was moved that the whole panel be dismissed. Out with them!

And out they went into the snowsteirm that was raging, these two hundred men of law and order who had come in from the sunshine.

The second panel is being examined as I write these impressions. I have read that judge Landis, overruling an objection of the Government attorney, has declared his intention of allowing the defence to introduce all kinds of evidence purporting to prove the industrial conditions that have created and are fostering the I. W. W. If so, for the first time in the history of America, and so far as I know, of the world, the whole industrial system is going to be investigated and twelve nien are going to pass judgment not on a few men but on the whole of organized society.

However bewildering such a thing is, I believe it will actually take place. Anything is liable to take place in America, especially if it is left to judge Landis.

I liked him from the first, in spite of my congenital bias against judges; and were I not afraid of appearing irreverent, I should say he is a fine fellow. But perhaps he won't mind, for he wears no gown and does not stand still like an ikon on that ridiculous long bench that looks more like a bargain counter than the sacred shrine of the law. When he comes in and the audience gets up, he makes a non-committal sweep of the hand which seems to say:

I0 THE LIBERATOR

It isn't my fault, you know; it's the custom; but you must not take it too seriously."

And when the court crier begins his daily "Hear ye ! Hear ye!, etc." like the cocori-co of Chantecleer, and then whittles it down to a mere whisper, so that you don't get the final flourish at all-you can't help thinking that it's the amused look of the judge that has queered him.

Yes I like him well, but my liking is purely of the surface -it has to do only with an admiring contemplation of the aesthetics and exteriorities of the law. Asa matter of fact I believe him to be a dangerous man-one of those very, few men (thank God), who still really believe in the law. I am always 'afraid of just judges. Mr. Landis is one of them, and there lies the danger. He appears to me to be one of those who want the law applied literally-who believe that no man ought to be hanged with a halter if the statutes pro-vide for a hempen rope. This also implies a certain amount of sympathy during a trial, if not even a bit of mercy at the end, for mercy is exclusively a juridic virtue. But of that I do not feel sure. I fear that if a verdict is returned, fudge

Landis will go the limit. He will turn loose on the T. W. W. and where he has not been unfair, he will be severe. I got this impression the first day of the trial, when I rose to tell him that my name had not been called.

"What's your name?" he thundered in a fine basso-cantabile voice. I told him meekly, trying to make it sound as un-German as my fierce Italian "R" would allow me. He consulted with the prosecutor for a few seconds, then veered around, levelled a terribly accusing finger at the helpless target of the most stupid smile I ever attempted, and bellowed with a withering wrath that sounded like the crack of doom:

"You have been dismissed. So far as YOU are concerned, this case is over. You GO!"

And in spite of my appealing look against this arrant miscarriage of justice, I had to withdraw and meditate outside on this costly April fool joke that Uncle Sam had played on me, for I had borrowed the money to go all the way from New York twice to find this out.

And then some people still whisper that the war has deprived Uncle Sam of his sense of humor

SPRING COMES AGAIN

A CERTAIN tramp sat on a bench in Madison Square. Not a few people were there, as it was a bright, warm morning, but he had his bench quite to himself.

If I call this man a tramp, it is not that he was really of the plodding brotherhood, but that his clothes were ragged, greasy, and shapeless, and his forehead sunk between his bare, hard hands as an outcast's might be.

The day was in February, and the first of the year in which the stir of Spring was truly abroad. The tivinter had been long and hard: November's snows had their part in the grimy mud and ice that still clung to the old brown grass. But, today, how rapidly these gray snows dwindled, trickling away beside the walks in broad, shining rivulets ! Sounds of traffic danced in the light air. How the noisy, crowding sparrows scented the coming magic in earth and air and sun, and how softly the sun's warmth fell on sparrow's wing and pavement, on leafless twig and human cheek!! With all this gay thawing and cheeping and coquetry of light and breeze, the very stones of New York must have told themselves they might learn to hope again, if such days continued . . .

From Twenty-third Street came two young girls and sat on the bench where the tramp was. They did not glance at him. They brought a pie in a paper bag to share between them it was near the end of the noon-hour-and weighty matters were at hand for discussion.

"The skirt is the same as the blue Georgette, Didn't I always look well in that?"

But where'll you get the shoes for such a dress, Annie? If you could have champagne-colored kid, now . . ."

"Oh . . . Well, I'll have to wear these black pumps, with-out the spats."

Their words tumbled in a high-pitched, rapid stream; their eyes sparkled; their lips smiled.

One of them glanced at the slouching figure at the end of the bench. Her eyes rested on a felt hat pushed off the fore-head by chapped, blunt-fingered hands; on bent and shabby

shoulders; stale tobacco greeted her nostrils, with the odor of sweat and damp woolen things. She turned away a disdainful nose.

"Bum," she said to her companion, and Annie replied: "S asleep. He's all right."

Not a movement had the man made in all this time. But indeed he was not asleep, and many a drama takes place beneath an unillumined exterior.

Since six that morning his feet had trod the streets of New York looking for work. He had set out with six advertisements from the morning paper in his pocket, and had answered five of them. Of what use to look further? He was dog-tired. His feet smarted. He was hungry, but if a meal had been put before him, would not have had the heart to eat.

This was not the first winter that hard luck had hit his struggle for a living, nor the first day he had sat on a park bench, dreading to go home. During all the years he had been 'raising his family the chimera of a steady job had played hide-and-seek with him, in employment and out of it. At such hours as the present it concealed itself and its call was silent.

Last week he had broken ice on the streets with numb fingers and in bitterness of spirit that a man with a trade should have to stiffen his muscles at such a task. Now that the weather had warmed there was no more ice to break. This morning he had set out saying that he would look and not come back until he had found work to do. Many miles of plodding with wet feet had obscured his resolution. As he sat there now he scarcely thought of anything.

The day's rejections beat in and out of his brain as meaninglessly as the tick of a clock. He had stood in line in a shipyard, jostled other ragged elbows in freight-yards, climbed stairs and stifled in offices. He had no tools; he was too old; he had not the experience. Could he force some one to give him work?

He covered his eyes, for he did not want to see. Dull

July, 1918 11

THE SOUL THAT IS SICK-A Drawing by Albert Sterner

within him was a feeling that he would make no more effort, but would sit there and sit and sit.

The chatter of his two companions on the bench fell upon his ears but not his brain. He was more impervious than a brick wall to the life and stir of the morning.

Then it happened that a bit of pie-crust, the last tid-bit of the feast, slipped from the fingers of one of the girls and fell . to the walk. It was the signal for them to explode in giggles and laugh on and on in the inexhaustible torrents of girlhood.

The tramp did not stir, but within him something warm suddenly quickened. A fiber came to life tinder the rills of laughter his mind scarcely felt. Involuntarily he raised his head from his hands and cast a glance from his tired, blood-shot eyes at the girl near him. A strand of dull black hair, a fat young cheek white with powder-oh much powder! under the crisp green straw of a new poke bonnet.... His own girl was prettier.

He had not known the sun shone so brightly. Its light dazzled him as though he awoke from a long sleep. His hat

it had fallen in the wet behind him. Through the back of the bench he fished it up, wiped it on the palm of his hand, and settled it on his head.

The girls watched him rather fearfully.

After all it seemed that the winter was broken. This sun was warm; the breeze put life into one. With the Spring he could take heart again, and luck might favor him.

With a final glance at him the two girls got up, shook the crumbs from their coats and walked away with a swing, on their run-down French heels.

This afternoon he would find something and then he would go home holding up his head. How many times had he not slunk in at night with lagging steps, and sat alone in the kitchen, his head between his hands?

That one advertisement he had not answered he would try now. The shop was at Seventy--second Street ; he would walk . . . he must, there was but one nickel in his pocket.

He would get a job and all would go well again. Had they not been in worse pinches before, and had not the tide al-ways turned?

Once more the blood flowed in his veins, and he no longer felt the stiffness of his limbs. Courage burned again; hope tried its wings. He buttoned his coat, got up, straightened his shoulders, and set out.

VERA B ocu.

SPRING IN PARIS-1917

By Inez Haynes Irwin

IT is spring in Paris, War-time Paris. No one ever described the beauty

Of peace-time Paris. But Paris in war!

Oh God how beautiful it is!

Oh God how sad! Everywhere trees

Trees and trees and trees and trees!

Today in one street I counted nine rows,

All with leaves of thin green-gold.

You could see the sun through

And trunks like wet ebony

And, between, the sky Pressing close

In flakes of thrilling blue.

That's when it's cool.

But sometimes it grows warm

And then great clouds, rose-colored, hall-submerged, Float like galleons, all sails set,

In seas of vapory blue.

The horse-chestnut blossoms have come

Lifting numberless cones of pinky-white

Into the dewy air;

And violets, wisteria, lilacs, acacias--and now syringas, That load the air with scents

And fill the heart with ecstasy and tears.

The Iittle First Communion girls

Flit white-veiled through the dusty streets

With eyes old-young, in these sad days-

Sweet maiden wefts

Fresh from the Virgin's Ioom.

Prompt with the morn On Jeanne d'Arc's day, The children came To pay her homage

And soon the little gold girl-warrior

Seated astride her golden charger

Under my window

In the Place de Rivoli

Stood stirrup-high in blooms;

But it is still strange at dark

Although the long soft dewy, purple twilight

Makes lingering mock of night.

There are no lights to flaw the shadows;

And heights and depths still die in gloom.

The long street-vistas merge with airy distance.

But stars drop silver tears upon the Seine;

And sometimes a young moon comes

To show his sad, pale face.

These days the whole world seems to brood

And whisper

With Paris for her lips,

Hark, for Paris stirs!

Listen, for Paris speaks! And this is all she says, "When will it ever end?"

All this month, women have gone on strike-Thousands and thousands, First the midinettes walked out And then the women who work On furs and laces and linens,

Even the bank-clerks and the laundry-workers, All asking for the English week And a franc a day more pay. I did not know of this

Until one day when I was writing,

Writing some foolish fiction Sitting at my window. A noise came to me

From the street below. A noise-I call it that

But it was different from any other noise.

It was not groan nor growl Nor hiss,

Nor roar,

Nor yell, nor scream, nor shriek; But there was something in it Of all of those,

I ran out on my balcony and gazed down.

I tell you when you hear that noise,

You jump

And very quickly go somewhere, anywhere.

It means the people are roused and angry-red And will not be gainsaid.

Just below in the street,

A crowd of girls were storming a door

Trying to push and pull and beat and kick it in. Gendarmes were there, keeping them out But they were very gentle about it, Wise Gallic gendarmes,

Quiet and calm, trying to soothe the girls; For those girls were French

And the French are a people,

You remember,

Who once tore up a monarchy

Floating the fragments out of sight On a river of blood.

Besides poilus had stopped

To see what was going on;

Poilus fresh from the trenches

And fighting a fight

That we thought won;

Not for labor

But for democracy.

Little broad, stumpy weather-beaten men,

July, 1918 13

Unwashed, unshorn,

Some with beards that seemed to grow

Up to the visors of their shrapnel-dented helmets;

With packs on their backs,

Musettes, one slung across each shoulder, And thick, heavy shoes upon their feet The metal trench-disks upon their wrists And the hard brown dirt of the trenches Ground into the horizon-blue of their coats,

And sometimes those coats, buttoned back at the ends; With quick-glancing eyes,

Fiery and sad;

Eyes that have seen

What they can't forget;

And strong, gnarled brown hands Hungry for action.

I do not know what happened,

But presently the girls marched off.

That was the beginning.

But after that every day, for days and days,

I met them;

Here, there, everywhere,

Two by two,

Waving the tri-color,

Singing the Marseillaise;

One moment, just girls

Laughing, talking among themselves Or flirting a bit;

Turning to tiger-cats

The instant they reached a shop That they must pull.

Once in that American corner of Paris Just back of the Opera House, I came across a group of them

Screaming defiance to a pair of forewomen,

Fat, soft, black satin creatures

With shining hair, all done in puffs and waves

And many gilded pins

Who sunned themselves at the window-sill like great sleek cats,

The while back of them, the shop gloomed empty.

"Come down," screamed those girls. "Come down, you cowards!" "You don't dare come down!" And they didn't dare come down, Although weakly they looked And tried to smile

Contempt.

And as I stood back and to one side,

Watching breathless,

Suddenly a group of strikers caught sight of me.

They rushed upon me, beat in my ears with their shrill French.

"You, you, madame," one said.

She was dark and thin. Thin! Oh God how thin!

Bones without flesh And big black eyes

That had burned their way inward

Bigger and blacker! Blacker and bigger! So far

That they left great gaunt tunnel-holes

In that hopeless yellow skull-face.

"You, you, madame,

"You bought that coat at Maison Riche.

"You paid three hundred francs.

"Do you know what I was paid for making it? "Three francs!"

Another took it up.

She was blonde, beautiful;

For through her milky skin, the color burst

With the purple pink of grapes

New ripened in the sun. Her eyes set slant-wise Turquoises

Gleamed faun-like;

Her hair was like a golden glory

Set airy to ensaint her.

And at the front of her mouth,

All her teeth had gone,

Leaving a few black stumps behind.

"You, you, madame, "You are rich

"And we are poor.

"That you may wear such things,

"We eat dry bread." Dumb an instant,

I stood there and looked at them;

Shrill-faced, unbeautiful, Greasy with the heat And smelling of it; Lustreless, oily hair, Tired eyes;

Muddy faces;

Hard-veined hands, the nails all rimmed with black; Eyes spitting hate and voices roaring poison.

And I thought of many things.

But most of all

Of labor

And women,

Labor and women, Women and labor.

I thought of California Where labor is strong And valiant and beautiful;

And of the Labor Council in San Francisco

Which I attended every Friday night

For one whole year

Learning lessons in citizenship;

And of the State Convention at Stockton

Where Michael Casey,

The handsome, white-haired chief of the teamsters, With his clear-grey Irish eyes

And ringing laugh,

Told me from start to finish

The terrific story of the Teamsters" Strike

In San Francisco; Where Sarah Hagan, A garment-worker,

14 THE LIBERATOR

"THE HOUSE OF USHER "-A Lithograph by Albert Sterner

At the close of one long hot day

Talked for two hours on Minimum Wage;

PIeading against it

Because organized women could do better things for women Than it could do,

Holding that big roomful of men

Silent, spellbound.

How she scolded them, how she berated them,

Flouted them, upbraided them,

Praised them, glorified them,

Pleaded with them,

Besought and begged, entreated them,

All the time admiring them,

All the time scorning them,

All the time loving them.

How Tweitmoe's heroic bulk,

Like a Rodin in mirth,

Rocked back and forth in an ecstasy of delight, And how Johannsen's golden laugh Waved in the silence like a banner. And I thought of San Quentin And the visits I made there

To the wrecks of the labor-trenches Who will never get the croix de guerre Nor the medaille militaire;

And I thought of Ford and Suhr, Those two hop-pickers

Who were given life

At Marysville

Because in Wheatland

They led a strike

Which suddenly foamed into a riot, Where four men died;

And how some women of California

Jy, 191.8 15

Went to ninety-one unions in San Francisco

Asking for money for a new trial

For those two friendless labor-leaders,

And if any Union refused them money,

I have forgotten which it was;

And how ninety-one times, •I heard Maud Younger say, "It is the glory of the labor movement

Of California

That it stands by its own, Always,

If they are taken on the field of battle

Fighting labor's fight."

And how every one of those ninety-one times,

The ninety-first as much as the first,

My eyes filled with tears; And I thought too

Of all the super-women That I'd heard speak For women,

Or labor,

Or both:

Susan Anthony

Who lived for women; The great Breshkofskaia Who helped free Russia; And Mother Jones,

The saint and fury of the labor-fight;

And Emmeline Pankhurst Who made it glorious For women

To go to jail.

And I said to myself:

"They helped to make this possible!"

And I thought of the women,

Who every spring march on Fifth Avenue

Under forests of flags and banners

Yellow and white

And the socialist. red

And the red-white-and-blue

Which in Old Glory and the tri-color

Now wave side by side;

And I thought, "They too helped to make this possible." And I thought of England last fall

And that strange Trades Union Congress

I saw in Birmingham

With sad old men talking of what might be,

And should be,

And would be

Sometime,

But little word of now; Men whose sons

Were fighting in the trenches.

A fight we thought won, Not for labor

But for democracy. And how my heart sank And how my soul froze As I said to myself: "Labor is dead!"

But as I looked into the faces of those midinettes,

I knew I was wrong.

Labor is not dead;

For women everywhere Are keeping labor alive.

Women are keeping labor alive.

Women and labor! Labor and women!

And I found enough French to say,

"I am sorry for you. "It is wrong.

"Some day it will be better.

"I am an American."

"An American!" they repeated.

"Ah it is different in America..

"Vive l'Amerique! "Vivent les Etats Unis!

"Vive la France!"

And the whole crowd took it up :

"Vive 1'Amerique "Vivent les Etats-Unis!

"Vive la France!" And since then,

I have seen them everywhere-

The striking women On the Rue de Rivoli, In the Place Vendome,

On the Grands Boulevards,

In the Place de la Bastille,

On the Champs Elysees.

And whenever they go by,

Sometimes hurling curses at us others, Sipping our tea so comfortably

In the pleasant sidewalk cafes,

Always I rise

And stand applauding Till they pass;

And they always smile at me

Though sometimes tears come too

And though I cannot speak with them

Nor they with me,

Something passes from eye to eye

As we look at each other.

They know what I am thinking.

And I know what they are thinking.

Women are passing the torch That the men left burning.

They are keeping labor's hearth-fires ablaze. They tend the altars.

They lift the sacred lamp.

And when the men come home, Those tired poilus,

Labor will not be dead.

No, on the threshold

Beautiful as the morning

Calm-browed, star-eyed,

Fair, fresh, strong,

An Amazon,

She will rise up and greet them. * * * *

Peace will come some day

16 THE LIBERATOR

And Paris will smile with such a spring-tide bloom As we have never seen.

The lights will flare and glare at night And all those strange mysteries

Of her sad war-time heart

Will vanish straight away

Forever.

No more will purple dusk

Make mystery of her heights.

No more will growing night

Merge eternity with her distance-

The Seine will be herself again

winging glad under the crescent moon; The stars will dance with joy,

Sparkles and shimmers here,

Gleams and glitters there, -iustres everywhere--Gay-painted cocottes, soldiers freed from the trenches And hunting hungrily for joy;

Cafes, theatres, kinemas, taxis;

The Grands Boulevards filled

With happy, singing, drinking, lovering people. The Place de la Concorde

Sitting in her marble guard• of cities, Will offer to the sky

The solemn glory of her wide, storied plane. But I shall never really see that city-not I. No, never, never again.

It will be there, brilliant with light and color and noise, But I shall not see it.

There is only one Paris for me

One and only one, and that will always last; A broken Paris,

Weary, run-down, shoddy, dirty, damp and cold, Filled with gaunt-eyed, black-veiled women, And with the sad old folk

Who walk with vision drooped upon the past Or eyes uplifted gazing through tears Into the future.

And in the streets, always,

Ever and forever-Poilus

Little, broad, stumpy weather-beaten men Unwashed, unshorn,

Some with beards that seem to grow

Up to the visors of their shrapnel-dented helmets; With packs on their backs,

Musettes, one slung across each shoulder; And thick-soled heavy shoes on their feet; The metal trench-disks on their wrists And the hard brown dirt of the trenches Ground into the horizon-blue of their coats

And sometimes those coats buttoned back at the corners; With quick-glancing eyes, fiery and sad, Eyes that have seen

What they can't forget;

And strong, gnarled brown hands

Hungry for action.

And I shall see the marching women, Those midinettes, waving the tri-color,

Singing the Marseillaise, and carrying sacredly A glory too great for human eyes

And so unseen to all the world,

But floating unstained, inviolate, secure-The flag of Iabor.

A Cold Blooded Crime

By O'Brien Geddes

KNEW Henry McKillvane well. He was always in

trouble. He had no business in Athensville, anyway, al-though I realize that is hardly justification for what happened, if it should need any justification. Still it had never occurred to me nor indeed to anyone else as far as I can find out that Henry was capable of committing a capital crime. But you can never tell anything about these modern people who feel called upon to reform everybody they see. I was very much surprised at Henry's conduct. And I was hurt, too. For hadn't Athensville always been a comfortable place for the man? I admit that at times we didn't under-stand him very well and we might have been guilty of a little rudeness toward him, now and again, . . . but in the broad sense of the word Athensville was kindly disposed, even to Henry. Yes, the man was a distinct disappointment to me.

Athensville had been very quiet for two or three months before Henry broke loose. Of course there was the war work going on all about us and there had been that preacher in town who had told the folks all about the Turks and the abominable brutalities they had practiced upon the poor Syrians and Armenians, and we were a trifle upset about that. Then there had been a bit of feeling in regard to so many of our colored population being let out of the draft in spite of our suspicion that they were not telling the exact truth with respect to their age. And maybe there was a little tension among some of as when we saw rifles put into the hands of those who came forward and entered the draft. But all in all Athensville was quiet, mighty quiet, and there was no cause for any such exhibition of brutal abandon as Henry was guilty of. No wonder there is bad blood in the black belt. That sort of thing can't be allowed to pass, and judge Possum did his simple duty. Nothing but his simple duty.. .

I was standing on the corner by the postoffice with Possum when the trouble started, and later I was with the judge and the folk from the Hill when the tragedy took place. It was a horrible business, a horrible business. It passes belief what a man can do in cold blood. I can still feel the awful revulsion that swept me when Henry showed the brute that had been lurking in him unsuspected by us all. Yes, sir; I have been living in Athensville for better than half a century and I have never witnessed the equal of that act. The South doesn't record a more cold-blooded murder, cold-blooded, sir; no temper; face as white as a sheet and calm as a piece of rock, and no language of any kind, not a single word. Just the act itself, an unemotional murder if there ever was one.

As I said, I was standing beside Judge Possum :when the first news of trouble was whispered along Jeff Davis Avenue. It was whispered but it made a greater stir than it would have made if it had been shouted from the housetops. The old story, of course. Billy Morton's daughter it was. and the nigger away with half an hour's start before the girl regained consciousness. All she could remember was that he was wearing gunny sacks for shoes. That and black, awful' black.

Before we heard the story there wasn't a nigger to be seen. just plum disappeared, lit out, and the whole town looking for them, for him. 'T wasn't more than ten minutes before

July, 1918 17

they had him either. Oh it was the right one, all right. Didn't he confess? You bet he confessed! The whole town heard him. But that was a bit later.

Andy Taylor was for hanging him then and there. There were quite a few who agreed with him, too, but some of the boys said that there was too much talk about hanging niggers without taking the trouble to find out whether they deserved it. No, sir; the nigger they hung this time was going to confess! No damned Yankee papers were going to sit in judgment on the acts of the citizens of Athensville. No, sir! So some of the boys take the nigger down to Jug-gin's Hollow and make him fast to a stake and some of them start a fire and some of them go over to the blacksmith shop and fetch sonie irons, rods, you know, and some bits of wagon tire. There was going to be nothing irregular about this lynching, you bet. No, sir! No comeback this time.

The fire's going good by the time they show up with the irons. Well, sir; that nigger sure did start to holler when he saw the irons. . . .

"Oh, boss; yo' ain't again' to scorch a pore nigger! You ain't agoin' to bran a pore black nigger what am incent' ! Oh, boss; I ain' never see diet thar white girl ! I ain' never heerd of thet thar white girl! Oh, boss, you ain' again' to bran' this here nigger!" I never did hear a nigger carry on like that one.

Well, sir; by that time the whole town was right there in Juggin's Hollow to see justice administered. And there was no concensus of popular opinion in favor of taking the nigger's bare word for his innocence. No, sir! That was what the irons were for. That nigger was going to have a chance to show how deep his innocence went. Any nigger will yell that he is innocent. Leave that to him! But this here nigger looked guilfy. And he was black as they grow, and wore gunny sacks for shoes. As he sat there waiting for those irons to heat, the facts certainly were against him. And that's what Athensville thought. No doubt about that. People couldn't help fast enough with the fires and the irons. Yes, sir ! Half the kids in town were running home and fetching flatirons and pokers and even curling irons. And all the time that nigger bawling like he thought he could bellow himself loose. No possible chance, sir! We were going to find out. To find out] No hasty lynching and no hasty pardons. We were going to have the truth out of that nigger.

Well, along about twenty minutes, or half an hour the irons were hot. Some of the boys, no need to mention names, approached the nigger with a couple of red hot pokers. You should have seen that nigger wiggle. Never saw the equal. Why, you could plumb tell he was guilty by the holler he put up and the way he flung himself around. An innocent nigger might not have liked it, but would he have yelled like an Indian, before they even touched him? No, sir; he would not! But this nigger, damn it, sir, he fairly rent the air with his howls. And it only made the crowd madder. You can't fool Athensville with the yells of a scared nigger. No, sir!

Some of the boys catch hold of that nigger and hold him and some of them apply a poker to his foot.

"Tell us the truth !" the crowd yells. The nigger lets out a howl and denies it. But the crowd aren't fooled a little bit . . . not that crowd. They want to know the truth. So they jam the iron right up against his foot, hard, and when

he opens his mouth againt to holler they jam a poker into his mouth. They want to know, not to guess. Then they take the irons away and ask him if lie's guilty and he starts to say "No" again but he hasn't a chance to say it when he sees some more irons coming and yells, "Yes, boss; I sure done it. Kill me quick!"

Well, sir; we knew all along that he was the man, and the crowd was so heated by his denials that they went a little far with him. Even I felt they were going a little far, sir; though there isn't anything too bad for a nigger that defiles the white race. No, sir ! Nothing, sir ! But they, startled even me for a moment.

When he admits his guilt the crowd lets out a roar of righteous indignation and sets upon the nigger. Charged him with flatirons, pokers, tire-irons, anything that they had that had been properly heated. And some of the boys were there ahead to rip his clothes off. They weren't any too gentle about it, either; but the nigger had confessed, and he couldn't expect any kid-glove handling. We've got to' make examples of them. Can't let that sort of thing pass! No, sir; we don't want any mixing of the races . . . not from that side. Can't be too quick on the trigger in a case like that.

So they set upon that nigger with the red hot irons and got down to business. No, Judge Possum and I didn't mix with the avengers. We were over on the knoll with the people from the residential district. But we saw it and the judge will tell you the same story.

The nigger was yelling like a maniac and the crowd wasn't exactly silent when all at once we see Henry McKillvane walk into the crowd and then we hear him say, "Stand aside !" The crowd opens a little and there we see him standing with a revolver in his hand.

"Are you going to torture this nigger any more?" he asks, cool enough.

"You just bet we are," yells the crowd.

So Henry waves them back with his gun for a minute and looks as though he's meditating. Then he speaks low to the nigger and the nigger hollers out:

"Praise be the Lawd !" and Henry raises his gun slow and takes aim and shoots that nigger through the heart. Then he pockets his gun and walks off without a word. The coldest-blooded murder I ever see or heard of. The man showed himself to be incapable of any of the higher emotions.

Now a lynching is one thing and a cold-blooded murder is another. It wasn't more than a second until the people of Athensville realized what had happened. Then they dropped their irons and all went into conference. I've seen too many crowds get their heads together not to know that it meant trouble for Henry. It did, too. That murder had been so cold-blooded that it turned their stomachs. Yes, sir; it wasn't the decent thing to do, to shoot that nigger as though he had been a target, and when he was tied and being tormented, too.

So in about a minute the crowd lit out after Henry. He seemed to expect them. Just shrugged his shoulders and handed his gun over. A cold-blooded man. Not the sort you want loose in the town with you.

Oh, yes; of course, Judge Possum couldn't overlook it . . right under his nose with the whole town for witnesses. Still, of course it was only a nigger, so Possum only gave him twelve years.

oys, I Can"t Ha:

RECOGNIZE RUSSIA

THE capitalist press of the Allied countries is loud in its indignation against the so-called "Russian betrayal" at Brest-Litovsk. At the. same time, however, it is full of excuses for the peace treaty signed by Rumania with the Central Powers on March 5, t918; and even justifies the action of the bourgeoisie of Finland and Ukraine in calling upon German troops to fight their own countrymen.

Yet the Russo-German peace-treaty was as much a matter of military necessity as the Rumanian treaty. The Russian army was demoralized and exhausted; Russian economic life had broken clown. For all this the Bolsheviki are not to blame. Have we forgotten how the Government of the Tsar deliberately disorganized the economic machinery of the country, allowed the transportation system to go to smash,

and deprived the army not only of arms but even of food-in order to force a separate peace with the Germans? The newspapers were full of these things at the time... .

Then came the Provisional Government, which was an unworkable compromise between the Socialists and the party of the burgeoisie. This regime was unable, at first, to accomplish any reorganization of the national life, Even the breadlines instituted under the Imperial Government were never done away with. The soldiers themselves, if they could have received proper support from the country, would have remained in the trenches to defend the country; it was their voice and the voice of the Russian masses which had proclaimed, "No annexations, no indemnities, and the right of self-definition of peoples," and they would have defended those terms. But under the pressure of the Allied Governments, an offensive was commenced in Galicia, and in that

'•dly Recognize You!"

act the majority of the Russian troops refused to participate.

After this the bourgeois wing of the Government bent all its efforts to the destruction of the Revolution, continuing the process begun by the Tsar, and even conniving, it is generally believed, at the fall of Riga, in order to strengthen discipline in the ranks of the Army. Under their systematic campaign to starve the workers by closing the factories, to break down the Soviets by wrecking the transportation and supply system, and to crush the soldiers' committees by diverting food and arms from the front, Russia was brought into a complete disintegration. The saving of Russia was the Bolshevik revolution. If that had not happened, the German army would now be garrisoning Moscow and Petro-grad.

At Brest the Russians were not supported by- the Allies, and for that reason were forced to accept the German terms.

Not only that, but they are wholly abandoned now, and by the pressure of japan in Siberia, greatly weakened in the heroic struggle they are carrying on against the armed might of the Central Powers.

For the Russian Soviet Government is at war with Germany-has been at war with Germany since last summer. It stands to reason that this is so. The Soviet ruling powers are Socialists, and as such, enemies of capitalism, and most of all, enemies of the German Imperial system, the arch-exponent of militant capitalism. They have been fighting Germany with the strongest weapon in the world-propaganda-the only weapon against which the sword is ultimately powerless. This propaganda, not only among the German troops, but also in the interior of the country, is remarkably successful. Austria is ready to crack open be-cause of it, and during the Brest-Litovsk negotiations the

20 THE LIBERATOR

entire eastern front of the German troops was permeated with it to such an extent that the invading force into Russia had to be made up largely of volunteers from the western front. As for the war-prisoners in Russia, they are deeply infected by Bolshevism, and many thousands of them are enrolled in the ranks of the Russian Red Army against their own peoples.

The Red Army is rapidly being organized-as Lenine says, "not for defense of nationalistic interests, or Allied aims . . . but to defend the world's Socialism." It is a compact little well-drilled force, composed of volunteers, not from the old Russian army, but from the untouched re-serves of young revolutionary workers and peasants.

According to figures in possession in the United States Government, there are at present more than eight hundred and fifty thousand German and Austrian troops now en-gaged in pacifying Ukraine-a country not half as revolutionary as Great Russia, and without any Red Army. The latest moves of German diplomacy indicate that the Imperial Government is not at all anxious to attempt the military invasion of Soviet Russia.

But just as the Soviet Government considers the German Imperial Government its worst enemy, so Germany well knows that Soviet Russia on her flank is mortal to her military autocracy. By every means, by commercial and financial pressure, by capturing the food-supplying countries of the South, Germany is attempting to destroy the Soviets. At the time of the advance into Russia, Prince Leopold of Bavaria, in an army order, said, "Our aim is not annexation .. but the restoration of order and suppression of anarchy threatening to infect Europe." And if this "restoration of order and suppression of anarchy" can be accomplished by Japanese intervention, so much the better for Germany. For Germany fears not military force; she fears not a Japanese army in Siberia, nor a bourgeois republic in Russia-whose power of propaganda among German troops would be as limited as that of the French Republic. Soviet propaganda, incredibly contagious, is the only thing that Germany fears. Allied recognition of the value of Soviet propaganda would be a plow at Germany.

At the present moment, however, most of the Allied Governments seem to be acting on the theory that it is more important to defeat the Russian Soviets than to defeat Germany. In the Brooklyn Eagle the American Consul at Helsingfors, Mr. Hayes, is quoted as praising the Germans for having restored order in Finland.... And the movement for Japanese intervention in Siberia is actuated as much by the motive of restoring "law and order" in Russia, as by the rather far-fetched excuse of combatting "German influence."

The Soviet Government of Russia is there to stay; it is based on the almost universal will of the Russian masses. At the present moment it is being attacked on one side by the Germans, and on the other side by all sorts of bourgeois and reactionary movements based on. the Japanese in Siberia. The threat of active, serious Japanese intervention, besides, hangs over it like a storm-cloud. When Central Russia was famine-stricken in the past, food could be got either in Ukraine or in Siberia. Now the Germans have Ukraine, and counter-revolutionary hordes are over-running Siberia. Russia is being starved from both sides. Its ability to make .war on Germany is crippled by this and by the possible necessity of making war upon Japan.

Recognition of the Soviet Government by the Allies will immediately put an end to the menace of counter-revolution in Siberia, and strengthen immeasurably the Soviet power against Germany.

Make no mistake, however. Soviet Russia will not re-enter the war as an ally of the Allies; it will defend itself against the capitalist world. But Germany is the nearest, worst, and most active capitalist menace. The time has come for the Allied governments to decide whether their hatred is greater for German militarism or Russian Bolshev-

ism. JOHN REED.

.A CHILD'S POEMS

By Elsie Stackhouse

[Elsie Stackhouse is fourteen years "old, the daughter of the English explorer Stackhonse, who was lost on the Lusitania.l

PIPES

SHRILL and high,

Shrill and high,

Are calling the pipes of Pan; "Come, come,

"Leave all and come"-

"I come," cries the heart of man.

BELLS

WHICH soundeth sweeter, The bells of St. Peter, Bells over the sea, Or bells ringing for tea?

BRICK PATHWAY

BRICK pathway shining red,

Clean washen, in the sun.

Old steps, deep grooven by the tread Of men whose work is done.

MY GARDEN

E'EN if I were in Heaven, I again Would come to see my garden after rain, And smell the warm, wet mould beneath the grass, And see the butterflies pass and pass

From flowers to grass and back again to flowers, And all the things in England after showers.

PLAY-TIME

OH why can't we sleep in the day-time And get up to play in the night? For the night is a much better play-time For scouts, than when all is light !

WISHES

OH to be something else than I am-(Bread and jam, bread and jam!) Oh to know something else than I know-(Lawns to mow, lawns to mow!)

Oh to love someone else than I do-(I love you, I love you!)

July, 1918 21

LABOR AND THE WAR

By Morris Hillquit

ONE of the peculiar paradoxes of the war has been that it has advanced the labor movement all over the world. A great many factors have contributed to bring about this condition. In the first place, whatever we may think about -the immediate causes of the war, wherever we may place the immediate responsibility for. its outbreak, one thing be-comes clearer every day, and that is that the responsibility for this greatest calamity that has ever befallen mankind, does not rest upon the workers. If five years ago we had not had an autocratic, militaristic, capitalist regime in Germany and Austria, if five years ago there had been no dynasty of Hohenzollerns or Hapsburgs, if five years ago England and France and Belgium and all other countries of Europe had been under the actual government of the workers of these countries, just as Russia is to-day, we may he sure this tremendous catastrophe would never have happened.

The millions of human lives that have been destroyed and wrecked, all the misery of the nations of the world, would have been spared, if the people, the working class, had ruled instead of their employers.

This realization makes an ever stronger appeal to mankind at large, and the working people in particular feel in ever increasing measure that in their unity, in their control, lies the hope and the salvation of the world.

Another great feature in this war has advanced the Iabor and Socialist movements to the first place-the natural instinctive democracy which the war has brought about. I do not mean that democracy which we find in the treaties or in programs ; I do not even mean that democracy which is granted by laws. I mean the impulsive, human democracy, which in the face of a great crisis sees the man and the woman behind the person of every class and rank. I mean the kind of democracy which comes from a community of struggle. from a community of suffering, and yes, from the grim impartiality of that great leveler of all human conditions, Death, who is no respecter of persons, and mows down the rich and the poor, the distinguished and the obscure, with the same impartial, cruel sweep of his bony hand. I mean the democracy which in the face of a world struggle and world crisis instinctively discards the artificial distinctions which have been erected in the course of centuries between men and men, and women and women.

Another great tendency in war times which strengthens the progressive labor movement all over the world, is the institution of collective ownership, management, and control of industries, which has been established in all civilized countries as a war measure.

This so-called war-Socialism is not the Socialism we are striving after. It is not a democratic collectivism. It is not a working class collectivism. It is a collectivism imposed from above, and meant primarily as a war measure. Still the world can not remain blind to the great fact that in the face of national and international danger, all conventional slogans about the sanctity of private property, and the rights of the owning classes, have disappeared as if they

*This article is based upon an address delivered at the convention of the International Lathes' Garment Workers Union in Boston, April, 1918.-M. H.

had never existed. The collectivity of the people-the nation as such-proclaims, if not by word, then by deed, that all that we have and own, all that we are, we own and have and are, in trust for the community, and not by virtue of any alleged sacred rights of the private individual; that all of the men and women of the world are entitled to the world and the fullness thereof.

This great recognition of the rights of the human race as such over individual rights, is revolutionizing public opinion and is rapidly advancing the cause of the radical labor movement and of socialism.

Another feature of the war important in this connection, is that for the first time in the history of the United States the large masses of the American people have begun to be trained into an appreciation of the spirit of internationalism. Up to the beginning of the war, an internationalist, in the eyes of the average, unthinking American, was a man with-out a country, a man who had no patriotism. Patriotism stood for the narrow love of one's own country, coupled with an implied opposition to all other countries. To-day we are fighting "to make the world safe for democracy"; not the United States alone; not our own country; the .world! We are announcing peace programs which affect the entire planet. The principle of international adherence, the recognition that, the world does not end with the United States. and that no nation can be free so long as a single nation anywhere in the world is enslaved, is daily growing upon the American people.

Estimate the symbolic value of even such simple, prosaic things as our war-bread, for instance. When you get a roll for your breakfast, the composition of which you can not determine, and when you reflect that all over the country similar bread is being eaten, and this means that every man, woman and child in the United States is giving away part of his best food to people in different European countries, who have no bread at all; when you reflect that we have come to the point of sacrificing our personal comforts for the benefit of foreign races whom we don't know personally, then you realize that the practical application of the principle of international solidarity has made more progress in this country within the last year than it made in a century before.

All these are not things desired or designed by anybody. They do not justify war. But they explain why the indirect results of the war have been to strengthen the radical labor movement and the Socialist movement all over the world.

With all the outcry of our reactionary press, and our narrow-minded statesmen against the present regime in Russia, we know that that great country, which has hereto-fore been the strongest resort of the darkest reaction, is to-day the vanguard of democracy and social progress. It is from top to bottom in the hands of the people, the working class, the peasants.

And I believe I am safe in saying, that for the historian of the future, the revolution in Russia will be of greater importance than the war itself. The war' will pass some day! It cannot last forever. But the fact that one of the greatest countries in the world has broken away from the

22 THE LIBERATOR

old capitalistic moorings, has turned a new page in history and proclaimed the rule of the people instead of the rulers-this cannot pass without the most vital effect upon the whole future of the human race.

The present regime in Russia may change, but whether or not there is any change in the administration, one thing is certain-autocracy, capitalism and oppression are dead in Russia.

And Russia will recover what she has lost. A great country like Russia cannot be dismembered forever. The people who have known how to overthrow their Czar after a subjugation bf hundreds of years, will know how to get rid of their Teutonic despots, and of all other kinds of at-tempted despotism. Russia will remain the land of liberty, lending inspiration to all other countries of the world.

And Russia has not been the only country to undergo such a marvelous transformation. There has been another revolution less spectacular and picturesque, but almost as significant. I mean the spiritual, moral, and political revolution which has taken place among the working classes of England. For years and generations the working class in England was very similar in type and spirit to that of the average organized workers in the United States. It was not a very inspiring type. But within the last year the British Labor movement, under the lessons of the great world

catastrophe, has been regenerated. It has grown to gigantic stature, has become a power in the land, a power in the world. The British Labor movement has given the world a new charter. It has turned to a bewildered mankind, in the midst of a general chaos wrought by the havoc of war, and has said in substance:

"Fellowmen and women all over the world, look what you have got yourselves into by this inhuman organization of modern society. Civilization will never survive if this form of world organization continues. We must begin remodel-ling the world. We must build it anew. We propose to build it on the foundation of true democracy, liberty, brother-hood' and equality among nations, with full rights and independence for every nation, and equality within each nation. Equality not merely in name, not merely as a political right, but equality in life, equality of opportunity. We must create a series of commonwealths based on social justice, and a free federation of all such commonwealths encircling the globe. We must build a world which will put an end to all strife and struggles within each nation, to all wars among nations. We must rebuild it radically from the foundation up-a world of cooperation, a world of labor, a world of freedom and a world of enjoyment !"

And this new charter given to us by our fellow-workers

in England, is a charter given to the working-class

of the world, It is not a program for the diplomats in the various countries. It is not even a demand upon the governments or the ruling classes of the different countries. It is a re-solve, a determination that the working class of the world will make over the world as a working class world !

And that is why the most progressive workers of all countries, of France and of Italy and of most of the neutral countries, have rallied to that great program. And that is why it becomes our duty in this country to make that program a living reality here.

We can not overlook the fact that the working class movement in the United States on the whole, has remained at this time the most back-ward in the world. Of all the labor bodies in the world, the organized labor movement of the United States is the only one that has practically forgotten nothing and learned nothing from this great world catastrophe. The average organized worker is repeating the old slogans in the old way. But if we are to retain our place in the great fraternity of International Labor, if we are co do our share in the world reconstruction that is to fall to the task, of organized labor, we must take up the task of regeneration, must give to the movement new inspiration, new ideals-call it to fight for the cause of Internationalism and economic liberty.

"Don't you believe that stuff about a sailor having a
sweetheart in every port !"

July, 1918 23

Kerensky Is Coming!

By John Reed

(Rumor has it that Kerensky is on his way to America to act as a center for propaganda in the United States against the Russian. Revolution. For those who believe that a counter-revolutionary movement led by Kerensky might be successful, it may be instructive to read the story of his final defeat at the gates of Petrograd.-J. R.)

"KERENSKY is coming !"

In Smolny Institute, where the Bolsheviks rode the rocking insurrection, there was half-panic, half-desperation among all the leaders except Lenin, Trotsky, and one or two others; among the soldiers hesitation; among the workmen and the Cronstadt sailors a fierce exultant defiance.

Kerensky, hurling proclamations and threats as he came, rolled up from the southwest with a horde of Cossacks, to win back the capital.

It was November loth. The Bolsheviks had been in control three days, with the world against them. Under their iron hands the city seethed and boiled. At the Duma, around which were grouped all the anti-Bolshevik elements-the moderate and conservative Socialists as well the "bourgeois" parties-a great crowd was gathered, composed of business and professional men, Socialist "intellectuals," and the officials of the Kerensky Government; there were present no common soldiers, no workingmen, no peasants.

At this particular moment the Committee for Salvation of Country and Revolution was forming a new government, and debating hotly whether or not the representatives of the Bolshevik party should be admitted. Around it swarmed army officers, journalists, and the foreign diplomats.

Kerensky was only twelve miles away-eight miles-four miles, with an army of five thousand-ten thousand-twenty thousand men. He had captured Gatchina, the Gatchina Soviet had fled, half the garrison had surrendered and the other half had fallen back in disorder on Petrograd. He was at the gates of Tsarskoe Selo. He would triumphantly enter the city in two days-twelve hours

Up at Smolny, the Military Revolutionary Committee roared like a fly-wheel clay and night, throwing off spark-like showers of orders. Here the dim corridors echoed to the tramp of hurrying factory-workers with crossed bandoleers and rifles, grim, silent men, hollow-eyed from loss of sleep, and with aimless wandering bands of soldiers. On piles of heaped-up newspapers and proclamations in the committee-rooms hundreds snored in utter exhaustion. Couriers came and went, running or in commandeered automobiles; and commissars-common soldiers, workmen, armed with the power of life and death, invested with the authority of the risen proletariat,-dashed out to the four corners of the city, the front, and all vast Russia, to command, plead, argue, fight . . . .

In the great white ball-room the Petrograd Soviet met, a bristle of bayonets, and in the next chamber the Central Executive Committee of the all-Russian Soviets, the new parliament of proletarian Russia.

Consider these Bolsheviks. Alone they had set up a Government in which the Minister of Finance was appointed be-cause he had once been a clerk in a French bank-there was no other man to put there; in which the Minister of Commerce and Industry was a historian, without the slightest conception of commerce. The army and navy were under the command of a common sailor, Dubenko, a cadet, Krilenko, and a civilian, Antonov.

All the Government employees had declared a strike against them. The Post and Telegraph Employees' Union refused to transmit their telegrams or deliver their mail. The Railway Workers' Union would not transport them. Their very telephone wires were cut.

They could not communicate with the provinces, with the front, or with Europe. They did not know what was going on anywhere. Outside of a few trained and educated men they were supported only by the masses of the Petrograd workmen and women and soldiers-but by all of them. Was Russia like Petrograd? Were the workmen everywhere ready for insurrection? Would the army at the front rise? Would the peasants support them? Lenin believed that Russia was ripe. The All-Russian Soviets had met on November 7th and endorsed the Revolution by an overwhelming majority-and now the delegates were speeding back to their homes, to the corners of Russia, carrying word of what had happened in Petrograd. Volodarski told me that even if the All-Russian Soviets had been prevented from meeting, still there would have been an insurrection. "We are realists," he said.

As a matter of fact, success depended on the correctness of the hypothesis that the Russian proletariat was ready for revolt.

In the court-yard of Smolny Institute stood an automobile, upon the running-board of which soldiers were trying to fasten two bicycles. The chauffeur protested violently. True, he was a Bolshevik, and the automobile had been confiscated ; true, it was to carry the Ministers of War and of the Navy to the front, and the bicycles were for the use of the couriers; but the automobile was nicely enamelled, and the chauffeur's professional pride revolted at the damage which would be done to the enamel . . . So the bicycles were abandoned.

Leaning against the side of the machine was a slight man with a thin beard and heavy glasses over eyes fixed and red-rimmed from three days and' nights without rest, his shirt collar filthy, his conversation painful and chaotic from terrible fatigue. A great bearded sailor, with the clear eyes of youth, prowled restlessly about, absently toying with an enormous blue-steel revolver, which never left his hand. These were Antonov and Dubenko.

Could we go with them to the front? We could not. The automobile would only hold five-the two Ministers, two couriers and the chauffeur. My Russian comrade, however, whom I will call Koslov, calmly got in and sat down, nor could any argument dislodge him; so finally Antonov and Dubenko gave up.

I see no reason to disbelieve Koslov's story of the trip. As they went down the Souvorovsky Prospect, someone men-

24 THE LIBERATOR

tioned that they might be out for three or four days, in a country indifferently well provisioned. Antonov stopped the car and asked Koslov to get out and buy provisions-about fifty roubles' worth. Money? The Minister of War looked through his pockets--he hadn't a kopek. The Minister of the Navy was broke. So was the chauffeur. So were the couriers. Koslov bought the provisions . . .

When they reached the Nevsky the automobile blew out a tire, and all got out, "Comandeer an automobile !" suggested Dubenko, waving the revolver. Antonov stood in the middle of the street and signalled to a passing machine to halt.

"I want that automobile !" he said to the lone soldier who was driving.

"You won't get it," responded the soldier.

"Do you know who I am ?" asked Antonov, producing a paper upon which was written a commission appointing him commander-in-chief of all the armies of the Russian Re-public. "In this paper it says that all my orders must be obeyed without question."

"I don't care if you are the devil himself," retorted the soldier. "This automobile belongs to the committee of the First Machine Gun Regiment, and we're carrying ammunition in it, and you can't have it." Whereupon he drove on . . .

The difficulty, however, was soon solved by the appearance of an old battered machine flying the Italian flag, (in time of trouble private machines were registered in the name of some foreign consulate, so as to be safe from requisition), from the interior of which was dislodged a fat citizen in an ex-pensive fur coat, and the party continued on its way.

Arrived at Colpinno, a factory town about twenty miles out on the Nicolai Railway, Antonov asked for the commandant of the Red Guard. He was led to the edge of the town, where about five hundred factory workmen had dug trenches and were waiting for the Cossacks.

"Everything all right here, comrade?" asked Antonov. "Everything perfect, comrade," answered the commander, 'except that we have no ammunition."

"In Smolny there are two billion rounds," Antonov told him. "I will give you an order." He felt in his pockets. "Has anybody a piece of paper?"

Dubenko had none. The chauffeur had none-neither had the couriers or the commander. Koslov offered his note-book, from which a page was torn.

"Have you got a pencil?" asked Antonov, rummaging through his clothes. Dubenko had no pencil-neither, need-less to say, had anyone-except Koslov . . .

* * *

Meanwhile late in the afternoon I took a train for Tsarskoe Selo. In the station nobody knew just where Kerensky was, or where the front lay. Trains went no further, however, than Tsarskoe Selo. . .

The train was full of commuters and .country people going home. They had the evening papers in their hands, and the talk was all of the Bolshevik rising. Outside of that, how-ever, you would never have realized that civil war was splitting mighty Russia in two, and that the train was headed into the zone of battle. Out of the window we could see. in the swift-deepening darkness, masses of soldiers going irregularly along the muddy road toward the city, flinging their arms out in argument. That was all. Back along the flat horizon the glow of the city's lights faded down the

night. A street-car crawled distantly along a far-flung suburban street.

Tsarskoe Selo station was calm, though knots of soldiers stood here and there talking in low tones and looking uneasily down the empty track that led to Gatchina. I asked some of them what side they were on. "Well," said a spokes-man, "we don't know exactly the rights of the matter . . There is no doubt that Kerensky is a provocator, but we do not consider it right for Russian men to be shooting Russian men."

The commandant of the station proved to be a big, jovial, bearded common soldier, wearing the arm-band of a regimental committee. Our credentials from Smolny Institute commanded immediate respect. He was plainly for the Soviets, but bewildered.

"There was'a commissar from the Soviets here this morning, hut he went away when the Cossacks came."

"The Cossacks are here, then?"

He nodded, gloomily. "There has been a battle. The Cos-sacks came this morning. They captured two or three hundred of our troops, and killed about twelve."

"Where are the Cossacks?"

"Well, they didn't come down here. I don't know just where they are. Off that way . . ." He waved his arm vaguely west.

We had dinner-an excellent dinner, by the way, much better and cheaper than could be got in Petrograd-in the station restaurant, and then sallied out into the town. just outside the door were two soldiers, evidently on guard, with rifles and bayonets fixed. They were surrounded by a crowd of business men, government officials, and students, who were attacking them with passionate argument and epithet. The soldiers were uncomfortable and hurt, like children who are being unjustly scolded.

A tall young man with a supercilious expression, dressed in the uniform of a student, was leading the attack.

You realize, I presume," he said insolently, "that by taking up arms against your brothers you are making yourselves the tools of murderers and traitors?"

"Now brother," answered the ;oldier earnestly, "you don't understand. There are two classes, don't you see, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. We-"

"Oh I know that silly talk! broke in the student rudely. "A bunch of ignorant peasants like you hear somebody bawling a few catch-words. You don't understand what they mean. You just echo them like a lot of parrots." The crowd laughed. "Now I've been a Socialist for twenty years. I'm a Marxian student. And I tell you that this isn't Socialism you are fighting for. It's just plain pro-German anarchy!"

"Oh yes, I know," answered the soldier, with sweat drip-ping from his brow. "You are an educated man, that is easy to see, and I am only a simple man. But it seems to nae-"

"I suppose," interrupted the other contemptuously, "that you believe Lenin is a real friend of the proletariat?"

"Yes I do," answered the soldier, suffering.

"Well, my friend, do you know that Lenin was sent through Germany in a closed car? Do you know that Lenin took money from the Germans?"

"Well, I don't know much about that," answered the soldier stubbornly, "but it seems to me that what he says is what I want, and all the simple men like me. Now there are two classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat-"

July, 1918 25

"You are a fool ! Why, my friend, I spent two years in Schhisselburg for revolutionary activity, when you were still shooting down revolutionists and singing `God Save the Tsar !' My name is Vasili Georgevitch Panim. Didn't you ever hear of me?"

"I'm sorry to say I never did," answ`e'red the soldier with humility. "But then, I am not an educated man. You are probably a great hero."

"I am," said the student with conviction. "And I am opposed to the Bolsheviks, who are destroying our Russia, our free revolution. Now how do you account for that?"

The soldier scratched his head. "I can't account for it at all," he said, grimacing with the pain of his intellectual processes. "To me it seems perfectly simple-but then, I'm not well-educated. It seems like there are only two classes, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie "

"There you go again with your silly formula!" cried the student.

"- only two classes," went on the soldier, doggedly. "And whoever isn't on one side is on the other." . . .

We wandered on up the street, whose lights were few and far between, and along which people rarely passed. A threatening silence hung over the place-as of a sort of purgatory between heaven and hell, a political No Man's Land. Only the barber shops were all brilliantly lighted and crowded, and a line formed in front of the doors of the public bath; for it was Saturday night, when all Russia bathes and perfumes itself. I haven't the slightest doubt that Soviet troops and Cossacks mingled in the places where these ceremonies were performed

We strolled toward the Imperial Palaces, along the edge of the vast, dark gardens, their fantastic pavilions and ornamental bridges looming uncertainly in the night, and soft water splashing from the fountains. At one place, where a ridiculous iron swan spat unceasingly from an artificial grotto, we were suddenly aware of observation, and looked up to encounter the sullen, suspicious gaze of half a dozen gigantic armed soldiers, who stared moodily down from a grassy terrace. I climbed up to them.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"We are the guard," answered one. They all looked very depressed, as undoubtedly they were, from weeks and weeks of all-day all-night argument and debate.

"Are you Kerensky's troops, or the Soviets'?"

There was silence for a moment, as they looked uneasily at each other. Then, "We are neutral," said he.

We went on through the arch of the huge Yekaterina Palace, into the Palace enclosure itself, asking for head-quarters. A sentry outside a door in a curving white wing of the Palace said that the commandant was outside.

In a graceful, white, Georgian room, divided into unequal parts by a two-sided fire-place, a group of officers stood anxiously talking. They were pale and distracted, and evidently hadn't slept. To one, an oldish man with a white beard, his uniform studded with decorations, who was pointed out as the Colonel, we showed our Bolshevik papers.

He seemed surprised. "How did you get here without being killed?" he asked politely. "It is very dangerous in the streets just now. Political passion is running very high in Tsarskoe Selo. There was a battle this morning, and there will be another tomorrow morning. Kerensky is to enter the town at eight o'clock."

"Where are the Cossacks?"

"About a mile over that way." He waved his arms. "And you will defend the city against them?"

"Oh dear no." He smiled. "We are holding the city for Kerensky." Our hearts sank, for the papers we had stated that we were International Socialists, revolutionary to the core. The Colonel cleared his throat. "About those passes of yours," he went on. "Your lives will be in danger if you are captured. Therefore, if you want to see the battle, I will give you an order for rooms in the officers' hotel, and if you will come back here at seven o'clock in the morning, I will give you new'passes."

"So you are for Kerensky?" we said.

"Well, not exactly for Kerensky." The Colonel hesitated. "You see, most of the soldiers in the garrison are Bolsheviks, and today, after the battle, they all went away in the direction of Petrograd, taking the artillery with them. You might say that none of the soldiers are for Kerensky; but some of them just don't want to fight at all. The officers have almost all gone over to Kerensky's forces, or simply gone away. We are-ahem-in a most difficult position, as you see . . ."

We did not wait for the battle. Looking out of the window as we sped.through the cold dark, I caught glimpses of dun masses of soldiers gesticulating in the light of fires, and of clusters of armored cars halted close together on cross-roads, the chauffeurs hanging out of the turrets and shouting to each other.

The next morning the Cossacks entered Tsarskoe Selo, Kerensky himself riding a white horse. From the top of a little hill beyond the town he could see the golden spires and many-colored cupolas, the sprawling grey immensity of the capital spread out along the dreary plain, and beyond, the steely Gulf of Finland. Every hour General Krasnov was issuing proclamations, "In the name of the Supreme Commandant, at the head of the loyal troops under Petrograd," calling upon the Petrograd garrison to return to their duty, and "all those who have been led astray by false counsels or the vain promises of the usurpers"-under pain of dire punishment when the city fell. Ten miles away ! The Bolshevik troops falling back in the direst confusion; a counter-revolution ready to break in the capital ; the Bolsheviks isolated . . .

There was no battle in Tsarskoe after all. But Kerensky made one fatal mistake. Ascertaining that there were "neutral" regiments in the vicinity, he adopted a high-handed method of dealing with them. To the barracks of the Second Tsarskoe Selo Rifles he sent a message to surrender their arms, and gave them ten minutes to think it over in. Now this savored too much of the old regime to these soldiers, who, after all, had been governing themselves by committee for half a year. They were not Bolsheviks, they did not want to fight Kerensky; but they would not submit to peremptory authority. At the end of the ten minutes Kerensky's artillery dropped a shell or two on their barracks; seven were killed, more wounded; and from that moment the Second Tsarskoe Selo Rifles ceased to be neutral . . . .

In Petrograd, Smolny was a huge uproar. A delegation from the Semionov Regiment, sent out to stop the Cossacks, was trying to explain to the Military Revolutionary Committee how it was that most of them had been surrounded and captured. The regiments of the garrison, it was reported,

26 THE LIBERATOR

had been corrupted by commissars of the City Duma, who had been around trying to persuade the soldiers to remain "neutral," so that the Cossacks and Junkers might be turned loose in the city; Krilenko started out in a fast automobile to make the rounds of the barracks and win them back. We had witnessed, in • the vast half-gloom of the Mikhailovsky Manege, the battle of speakers over the Armored Car Di-vision, the far-famed Brunnoviki; where, in the bitter cold, two thousand great child-like men stood listening with painful intensity to the arguments of the different speakers for five long hours, and finally went Bolshevik with the ponderous roar of an avalanche . . . A message arrived from Pulkova, this side of the Tsarskoe Selo, where the Bolsheviks were digging trenches, asking for "two truck-loads of orators."

This is the Russian way of making civil war. It was the propaganda of the revolutionary troops which destroyed the forces of Kornilov. Russians will always listen . . . . In this case the old proclamations and pamphlets used against Kornilov were resurrected and shipped to the front. "Eighteen agitators" were collected by the Military Revolutionary Committee, and hurtled off down the street in motor trucks, to corrupt the enemy.

On Saturday at three o'clock, the Military Revolutionary Committee loosed the full revolutionary force of the proletariat; a telephonogram was sent out to the factories to shut down and turn out the Red Guard. All around the grey horizon the whistles blew, and the hundreds of thousands of workers poured out in tides, bristling. Petrograd hummed like a beaten hive. Along the broad roads white with the first light fall of snow, the city belched its slums. As far as the eye could reach the roads were crowded-with rifles and crossed cartridge belts over their working clothes,-women, some with guns, some with spades, picks, some carrying rolls of bandages, red crosses pinned on their arms,-children

. . . Such an immense, spontaneous outpouring of a city was never seen! They rolled along torrent-like, companies of soldiers borne with them, guns, auto-trucks, wagons---the revolutionary proletariat defending with its naked breast the capital of the Socialist republic.

That night Kerensky and his Cossacks attacked all along a wide front, and untrained masses of people made a stand. What had happened to all that disorganization, panic? What change had come over those halves of garrisons which had retreated in disorder? Who had brought order out of chaos, and co-ordination between the thousands of wavering regulars and the hundreds of thousands of untrained workers? Nobody-nothing-but the concerted desire that the new revolution should win, that forever the powers of "coalition" and of the Cossacks should be smashed. Things were done that night at Krasnoe Selo, at Pulkova, which will never be forgotten in the history of revolutions. The Red Guards rushed in masses, rushed the cannon, rushed the Cossacks and pulled them from their horses. Hundreds of workers were killed, and the plain was full of riderless Cossack steeds when morning came, and truce . . .

Zalkind, later Trotsky's adjunct in the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, was riding in an automobile with Vera Sloutskaya, a veteran woman revolutionist, after both sides had agreed to stop firing. The train on which Kerensky rode carried a cannon, and I suppose the gunner couldn't reskt the temptation to take a shot at the lone machine with

the red flag floating over it. The shell went through the automobile, carrying away a door. Zalkind, who was in the midst of a discussion with Sloutskaya, turned around in the middle of a sentence to find himself addressing a corpse-Sloutskaya's chin and breast had been torn off.

They hurried the body to a large building beside the road, which proved to be a retiring home-a sort of half convent -for aged ladies of the aristocracy. These ladies, since the fall of their beloved Tsar, had ceased to follow politics, except for venting their hatred against Kerensky. They ran out now, and surrounding the automobile with cries of pity and horror, demanded to know who had done this thing. Zalkind told them that it was Kerensky. "Ah !" they said. "I always knew he was a Jew !"

When the truce ended Kerensky's Cossacks had retreated. They gave up Tsarskoe Selo the same hour, and fell back on Gatchina ; and when I reached Tsarskoe again late that morning, the Army of the Risen People was joyously pressing on.

I went to Tsarskoe in a Red Cross ambulance, which happened to be leaving Smolny for that indefinite region known as "the revolutionary front." The soldier who was driving had no objections to me or anybody else; in fact, he was lonely, and wanted somebody to talk to. Bumping down the streets he decided that he was hungry; nothing would do but that we turn into a nearby barracks and get something to eat. The BattaIlion Committee was just sitting down to lunch around an enormous common bowl of khasha and another of stclsi. Each man took his wooden spoon out of his boot and fell to. When the Committee heard that we were going to the front, they suddenly decided to come with us. The Colonel in command, who happened in just about that time, decided he would go too; he therefore asked, and received, permission from the committee. Revolvers were served all around-perhaps we would run into Cossacks.

Down the Zagorodny Prospekt a Red Guard stopped us. Were we going to the front? Would we take several thou-sand newspapers to the comrades? He dumped them in and got in himself. Out under the great grey city gate, carved with inscriptions recording Imperial conquest over Central Asia, Persia and the Middle East, crowned with huge gilt Imperial monograms and eagles, to the wide road, running straight as an arrow, and thronged with the returning conquerors, workers, soldiers, women, and with new floods that the exhaustless city poured forth to take their places. A column of disheveled artillery passed, singing and shouting. A peasant cart drove by, whereon bodies of workmen and soldiers were indiscriminately heaped, .writhing with low groans . . . .

At Pulkova there was a jam of horses, guns, marching troops and Red Guards straggling indiscriminately. A happy self-congratulatory roar went up from them. This was the place of victorious battle. On all the shot-marked houses home-made Red Cross flags floated. In the little public square formed by the junction of the roads half a dozen Red Guards were trying to ride plunging Cossack horses, to the immense amusement of the crowd. We staggered up the muddy hill to Upper Pulkova, and at length came into Tsarskoe, animated with the swaggering heroes of the proletarian horde.

Now the palace where the Soviet had met was a busy place. Red Guards and sailors filled the court-yard, sentries stood at the doors, and a throng of couriers and commissars

j uly, 1918 27

pushed in and out. In the Soviet room a samovar had been sci up, and fifty or more workers, soldiers, sailors and officers stood around, drinking tea and talking at the top of their voices. In one corner two clumsy-handed workingmen were trying to make a multigraphing machine go. At the center table, the huge Dubenko bent over a map, marking out positions for the troops with a red and blue pencil, sticking his tongue out the corner of his mouth as he worked. In his free hand he carried, as always, the same enormous blue-steeI revolver. Anon he sat himself down at a typewriter and pounded away with one finger; every little while he would pause, pick up the revolver, and Iovingly spin the chamber.

A couch lay along the wall, and on this was stretched the body of a young workman. Two Red Guards were bending over him, but the rest of the company did not pay any attention. In his breast was a hole; through his clothes fresh blood came welling up with every heart-heat. His eyes were closed, and his young, bearded face was greenish-white. Faintly and slowly he still breathed, with every breath sighing, "Mir boudit! Mir boudit! (Peace is coming! Peace is coming!)"

Out in front an auto-truck was going to the front. Half a dozen Red Guards, some sailors, and a soldier or two, under command of a huge workman, clambered in, and shouted to me to come along. Red Guards issued from headquarters, each of them staggering under an arm-load of small, corrugated-iron bombs, filled with groubit-which, they say, is ten times as strong, and five times as sensitive as dynamite ; these they threw carelessly into the truck. A three-inch cannon was loaded and then tied onto the tail of the truck with bits of rope and wire.

We started with a shout, at top speed of course; the heavy truck swayed from side to side. The cannon leaped from one wheel to the other, and the groubit bombs went rolling hack and forth over our feet, fetching tip against the sides of the car with a crash.

The big Red Guard, whose name was Vladimir Nicolaievitch, plied me with questions about America. "Why did America come into the war? Are the American workers ready to throw over the capitalist regime? What is the situation in the Mooney case now? Will they extradite Berkman to San Francisco?" and others, very difficult to answer, all delivered in a loud shout above the roaring of the truck, while we held on to each other and danced amid the caroming bombs.

Occasionally a patrol tried to stop us. Soldiers ran out into the road before us, shouted "Stoi!" and threw up their guns.

We paid no attention. "The devil take you !" cried the Red Guards. "We don't stop for anybody ! We're the Red Guards !" And we thundered imperiously on, while Vladimir Nicolaievitch bellowed to me about the imminent international social revolution, which Russia had begun, and which would soon sweep all nations of the world, and end the ac-cursed war . . .

About five miles out we saw a company of sailors marching back, and slowed down.

"Where's the front, brothers?"

The foremost sailor halted and scratched his head. "This morning," he said. "it was about half a kilometer down the road. But the damn thing isn't anywhere now. We walked and walked and walked, but we couldn't find it."

They climbed into the truck, and we proceeded. It must

have been two miles further that Vladimir Nicolaievitch cocked his ear and suddenly shouted to the chauffeur to stop.

"Firing !" he said. "Do you hear it ?" For a moment dead silence, and then, a little ahead and to the left, three shots in rapid succession. Along here the side of the road was heavily wooded. Very much excited now, we crept along, speaking in whispers, until the truck was nearly opposite the place where the firing had come from. Descending, we spread out, and every man carrying his rifle, went stealthily into the forest.

Two comrades, meanwhile, detached the cannon and slewed it around until it aimed as nearly as possible at our backs.

It was silent in the woods. The leaves were gone, and the tree-trunks were a pale wan color in the low, sickly autumn sun. Not a thing moved, except the ice of little woodland pools shivering under our feet. Was it an ambush?

We went uneventfully forward until the trees began to thin, and paused. Beyond, in a little clearing three soldiers sat around a small lire, perfectly oblivious?

Vladimir Nicolaievitch stepped forward. "Zra'zvitye, comrades !" he greeted, while behind him one cannon, twenty rifles and a truck-load of groubit bombs hung by a hair. The soldiers scrambled to their feet.

"What was the shooting going on around here ?"

One of the soldiers answered, looking relieved, "Why we were just shooting a rabbit or two, comrade." . . .

Kerensky was at Gatchina. The Cossacks were discontented. They had been beaten-and then, too, it seemed that all Russia was up against them, whereas they had been told that Petrograd, rich Petrograd, would hold out welcoming arms. In this frame of mind "two truck-loads of orators" descended upon their outposts. And toward nightfall arrived the redoubtable Dubenko, alone . . . .

What Dubenko said no one knows, but the fact is that General Krasnov and his staff and several thousand Cossack troopers surrendered, and advised Kerensky to do the same.

General Krasnov advised Kerensky to go to Petrograd with an escort, proudly, as head of the Provisional Government, and deal face to face with the Bolsheviks in Smolny. If Kerensky had followed this advice, he might still have been a power in Russia. But instead, he promised to do so, and then disguised himself in a sailor's uniform and ran away. And that was the end of Kerenksy . . . .

I went back to Petrograd riding on the front seat of an auto truck, driven by a workman, and filled with Red Guards. We bad no kerosene, so our Iights were not burning. The road was crowded with the proletarian army going home, and new reserves pouring out to take their places. Immense trucks like ours, columns of artillery, wagons, loomed up in the night, without lights, as we were. We hurtled furiously on, wrenched right and left to avoid collisions that seemed inevitable, scraping wheels, followed by the epithets of pedestrians.

Across the horizon spread the glittering lights of the capital, immeasurably more splendid by night than by day, like a low dike of jewels heaped 'on the barren plain.

The old workman who drove held the wheel in one hand, while with the other he swept the far-gleaming capital in an exultant gesture.

"Mine !" he cried, his face all alight. "All mine now ! My Petrograd !"

THE LIBERATOR

Norman Hapgood and Socialist Journalism

WE have received the following letter from Norman Hapgood which gives us a good deal of pleasure and not very much pain. New York, May 29, 1918.

TO the editor of the LIBERATOR :

Before asking you a question I wish to state my general position on matters involved.

i. I am entirely opposed to the second trial of the editors of the Masses, as I think the charge of conspiracy is ridiculous, nor do I believe that these men form an appreciable difficulty in our war-effort.

2. I have frequently expressed the desire to have the entente give the Boisheviki such friendly help as is possible.

Therefore it is without prejudice that I express regret that most party socialists in America are so unintelligent. We have no great liberal paper like the Manchester Guardian, but also we have no socialist paper with weighty judgment like l'Humanite or Vorwaerts. In your June issue John Reed says that the Kerensky government intensified the disorganization of Russia "in order to wreck the revolution." Such childish nonsense could not be found in any of the European organs I have mentioned. Why is it?

NORMAN HAPGOOD.

We have always ourselves bewailed the fact that party Socialists in America are so unintelligent. The party always seemed to us a little like a country church, and we always said so, especially when we were talking to the party. But it never occurred to us to include ourselves among the unintelligent ones until this letter came. We thought the very fact that we called most of the party unintelligent, proved that we were exceptions, and that our brains were working with extraordinary freedom and brilliancy. Of course it doesn't prove that at all-it only suggests that our unintelligence is of a different kind. I should say that ours is young and in-judicial, whereas that of the party as a whole is old and dogmatic. Between us we are botching the opportunity to create a great wise watchful Socialist journal in this country at the hour of need. There is no doubt about that.

On the particular point in question, however, I think it is fair to quote the whole of John Reed's statement:

The disorganization "was intensified by the bourgeois element in the coalition government of Kerensky, in order to wreck the Revolution . .

John Reed is away making speeches, and I can not give his defense of this statement. I know that these elements intensified the disorganization after the Kerensky Government in order to wreck the Bolshevik revolution, and as that revolution was little more than the taking over of formal power by the Soviets, who were in material power before, I do not find it "childish nonsense," on its face, to imagine that there was an almost wholly pre-occupying clash of these same two interests before Kerensky fell.

Socialists, like human beings, are usually unintelligent, but sometimes they seem more unintelligent than they are because they have a system of meanings that is not familiar to their critics. By "the Revolution." for instance, John Reed does

not mean the overthrow of Czarism, he means the gradual coming into power of an industrial government, the Council of Workmen and Soldiers, which ran parallel with Kerensky's political coalition for a long time, gradually and inexorably superceding it. Knowing this, even though I am willing to grant in Reed's absence, that he is, like the rest of us, too young and able-bodied to be as intelligent as the Manchester Guardian, I hesitate to convict him of "childish nonsense."

I also want to ask our distinguished correspondent to hold the thought that we may possibly, with the passage of time, become that Socialist journaj that he longs for-and that we all, for that matter, long for. In my own case I can feel wisdom and "weighty judgment" creeping on me month by month, and my sister, who was born with these afflictions, is absolutely determined to make this magazine the standard social revolutionary weekly.

Of course I can't hold out the same hopes of John Reed. He is younger than we are and still believes in using his imagination when he writes prose. But I am quite sure that in the course of about twenty years-provided our activities in that time are not too much circumscribed-we will all arrive at an age and degree of intellectual strength where we will be able to wield "weighty judgments" with as familiar a grace as the Manchester Guardian, or Mr. Hapgood himself. Meanwhile we are more grateful for his critical attention than pained at his perception of our inadequacy.

MAX EASTMAN.

FROM JOHN REED

MY dear Mr. Hapgood: I came into the office just as Max Eastman finished his reply to you, and at the very moment of going to press I want to hastily try to answer you myself.

The question of the unintelligence of American party Socialists I leave to Max to deal with, as your letter seems not to apply to my intelligencC at all, but simply to my observation and my integrity as a reporter.

Eastman does right in quoting the remainder of my re-marks, but perhaps I have not made the situation clear enough. I did not ever mean to say that Kerensky, or any of the other "moderate" Socialist leaders, wanted to "wreck the revolution." It was the bourgeois wing of the Pro-visional Government which attempted to do that, and quite openly, too.

Factories were shut down with the avowed purpose of starving the workers into abating their democratic enthusiasms; food and supplies were diverted from the Army, in order to destroy the soldiers' committees and "reestablish discipline"-there is even a mountain of proof to indicate that the fall of Riga was no accident, but carefully arranged by the Army chiefs for the same purpose; Rodzianko, at the Moscow Business Men's Conference, said: "The loss of Petrograd to the Germans would not be a misfortune; in the first place it would destroy the insubordinate Baltic Fleet, and in the second place it would eliminate the revolutionary

July, 1918 29

Petrograd workmen"; in the country the land-owners provoked agrarian revolt, with the open sympathy of the bourgeoisie in the Provisional Government, by arresting the Land Committees created by the Provisional Government itself, in the exercise of their legal duties; on the railroads emissaries of the administrations and the share-holders of private roads were caught red-handed puncturing engine-boilers. I could go on for pages, backed up by detailed proof. My papers, however, are still in the hands of the State Department, so I cannot give the details here. If I had those papers I could also show you an interview I had with Lianozov, the Russian Oil King; another with Kosovtsev, Secretary of the Petrograd cadets, etc.

As for Kerensky and the "moderate" Socialists, the part they played was that of unwilling tools in this campaign-because they held so strongly to the idea of coalition with the bourgeoisie that they were finally forced to become its de-fenders. In the Kerensky Government, tb which I referred in the article you criticize, the bourgeoisie and not the Kerensky group were the ruling powers.

The Kerensky group played a part, however, not as disgraceful as that played in Germany- by Scheideman and in France by Gustave Herve, whose papers the Vorwacrts and Huinanite (now La Victoire, I believe), are so eulogized by you for their "weighty judgment." And the action of the Kerensky group, in the coalition government which attempted in the summer and fall of 1917 to wreck the Russian Revolution, was the sole cause of their downfall; just as the action of Scheideman and Herve will be the cause of theirs.

One word more. Undoubtedly when you quote my word "revolution," you have in your mind the so-:-filled "first revolution" of March, 1917. By "revolution" I did not mean that at all. I meant the whole Russian revolution, which to my mind is one unity from March, 1917, down to the present day. Any other interpretation would correspond to the denomination of the different periods of the French Revolution as different revolutions. There was only one French Revolution, although the phase of the Constituante and that of the Convention are so different.

But the Russian Revolution is easily provable, to those who have watched it closely, to have been even more of a unified organic growth than the French Revolution. Every development and change in the Russian Revolution was forced by the action of the masses of the people, by demonstrations and the political action of the Soviets. The Duma was forced against its will to take the reins of government into its hands, although it clearly did not expect or desire the abdication of the Imperial family. The action of the masses hurled down Miliukov's ministry, caused the failure of the Galician offensive, and finally, in November, forced the Soviets to take over the power from the bankrupt Kerensky Government.

When Miliukov, Lvov, and the Duma Liberals were pro-claimed the Russian Government, they tried to make it a parliamentary republic. Their action in refusing to obey the Tsar's order of dissolution merely unchained the revolutionary forces of the popular masses, whose idea of the Russian Revolution was not that at all. The proletariat did all the fighting in the Russian Revolution, and when it was ready, proceeded to take over the whole business. From the first, the Russian Revolution was only a bourgeois Liberal

front for a real proletarian upheaval strictly according to :1larx.

The reason you don't see these things in Vorwaerts and in La Victoire is because Scheideman and Ilerve are less anxious for Socialism in their own countries than Kerensky was in Russia. The reason you did not see them in the Manchester Guardian is because the Russian correspondent for the Guardian was Dr. David Soskice, Kerensky's secretary and also the Russian press censor, who took correspondents' stories, sent these stories to his own paper, and then refused the correspondents the right to send them to theirs.

When I get my papers from the State Department I will he very glad to reply to you at length and in detail.

Yours sincerely,

June 4, 1918. JOHN REED.

Fire And Water

FLAME-HEART, take back your love. Swift, sure And poignant as the dagger to the mark, Your will is burning ever. It is pure.-Mine is vague water welling through the dark, Holding all substances-except the spark.

Picture the pleasure of the meadow stream When some clear striding naked-looted girl Cuts swift and straightly as a gleam Across its bosom ambling and aswirl With mooning eddies and soft lips acurl;

Such was our meeting-fatefully so brief.

I have no purpose and no power to clutch. Gleam onward, maiden, to your goal of grief! And I more sadly flow, remembering much, Yet doomed to take the form of all I touch.

Max Eastman.

The Still Return

I SET a lighted candle Before my window pane, To be a welcome to my love Should he come back again.

Though he'd need no such signal If he came as before-

A-whistling and a-striding by-To guide him to my door.

He'd tap upon the window,

And to the door I'd run-

And a dozen candles he'd not see,
Though shining like the sun!

But still I light my candle,