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" C. C. Coie NE, Secretary,

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4   THE LIJ3ERATOR

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THE LIBERATOR

Vol. 1, No. 7   September, 1918

Editorial

The most wise and final comment we can make on the Russian situation is made for us in the "New Republic," by Arthur Ransome in his " Open Letter to the American People." We publish his conclusion.

F ROM the moment of the October revolution on, the best illustration of the fact that the Soviet government is the natural government of the Russian people, and has deep roots in the whole of the conscious responsible part of the working classes and the peasantry, has been the attitude of the defeated minorities who oppose it. Whereas the Bolsheviks worked steadily in the Soviets when the majority was against them, and made their final move for power only when assured that they had an overwhelming majority in the Soviets behind them, their opponents see their best hope of regaining power not in the Soviets, not even in Russia itself, but in some extraordinary intervention from with-out. By asking for foreign help against the Soviet government they prove that such help should not be given, and that they do not deserve it. The Soviet has stood for six months and more, absolutely unshaken by any movement against it inside Russia. In the Ukraine the anti-Soviet minority asked for intervention and received it. German bayonets, German organization, destroyed the Soviets of the Ukraine, and then destroyed the mock government that had invited their help. We, the Allies, supported that anti-Soviet minority, and, in so far as our help was efficacious, contributed our share in obtaining for Germany a victorious progress from one end of the Black Sea coast to the other. . . . In Finland we repeated the mistake. . . . Do not let us make the same mistake in Russia. If the Allies lend help to any minority that cannot overturn the Soviets without their help, they will be imposing on free Russia a government which will be in perpetual need of external help, and will, for simple reasons of geography, be bound to take that help from Germany. Remember that for the German autocracy, conscious of the socialistic mass beneath it, the mere existence of the Soviet government of Russia is a serious danger. Remember that any non-Soviet government in Russia would be welcomed by Germany and, reciprocally, could not but regard Germany as its protector. Re-member that the revolutionary movement in Eastern Europe, no less than the American and British Navies, is an integral part of the Allied blockade of the Central Empires. . . . Remember all these things, if indeed you need, as I think

you do not need, such selfish motives to prompt you to the support of men who, if they fail, will fail only from having hoped too much. Every true man is in some sort, until his youth dies and his eyes harden, the potential builder of a New Jerusalem. At some time or other, every one of us has dreamed of laying his brick in such work. And even if this thing that is being builded here with tears and blood is not the golden city that we ourselves have dreamed, it is still a thing to the sympathetic understanding of which each one of us is bound by whatever he owes to his own youth   

Well, writing at a speed to break my pen, and with the knowledge that in a few hours the man leaves Moscow who is to carry this letter with him to America, I have failed to say much that I would have said. . . . I ask only that men shall look through the fog of libel that surrounds the Bolsheviks and see that the ideal for which they are struggling, in the only way in which they can struggle, is among those lights which every man of young and honest heart sees before him somewhere on the road, and not among those other lights from which he resolutely turns away. These men who have made the Soviet government in Russia, if they must fail, will fail with clean shields and clean hearts, having striven for an ideal which will live beyond them. Even if they fail, they will none the less have written a page of history more daring than any other which I can remember in the story of the human race. They are writing it amid showers of mud from all the meaner spirits in their country, in yours and in my own. But, when the thing is over, and their enemies have triumphed, the mud will vanish like black magic at noon, and that page will be as white as the snows of Russia, and the writing on it as bright as the gold domes that I used to see glittering in the sun when I looked from my windows in Petrograd.

And when in after years men read that page they will judge your country and mine, your race and mine, by the help or hindrance they gave to the writing of it.

ARTHUR RANSOME.

Important News

O N July 13 Arthur Henderson announced that the Inter. Allied Socialist and Labor War-Aims Memorandum had in June finally reached the Socialists of the enemy countries and that four replies had been received, as follows :

" The first reply came from the Bulgarian Socialists, who accepted practically all the general points of our

6   THE LIBERATOR

memorandum, reserving some unimportant points regarding Macedonia.

"The second reply came from the Hungarian workers, who have submitted to the Stockholm committee a statement of policy much on the lines of our memorandum.

" The third reply came from the Austrian Socialists, who accepted the principles of the inter-Allied memorandum as a basis for discussion. They indorsed our conception of a federal system for Austria-Hungary and a similar system for the Balkan states.

" They declared that they had always repudiated the Brest-Litovsk peace treaty, and they agreed that Alsace-Lorraine and Italian, Polish and colonial questions must be solved in accordance with the desires of the peoples concerned.

" The fourth reply came from the German minority Socialists, who submitted a statement to the Stockholm committee on the lines of the inter-Allied memorandum.

" The fifth, and the most significant, reply came from the German majority Socialists, who endeavored to send it by Troelstra, hut the action of the Allies in refusing passports to Troelstra prevented the written document from reaching us. Nevertheless, we received a summary which shows that the German majority Socialists declared their willingness to take part in an international conversation on the basis of the proposals made by the neutral Socialists.

" It also seems clear that the German majority Socialists accept virtually all the principles of the inter-Allied memorandum. They are ready to discuss even the question of the responsibility for the war, although they think that no good purpose would be served there-by. They are ready to discuss Belgium and Alsace-Lorraine and believe that an amicable solution can be found. They agree to a complete restoration of Belgian independence. They urge that an international conference would be very useful at this time and, finally, they declare themselves in favor of a league of nations to prevent aggression by one power upon another."'

Phis seems to us the most important word that has come out of the enemy countries since the Reichstag Peace Resolution on July 19, 1917, calling for a peace of " reconciliation " without " forced acquisitions of territory," without " politicaI, economic or financial violations."

The right of contact with enemy Socialists is coming to be the united demand of the Socialist parties of all nations involved in the war. The French Socialists have apparently made it the price of their continued support of the war. According to the New York Times, the French Socialist Party, in national congress on July 30th, resolved to use every means, even a refusal to vote war appropriations, in order to force the government to issue passports to Socialist delegates who wish to attend the proposed international conference.

The endorsement of such a conference, which looks more definitely than any other policy towards a working-class peace, will doubtless be the crucial plank in the Congressional platform of the American Socialist Party.

t From the New York Times, July 14, 1018,

Easy Come; Easy Go

T HOSE army officers who rounded up and arrested a lot of privates for not saluting on the crowded streets of Washington must have had one phase of their education neglected. The Committee on Public Information might write them a letter explaining what the war is about.

The enemy is disgusted with the military ignorance of the American prisoners who give only evasive and sarcastic answers to questions   if not deliberately misleading. The Teutonic sense of humor is another thing that, happily, is not contagious.

The Brown Quince, as our men disrespectfully call him, has now been four years in the big league. He has a lot of medals and a batting average of .ooo.

After the defeat at the Marne, Germany ought to under-stand the inner meaning of the phrase, " twice in the same place."

Berlin papers are now advising the people to go barefoot. As some Teutonic Hoover might say: " Shoes will win the war, do not wear them."

Austrian subject races are deserting the army by thousands and taking to the mountains. There is such a thing as being too cowed to fight.

We assume that there is no truth in the report that Emperor Charles is having trouble with his wife; but he certainly would be justified in suing his subjects for non-support.

The execution of the former Czar is held by such papers as the New York Times to compel intervention in Russia. If we must intervene let us have eight or nine better reasons than Nicholas.

Mayor Hylan ran the first. train in the new subway with-out mishap. Confirming a widespread belief that a good motorman was spoiled when Hylan sought wider fields.

The telegraph and telephone systems have been taken over by the government and it will take a lot of expert wire-pulling to pull them back to private ownership.

Mooney is granted a reprieve until December 13th to give Governor Stephens time to look over all the papers. The California department of perjury is concealing its enthusiasm admirably.

The United States Senate voted 20 billion dollars in four hours. What do we care?

Easy come; easy go.

HOWARD BRUBAKER.

September, 1918   7

With Gene Debs on the Fourth

By John Reed

6i-W HAT'LL it be, Mr. Sparks? " asked the drug-

clerk, with the familiarity of common citizenship in Terre Haute, Indiana, and the respect due to a successful politician.

" Gimme a nut sundae, George," said the lawyer, who lived around the corner on Sycamore street. Sparks is not his real name. He was dressed up in a new grey suit, adorned with a small American flag, buttons of the First and Third Liberty loans, and a Red Cross emblem. " Reg'lar Fourth o' July weather, hey George? "

Through the windows of the drug-store Eighth Street looked extremely animated; with families trooping toward the center of the town, Hags aslant in children's hands, mother and pa in holiday attire and sweating freely; with patriarchal automobiles of neighboring farmers, full of starched youngsters and draped with bunting. Faintly came the sound of an occasional fire-cracker, and the thin strains of martial music from the parade. A hot, sticky wind blew occasional puffs of yellow dust up the street.

Drawn by Art Funny

" Yes, we got a spell of heat all right," responded George. " We're going to close the store pretty soon and go up town to see the p'rade." He scooped ice-cream and went on gossiping. " They say Gene Debs has got arrested up to Cleve-land. . . ."

Everyone in the place stopped talking and looked up.

" Yes," said the lawyer in a satisfied tone. " Ye-e-es, I guess from what the papers say Gene stepped over the line this time. I guess they'll shut him up now."

An old man in a stiff white shirt, with grey whiskers stick' ing out of a shrewd, smooth-shaven face, looked up from a table in the corner.

" Do ye think they're again' to put Gene in jail? " he queried, a little anxiously.

" He'll have to pay the penalty of breakin' the law just the same as other folks," answered Sparks, virtuously. " If he's again' to make trouble for the Gov'ment, trouble is what he'll get. This ain't any time to talk Socialism. . . ."

George paused in his concoction of a milk-shake. " You know Hank, the policeman; well he was in here last night, and he says Gene Debs ought to ben locked up twenty-five years ago.

There were mutters of approval at this.

" It's bad for the town," announced Mr. Sparks. " Why with all the money Gene Debs has made out on the Chautauqua, he ain't bought a single Liberty bond. . . ."

A raw-boned, brick-colored youth who sat with two giggling girls in muslin finery, spoke out fiercely:

" I bet the Kaiser would give him the Iron Cross if he ever heard about Gene Debs!"

The old man with the chin-whiskers mildly intervened.

We-e-ell, that's goin' a leetle strong," he remarked. " Everybody knows Gene Debs. He ain't no traitor, Gene ain't. Only jest a trifle flighty, that's all's a matter with Gene Debs. . . ."

Everybody knows Gene Debs in Terre Haute. Sixty-two years ago he was born in Terre Haute, of parents who came to America from Alsace. Gene's father was of upper middle-class family, and owned mills in Colmar. He fell in love with a girl who worked in one of his mills, and renounced his heritage to marry her. They came to Indiana as immigrants, and lived through hells of poverty. . . .

This was all before 1870. But old man Debs never admitted that Alsace could be German. On his tomb-stone he had engraved, " Born at Colmar, Alsace, FRANCE."

Gene, his father and his mother went through their political and economic evolution together. Together Gene and his father voted for the Greenback Party, then for the Populists . . . and that way, the characteristically American way, Gene Debs and his father and mother came to Socialism. . . .

8   THE LIBERATOR

Terre Haute is a rich little country town in the Hoosier land, where Eugene Field came from, and James Whitcomb Riley, and a whole raft of novelists and poets. Going through that country on the train T can never resist the feeling that after all, this is real America. Trim villages, white farm-houses set in trees, fields of tasselled corn ; shallow rivers flawing between earthen banks, little rolling hills spotted with lazy cows, bare-legged children; the church-spires and grave-yards of New England, transported hither by Protestant folk, mellowed and grown more spacious by contact with the South and West; rural school-houses, and everywhere hideous and beloved monuments commemorating the Civil War; locusts jarring in the sycamores, an almost overwhelming fertility rioting in the black earth, steaming in the procreative heat of flat-country summer, and distilling a local sweetness that is distinctively American-sentimental and humorous.

The Middle West, with its tradition of settled, 'country-living folk, and behind that, the romance of the Civil War, and still further back, the epos of the race moving West and conquering. . . .

Here lives Gene Dcbs, authentic kin of Field and Riley, American, Middle Western, shrewd, tender-hearted, eloquent and indomitable. When I was a small boy my conception of Uncle Sam was just what I found Gene Debs to be-and I'm not at all sure my instinct was wrong.

It was on the Fourth of July that Art Young and I went to Terre Haute to see Gene. Barely a month before, the terrible rumor had gone round, chilling all our hearts-" Gene Debs is going back on the party! " That lie he nailed in the ringing statement published in the New York Call, and the Wallings, the Simonses, the Bensons cringed under the lash of his words.... Then came his tour through the middle states, menaced everywhere with arrest, violence, even lynching . . . and Debs calmly speaking according to schedule, fearless, fiery and full of love of people. . . . Then his Canton speech, a clear internationalist manifesto, and the Cleveland arrest.

" Gene Debs arrested! They've arrested Gene! " people said everywhere, with a shock, a feeling of pity, of affection, of rage. Nothing that has happened in the United States this year has stirred so many people just this way. The long sentences given to conscientious objectors, the suppression of the Socialist press, the indictment of editors, lecturers, Socialist officials under the Espionage and Sedition Acts-people didn't seem to he deeply moved by these things; but the arrest and indictment of Gene Debs-of Gene Debs as a traitor to his country! That was like a slap in the face to thousands of simple people-many of them not Socialists at all-who had heard him speak and therefore loved him. Not to mention the hundreds he has personally befriended, helped or even saved from every sort of evil. . . .

" Gene Debs arrested ! Our Gene! That's going too far!"

It appears that Allan Benson had come out with a piece in the paper criticizing the authorities for arresting Debs

at the moment when he was " just on the point of going over to the National Party! " Sitting there in his darkened sitting-room, with the busts of Voltaire, Rousseau and Bob Ingersoll just behind him, he chuckled over Mr. Benson's perspicacity. I couldn't help seeing a ludicrous mental picture of Gene Debs in the company of pious Prohibition preachers and Socialist renegades. " Cheap skates," was Gene's dismissal of the whole tribe.

He was in bed when we arrived, but insisted on getting up. Not very well, his wife said; had not been well a whole year. How gaunt and tall he was, how tired his long burned-up body looked; and yet with what a consuming inward radiance he came forward and greeted us, holding both his hands on ours, looking at us so eagerly, as if his affection for us was so deep. . . . We felt wrapped in Gene Debs' affection. I had never met him, but I had heard him speak. How from that body and soul then he had poured out vitality, flaming across all his time, warmth and courage and belief!

Now he was older, more ravaged by the strain of giving and fighting; but his smile was still as delighted, and his

Seymour Stedman, Chicago's Leading Socialist,
Attorney for Debs

September, 1918   9

sympathy as wonderful, and the tides of his indomitability at the service of anyone. .. .

Gene talked. You who have never heard him talk don't know just what that means. It isn't erudition, fine choice of words, or well-modulated voice that makes his charm but the intensity of his face, glowing, and the swift tumbling out of his sincere words. He told about his trip, describing with boyish pleasure how he outwitted the detectives watching for him in Cleveland; and how mayors and patriotic committees in little towns had warned him not to speak-and he had spoken, just the same.

"Aren't you afraid of lynching?" I asked him.

Gene smiled. " Now that's a funny thing," he said. " I just don't happen to think about it, some way. I guess I'm sort of psychically protected, anyway. I know that so long as I keep my eye on them, they won't dare to do anything. As a rule they're cowardly curs anyway. Keep your eye right on them., that's all. . . ."

Outside as he talked to us the automobiles went by, covered with flags, and the sound of the parade came drifting down. . . . Looking through the darkened windows we watched the people. As they passed the house they motioned or pointed toward it, with expression compounded half of eager malice, and half of a sort of fear. " That's where Gene Debs lives," you could see them saying, as one would say, " The House of the Traitor. . . ."

" Come on," said Gene, suddenly. "Let's go out and sit on the front porch and give 'em a good show, if they want to see me."

So we went out on the porch, and took off our coats. And those who passed only looked furtively our way, and whispered, and when they caught Gene's eye, bowed over-cordially.

The old man told us how the people of Indiana, and indeed, of all the Middle States, were will-broken and terrorized by " Loyalty " leagues, citizens' committees, vigilantes -and whipped into hysteria besides. . . . The old frankness which still characterized Hoosier farmers before the War, was now all gone. No one dared speak his mind to anyone. Many, many loved him, Gene Debs, who dared not testify in any other way except by anonymous letters. . . . He spoke of leaders of the people who, after being beaten by mobs, or tarred-and-feathered,- abandoned their rebellion and con-formed to the view of the majority.

" If they did that to me," said Gene, " even if I changed my mind I don't think I could say so ! "

There was something tragic, and funny, in the way Terre Haute regarded Gene. Before the war Gene added luster to the name of the town, as well as having an immense personal popularity. In the beginning, practically the whole population, all through that section, was against going to war.... But since the war the usual phenomenon has happened in Terre Haute. The whole place has been mobilized physically and spiritually. Except Gene Delis. The simpler people couldn't understand it. The bankers, lawyers and merchants felt for him a terrible rancour. Even the ministers

of the gospel, who had often implored him to address their conventions, now held meetings denouncing " the enemy in our midst."

No names were mentioned. No one dared to call Gene Debs " enemy " to his face. When he went down the street, everyone was studiously polite. Department of justice operatives, volunteer detectives of all sorts, Liberty loan agents, prowled all around his house-but did not dare to enter and front the old lion. Once a business men's " patriotic " committee descended upon a German-born workman, and threatened him. Gene heard about it, and sent word to the committee: " Come down to my house, why don't you, in-stead of to the place of a poor man. I have a shot-gun waiting for you fellows." The committee did not come. . . .

I have a picture of Gene Debs, his long bony head and shining face against a background of bright petunias in a box on the rail, his lean hand lifted with the long, artist's fingers giving emphasis to what he said:

" Say, isn't it great the way most of the boys have stood up? Fine! If this can't break them down, why then I know nothing can. Socialism's on the way. They can't stop it, no matter what they do. The more breaks the other side makes, the better for us. . .

And as we went down the steps, wringing our hands, dapping us on the shoulder, winning and warm, he said-and all the neighbors could hear him, too--

" Now you tell all the boys everywhere who are making the fight, Gene Debs says he's with you, all the way, straight through, without a flicker!"

FACES

JEERING face in a prison window, Yearning out at the April rain, Did you catch some of my joy, I wonder, As I felt the stab of your pain. Rose Henderson.

10

A statesman Of The New Order

By Max Eastman

F OR more than six months I have privately believed that a very great statesman lives in the world today, a states-man of the new order, and my belief is so far confirmed that I am now ready to say so, and try to prove it. I mean by a statesman of the new order the thing that Plato meant when he said:

" Until philosophers are kings or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils,-no, nor the human race as I believe."

This super-statesman will be a man who possesses the exhaustive knowledge of a technical authority in economics and politics and social psychology. He will be as learned as any professor. And he will be an idealist. But unlike most of the professors and the idealists, he will be a man who knows how to think in a concrete situation. And still more unlike the professors, if not the idealists, he will be a man who puts the conclusions of his thought into action with an iron will. It has always seemed a Utopian dream of Plato, a dream to smile at with indulgent sympathy, that such a man should exist, or existing should find his way to a place of power. And the dream has grown more Utopian with the increasing complexity of " philosophy " on the one hand, and of politics on the other, so that a modern Plato would hardly even dare to imagine that a man who could sit patiently for years at a desk in his study mastering the authentic volumes of all the social sciences, excelling them perhaps with his own volumes, and perhaps himself writing a treatise on Logic, or the technique of scientific thinking, should also arrive through his own forceful and fearless generalship at the helm of the state, and firmly stand there and give orders to practical men, and see to it that liis orders are obeyed. If I can establish that such a man exists, I will not be accused of journalistic sentimentality in declaring that he is one of the great statesmen of the world. And in order to establish this, I have only to prove that Nicolai Lenin knows how to think in a concrete situation, for the rest of his achievements are historic. He is the author of authoritative volumes containing the most accurate knowledge of the various sciences I have mentioned ; he is the author of an exhaustive treatise on Logic. He is an idealist of the most uncompromising kind. He is the revolutionary general who with a strategy as dynamic as it was daring, moved his personal headquarters into a building in the city of Petrograd within sight of the windows of the government he intended to overthrow, stayed there dread-fully unmolested until his plans were mature, and then seized the telephone office and overthrew the government by telephone. He is a man whose orders are carried out.

The conviction that Lenin knows how to think-in the

way that the wisest philosophers know it-comes to me from reading an article that he published in the Bolshevist organ Pravda, at the end of last April. He has the habit of de-fining a problem before he enters it, and he enters it with the trained equilibrium of one who knows the true relation between facts and ideas in scientific thinking-and one who knows what to do with his emotions while thought proceeds. In spite of a dictatorial personality, a sureness of himself that is essential to political strength, he seems to be without dogmatic fixations of mind, and without those emotional habits which make it so difficult for the man of action to be a philosopher. One feels that his thinking would be equally compelling and abstractly accurate no matter what the emotional color of the problem that he set himself. And, to an amazing extent, it has been. Think, for instance, of the difference between all the concrete elements of the situation Lenin confronted and mastered during the period of agitation against the pseudo-Socialist regime of Kerensky, the period of rebellion, the insurrectionary capture of power in the capital, and the present period of arduous far-reaching labor at the construction of a new world. Nothing is the same now, except the ultimate end and the bare outline of the method of thought. All the sensations, emotions-all the pleasures-involved in " being a Socialist " are changed. And yet Lenin proceeds with his relentless, unsentimental iron-minded pragmatic thinking and acting in this new situation, and still writes his wise, patient, reiterative articles to the Russian people, as though to children, pleading with them to be philosophic and to understand the difference between these different periods, and the emotions that belong to them, and give all their mind's attention to the definition of the present problems, and all their heart's energies to the kind of action that is demanded now for the achievement of the ultimate purpose upon which they are all agreed.

At the beginning of this article he is occupied with de-fining the problem of the special period when it was written. He is urging the Socialist leaders to cast off their " exclusive habits of agitation," that were necessary in a former period, but that are obstructing the work of the new.* He says:

" We are now confronted by the third problem, which is the most urgent and which characterizes the present period: to organize the management of Russia. Of course, we have had to deal with it and have been dealing with it ever since October 25, 1917. But heretofore, as long as the resistance of the exploiters manifested itself in open civil warfare, this problem of management could not become the central and principal problem.

" At present it has become the central problem. We, the

*The English of the translation of this article is a little obscure, and I have simplified it occasionally, where I felt certain that I was not disturbing the author's meaning.

September, 1918   11

Bolshevik party, have convinced Russia. We have won Russia from the rich for the poor, from the exploiters for the toilers.   .   .

" We have defeated the bourgeoisie, but they are not yet destroyed and not even completely conquered. We must therefore resort to a new and higher form of the struggle with the bourgeoisie; we must turn from the very simple problem of continuing the expropriation of the capitalists to the more complex and difficult problem-the problem of creating conditions under which the bourgeoisie could neither exist nor come anew into existence.

" Comparing our revolution with the revolutions of West-ern Europe, we are now approximately at the point which was reached in 1793 and 1871. We have a right to be proud of the fact that we have reached this point and that in one respect we have gone somewhat further, viz.: we have decreed and established through Russia a higher type of state-the Soviet rule. But we cannot possibly rest satisfied with these achievements, for we have only begun the transformation toward Socialism, and in this respect we have not yet accomplished anything decisive."

Having thus defined the problem of the new period in general terms, he proceeds to detail more specifically the nature of its demands. And first its demands upon the morale of the people. And here especially Lenin shows him-self free from sentimentality, and possessed of complete intellectual courage, for he does not hesitate to incur the contempt of a great plenty of emotional rebels and temperamental iconoclasts among the intellectuals of the " Social Revolutionary " party, by declaring that the first and most important thing for the workmen and peasants of Russia to do at the present time is to be good.

" Keep accurate and conscientious accounts, conduct business economically, do not loaf, do not steal, maintain strict discipline at work,-these slogans, which were justly ridiculed by revolutionary proletarians when they were used by the bourgeoisie to defend their domination as a class of exploiters, have now, after the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, become the urgent and principal slogans. On the one hand the practical realization of these slogans by the toiling masses is the sole condition for the salvation of the country, which has been shattered by the imperialistic war and by the imperialists under Kerensky. On the other hand, the practical realization of these slogans by the Soviet power, with its own methods and its own laws, is necessary and sufficient for the final victory of socialism. This, however, is not comprehended by those who contemptuously refuse to urge such ` common ' and ` trivial' slogans. In our agricultural country, which only a year ago overthrew czarism and less than half a year ago freed itself from the Kerenskys, there remained naturally a good deal of unconscious anarchism, which was increased by the bestiality and barbarity accompanying every prolonged and reactionary war; and a good deal of despair and aimless anger has ac-cumulated. If we should add to this the treasonable policy of the servants of the bourgeoisie, the Mensheviki, right Social-Revolutionists, etc., it will become clear what energetic and persistent efforts must be exerted by the best and most con-

scious workers and peasants, to effect a complete change in the mood of the masses and to turn them to regular, uninterrupted and disciplined labor. Only such a change accomplished by the masses of proletarians and near-proletarians can complete, the victory over the bourgeoisie, and, especially over the more persistent and numerous peasant bourgeoisie."

In this preoccupation with the morals of the people as the one indispensable prerequisite of Socialist success, we do not taste the flavor of revolution as it is enjoyed in Bohemian parlors. We do not see a man guided by emotional flavors. We see a man bent upon the achievement of an end, and guided in determining what are the means to that achievement by a mature and unswerving intelligence.

Just as he is able to put the question of personal morality at the front, when in the scheme of attaining Socialism it belongs at the front, so he is able to put it in the back at the time when it belongs there. He does not confuse the Social revolution with a hypnotic fixation upon any moral ideal.

" We were frequently reproached," he says, " by the servants of the bourgeoisie for conducting a Red Guard' at-tack on capital. An absurd reproach, worthy indeed of servants of the money pouch. For the ` Red Guard ' attack on capital was at that time absolutely dictated by the circumstances. In the first place, capital was offering military resistance through Kerensky, and Krasnoff, Savinkoff and Gotz, (Gegechkori is even now offering such resistance), Dutoff and Bogayevsky. Military resistance can be crushed only by military means, and the Red Guards were contributing to the noblest and greatest historical cause. .

" Secondly, we could not then give preeminence to the method of management instead of the methods of suppression, because the art of management is not inherent in people, but is gained through experience. At that time we did not have this experience. Now we do have it.

" In the third place, we could not then have at our disposal specialists of different branches of knowledge and technique, for they were either fighting in the ranks of the Bogayevskys, or were still in a position to offer systematic and persistent passive resistance through sabotage. Now we have broken the sabotage. The ' Red Guard ' attack on capital has been successful and victorious, for we have defeated both the military resistance of capital and its resistance through sabotage.

" Does this mean that the ` Red Guard ' attack on capital is the right method always and in all circumstances, and that we have no other methods of combating capital? To think so would be naive. We have won with light cavalry, but we also have heavy artillery at our disposal. We have won by methods of suppression. We will be able to win also`by methods of management. We should be able to change the methods of fighting with the change of circumstances. . . ."

It is hardly necessary to say that a man who can use the weapon of modern warfare successfully, and yet all the time remember that modern warfare is " light artillery " compared with the heavy guns of economic management, is a statesman of new and extraordinary force. There will be something almost supernatural in the hold upon historic forces that Marxian science and the philosophy of change will give into

12   THE LIBERATOR

the hands of this man. He is a suitable repository of the power of the new international class, that is destined to revolutionize the social and political, as capitalists have revolutionized the mechanical, fabric of the world.

After these questions of moral conduct, the leading problem that Lenin presents-and this also will not excite the palate of the temperamental rebel-is the " organization of strict and universal accounting and control of production and distribution." And here also, from the standpoint of an adamant determination to achieve socialism, he finds it necessary to check the impulses of the too impetuous expropriators of capital.

" It would be impossible," he says; " to define the problem of the present period by the simple formula: to continue the offensive against capital. In spite of the fact that we have undoubtedly not conquered capital-and that it is absolutely necessary to continue the attack on this enemy of the workers, such a definition would be vague and not concrete, it would not indicate the peculiarity of the present period, when in the interests of a successful final offensive it is necessary to halt the offensive for the present.

" This can be explained by comparing our position in the war against capital with the position of a victorious army which has captured, let us say, a half or two-thirds of the enemy's territory and is compelled to halt the offensive in or-der to recuperate, to increase the supply of ammunition, to repair and to strengthen the communication lines, to build new store-houses, to bring up new reserves, etc. A halt in the offensive of the victorious. army under such conditions is necessary in the interests of winning the remaining territory from the enemy, i. e., in the interests of complete victory. .

" Of course, we can speak only metaphoricaIIy of a ` halt ' in the offensive against capital. In an ordinary war it is possible to issue a general order to halt the offensive, it is possible to actually stop the movement forward. In the war against capital the movement forward cannot be stopped, and there can be no question of our renouncing any further expropriation of capital. We are considering here the question of changing the centre of gravity of our economic and political work. Heretofore measures for the immediate ` expropriation of the expropriators' were preeminent. At present pre-eminence must be given to the organization of accounting and control in those enterprises in which the capitalists have al-ready been expropriated."

So he explains, and tries to make meticulously clear to the workingmen and peasants-as he has been doing in primers of Socialist theory for years   the exact and candid truth about the things that most affect their interest. He has been a Christ of Science, this man, and that is the source of his personal power.

For the crucial business of " accounting and control " Lenin has been compelled to summon the help of expertshigh-salaried men under capitalism, and though his own salary as Premier of the Republic is just the wages of on ordinary working man, he is compelled to pay these experts-in

order to get them immediately-what they used to receive. He makes no secret, and more yet, he makes no bluff, about this. He tells the people what he is doing, and why, and for how long he believes it will be necessary if they all do their best. There is no statesman in the rest of the world who has enough faith in himself to be so candid and so clear.

" Without the direction of specialists of different branches of knowledge, technique and experience, the transformation toward Socialism is impossible, for Socialism. demands a conscious mass movement toward a higher productivity of labor in comparison with capitalism, and on the basis which has been attained by capitalism. Socialism must accomplish this movement forward in its own way, by its own methods-we will make it more definite-by Soviet methods. But the specialists are inevitably bourgeois, on account of the whole environment of social life which made them specialists. If our proletariat, having obtained power, had rapidly solved the problem of accounting, control and organization on a national scale-(this was impossible on account of the war and the backwardness of Russia)-then, having crushed the sabotage, we would have obtained the complete submission of the bourgeois specialists. In view of the considerable delay in ac-counting and control in general, although we have succeeded in defeating the sabotage, we have not yet created an environment which would put at our disposal the bourgeois specialists. Many former sabotagers are now coming into our service, but . . . . we are forced now to make use of the old bourgeois method, and agree to a very high remuneration for the services of the biggest of the bourgeois specialists. All those who are acquainted with the facts understand this, but not all give sufficient thought to the significance of such a measure on the part of the proletarian state. It is clear that such a measure is a compromise. . . ."

Did you ever hear of a capitalist politician who talked to the people that way about his compromises? Lenin goes even farther. It is worse than a compromise, he says, it is " a step backward by our Socialist Soviet State, which has from the very beginning proclaimed and carried on a policy of reducing high salaries to the standard of wages of the aver-age worker.

" Of course the servants of the bourgeoisie, particularly of the petty kind, like the Mensheviki and the Right Social Revolutionists, will giggle at our admission that we are making a step back. But we should pay no attention to giggling. We must study the peculiarities of the highly difficult and new road to Socialism, without concealing our mistakes and weaknesses, but trying to overcome our deficiencies in time. To conceal from the masses that attracting bourgeois specialists by extremely high salaries is a defection from the principles of the commune, would mean that we had lowered ourselves to the level of the bourgeois politicians and were deceiving the masses. To explain openly how and why we have made a step backward, and then to discuss publicly the means we have to overcome our deficiencies,-this is to educate the masses and to learn from experience, to learn together with them how to build Socialism. There has hardly

September, 1918   13

been a single victorious military campaign in history when the victor did not happen to make individual mistakes, to suffer partial defeats, to temporarily retreat somewhere. And the campaign ' against capitalism which we have undertaken is a million times more difficult than the most difficult military campaign, and it would be foolish and disgraceful to be-come dejected on account of an individual and partial re-treat.   .   .   .

" All thinking and honest workers and peasants will agree with us and will admit that we are unable to get rid at once of the evil heritage of capitalism; that the Soviet republic can be freed from the ` tribute ' of fifty or a hundred millions of rubles (a tribute for our own backwardness in the organization of universal accounting and control from the bottom up) only by organization, by increasing the discipline among ourselves, by getting rid of all those who keep the traditions of capitalism, i. e. of loafers, parasites and grafters. If the conscious advanced workers and peasants succeed, with the help of the Soviet institutions, in organizing and disciplining themselves, and creating a powerful labor discipline in one year, then we will in one year do away with this `tribute'   .   .   .

" A Socialist state can come into existence only as a net of production and consumption communes, which keep conscientious accounts of their production and consumption, economize labor, steadily increasing its productivity, and thus making it possible to lower the working-day to seven, six, or even fewer hours.

After " accounting and control " the chief problem con-fronting the revolution is that of Increasing the Productivity of Labor. I suppose every one who has studied economics knows that in order to maintain a really free and happy stanard of living among all the people after wealth begins to be justly distributed, it will be necessary to increase the amount of wealth produced. It is interesting and hope-giving to see this heretofore academic problem, dark with prejudicial controversy, held up clearly into the light and attacked by the man who adds " laboratory opportunities " on a large scale to a thorough knowledge of its theoretic status.

" In every Socialist revolution,-after the proletariat has captured the power, and to the extent to which the problem of expropriaCing the expropriators and of suppressing their resistance is solved,-it becomes necessary to turn first of all to the fundamental problem of the creation of a higher-thancapitalism social system. It becomes necessary to raise the productivity of labor and, in connection with this and for this, to improve its organization. . . . Our Soviet power is just now in a position where, thanks to the victories against the exploiters from Kerensky to Korniloff, it has become possible for her to directly approach this problem and take hold of it. And here it becomes at once clear that although it is possible to seize the central state power in a few days, al-though it is possible to suppress the military resistance and the sabotage of the exploiters even in the far corners of a large country in several weeks, a sound solution of the problem of increasing the productivity of labor requires (especially

after a most destructive war) at least several years.

" The decisive character of this work is determined by purely objective circumstances. To increase the productivity of labor we must first of all secure the material basis of a large industry; the development of the production of fuel, iron, machinery and of the chemical industry. . . .

"Higher productivity of labor depends on the improvement of the cultural state of the masses of the population. This improvement is taking place with unusual swiftness, but it is not perceived by those who are blinded by the bourgeois routine, and are unable to comprehend what a longing for light and initiative is now pervading the masses of the people, thanks to the Soviet organizations.

" Secondly, economic improvement depends on higher discipline of the workers, on higher skill, efficiency, and intensity of labor, and its better organization. Ln this respect our situation is especially bad-and even hopeless, if we should take the word of those who are scared by the bourgeoisie, or who are paid to serve her. These people do not under-stand that there has never been nor can ever be a revolution when the adherents of the old regime would not wail about disorganization, anarchy, etc. It is natural that among the masses who have just overthrown an incredibly barbarous oppression, there is profound and widespread unrest and ferment; that the development of a new basis of labor discipline is a very long process; .that before a complete victory over the Iand-owners and the bourgeoisie had been attained this development could not even begin.

"No profound and powerful popular movement in history ever escaped paying a price to, the scum,-the inexperienced innovators would be preyed upon by adventurers and crooks, boasters and shouters; there would be stupid con-fusion, unnecessary bustle; individual `leaders' would undertake twenty tasks at once, completing none of them. Let the poodles of bourgeois society scream and bark on account of every additional splinter going to waste while the big old forest is cut down. It is their business to bark at the proletariat elephant. Let them bark. We will go ahead, trying very cautiously and patiently to test and discover real organizers, people with sober minds and practical sense, who cornbine loyalty to Socialism with the ability to organize quietly (and in spite of confusion and noise) the efficient and harmonious joint work of a large number of people under Soviet organization. Only such persons should, after many trials, advancing them from the simplest to the most difficult tasks, be promoted to responsible posts to direct the work of the people, to direct the management. We have not yet learned this. We will learn this."

[In the continuation of this article next month, we shall see Lenin discuss among other things the problems of " proletarian dictatorship," of the relation of "labor discipline" .to the principle of individual liberty, of the character and significance of anarchist and an archo-syndicalist philosophy, the practical working of the Soviets, the guarantees of popular control, and the maintaining in the Socialist organization of a state of fluidity, and of power to change.]

New York And I

By Arturo Giovannitti

C ITY without history and without legends,   And all the things that are dead

City without scaffolds and without monuments,   Tho' they were born to be deathlessly mine, Ruinless, shrineless, gateless, open to all wayfarers,   You have branded with kisses of fire on my flesh and

To all the carriers of dreams, to all the burden bearers,   my brain,

To all the seekers for bread and power and forbidden 0 Barren Harlot of heroes you turn into swine!

ken;

City of the Common Men

Who work and cat and breed, without any other ambitions,

0 Incorruptible Force, 0 Reality without visions, What is between you and me?

You have narrowed my vast horizons To the coil of your cold embrace,

You have shortened my star-girt heights To the height of your bludgeoning mace; You have pinioned my falcon flights

With the shears of your thieving measure, You have seared my eyes with the sights Of the stews 'where you rot and. gloat;

You have parched my war-shouts in my throat With the smudge of your hot bitumes,

You have choken my white prayers with the fumes

Of your toils, and the dust of your streets.

0 Mad One, but how could I sing to you my last song? O Dread One, how could 1 praise you, I who so long Had seen you feed on the corpse of my dreams that you

slew,

Gnaw at the plinths of' all pillars I raised for the world, Mock every flag I unfurled,

Rend every sail that I set and fell every oak that I grew?

How could I sing of you,

O Ferocious City who boil

All the mad powers of men in your cauldron, and stir Their molten furies with tridents of lust and despair Till the flesh and the soul and the soil

Are turned into tinsel and coin for your dress and your hair?

What was between you and me, Grey City of Hunger and Toil?

[n the charnels of my defeats,

In the welter of your foul trough

You have sealed ill my lungs the cough Of your sick and voracious breath; You have poured the squalid death Of your pleasures into my veins;

And all the things that are red,

And all the things that are vain,

What is between you and me, save the ashes and lees Of orgies, the blows that you struck me, my impotent curse,

And now and again, in a fit of regret and remorse, The truce of your soft Iullaby, and my head on your knees?

I cursed in your temples, I wept leaden tears in your inns,

I laughed in your graveyards, I prayed in your slums for your blood,

I wallowed to purge my dead soul in the pools of your sins

And found the thing that's divine, the word that was God

In the filth of your offals and swill

That to your servants you fling,

When your law, when your fate and your will

Bade me to steal and to kill,

But the glory of your face made me sing!

But now   . 0 Mighty One, what shiver shakes your form?

I see you awake and arisen,

Out of your golden seraglio, out of your lecherous prison,

Out of your shame and your sloth.

Naked your brow, your hair flung away to the breeze, Naked your breasts, the wrath of the race in your knees, Naked your sword, your gauntlet is cast on the seas, And the breath of your shout swells the storm. And shall you hear it now, the voice that smote behind The locked gates of the past?

And shall you keep your troth?

And will you he steadfast,

And will you keep your promises or. will they be refused When rise to hail you mother the vanhosts of mankind? Will then the blood you bleed and shed be re-trans-

fused

Into fraternal veins? Will then the (lead arise,

The starved be fed again, the sick again made whole?

And will you then have flowers to cover every tomb?

You who will slay the old world, will you then bear to light

Or crush within, the new one that stirs now in your womb?

What matters all that now-now you have found a soul!

And to ! as now I hear you from sky and earth and water

September, 1918   15

Calling upon your children, to every son and daughter, And tears are in your eyes, and in your hand is slaughter,

And you stand straight and terrible, cruel and holy, bruised

And blessed and bereft,

While stilled in your calm breast your every languish lies,

My heart has been unlocked, my silence has been cleft, My song has been unloosed,

O Brazen One! 0 Dreadful One? 0 Glory of my eyes?

And so I shall sing with a song that shall bide in the ears

Of men, like the groan of the dying in those of the child,

All that in you is eternal and placid and wild,

All that is godlike or mean, till my light burns no more. I shall sing your streets and your marts, many-tongued, myriad-armed,

Hallucinated with fires,

Athunder with tumult and roar;

Your human beehives alarmed

With frenzies or bastes and desires;

I shall sing of your strong sons and weak ones, The prophets and seers that you maim,

The singers you starve, the wastrels you fill,

The thieves and the strumpets you honor, the cowards you acclaim

And the saints and the heroes you kill.

I shall sing of your slums where you bleed, Your machines, iron claws of your greed, And your jails, viscid coils of your mind, The light of your eyes that dazzles the sun And turns your midnights into noons, The Street where you buy and resell Each day the whole world and mankind, Your foundations that reach down to hell And your towers that rend the typhoons, And your voice drunk with bloody libations, And your harbor that swallows the nations, And the glory of your nameless dead, And the bitterness of your bread,

And the sword that shall hallow your hand, And the dawn that shall garland your head!

Arturo Giovannitti.

Were You Ever a CbId?

A Discussion of Education by Floyd Dell

II---The Book

4 F the ingredients of the educational catastrophe, the only one remaining to be discussed is the Book. Is it to blame for the failure of the process which has brought us to our present state of elaborate ignorance, and ought it to be abolished?

We determined at the outset, if you remember,* to go at this question with an open mind. We decided to take up in turn the Child, the Building, the Teacher and the Book, and find out which was to blame. We put the Child on the witness stand and found-well, a pretty desperate state of affairs. Plainly it was going to be a hard task to turn him into the kind of being of which civilization stands in need. We considered abolishing him, as the easiest solution of the problem. And when, after due consideration, we decided not to after all, it was with a full understanding of the implications of that decision. It meant that something had to be done to give him a complete opportunity to find out about the world and about himself. It meant that everything in the educational scheme had to be considered with reference to whether and how much it subserved this end. We found the School Building, which might have been an aid to this plan, a serious obstacle, because of its pretensions to being

* The first part of this article appeared in the August Liberator.

a kind of sacred edifice. Instead of trying to be a world in miniature from which the Child could learn how to be a complete human being, it was demanding that the Child should sacrifice his needs to its dignities. We dismissed it with a serious warning to put on fewer airs and the threat of abolition altogether unless it amended its ways. And then the Teacher-well, she wasn't to blame for having to play the part of immaculate omniscience; and so we let her go with the suggestion that she learn to do one thing so well that it would be a pleasure to watch her and a temptation to learn from her. In her character, however, as a semi-sacrosanct peddler of odds-and-ends of book-learning, we made it clear that she was of no more use to the Child than the pseudo-sacred School Building: he could get along with-out them both very well.

And so we come to the Book. What have books got to do with education, anyway?

Not half as much as most people think! If education is learning to be a civilized human being, books have their place in it. But civilized life is composed of a number of things besides books-it contains machinery, art, political organization, handicraft, flowers and birds, and other things too numerous to mention, all of which are notoriously capable of being learned about in the great world outside without

16   THE LIBERATOR

the use of books. If in the great world outside the school, then why not in the little world inside the school? Not that the use of books should be ever avoided anywhere for the sake of the avoidance. Books are a convenience-or an inconvenience, as the case may be. Like other valuable human utilities, they are frequently a nuisance if obtruded in the place of better things. Every intelligent person has the same attitude toward books that he has toward his sweetheart's picture: if she is out of reach, if the picture furnishes him his only way of seeing her, he values it profoundly; but if she is in the next room, he does not linger with the picture. True, he may fall in love with the picture first-the picture may reveal to him the girl whom otherwise he might never have appreciated; and books do make us appreciate aspects of reality which we have neglected. But in education books are not an adequate substitute for direct contact with the realities with which they deal, precisely because they do not give the sense of power which only comes from direct contact with reality. It is the function of books to assist in that educational contact-not to take the place of it.

There is, indeed, a sense in which books are the most egregious fraud ever perpetrated upon a world hungry for the knowledge which is power. I am reminded of the scene in " The Wild Duck," when the fvther returns home from a grand dinner party. He has promised to bring his little daughter some sweetmeats or cake-and he has forgotten to do so. But-and he grandly draws from his pocket a piece of printed matter-" Here, my child, is the menu: you can sit down and read about the whole dinner! " Poor little Hedvig knew that she wasn't getting anything to eat; but some of us don't realize that for years and years-we dutifully masticate the innutritious contents of text-books while we are starving for a taste of reality.

Take geography, for instance. I know quite well that it was not the intention of the author of the text-book which I studied that I should conceive the state of Illinois as yellow and the neighboring state of Indiana as pale green: but I do to this clay. They were not realities to me, but pictures in a book; and they were not realities because they had no relation whatever to real experience. If I had been asked to draw a map of the school grounds, with the boys' side distinguished by one color and the girls' by another, that convention would thereafter have seemed only what it was. If I had drawn a map of the town I lived in, I would have been thenceforth unable, I am sure, to see a map without feeling the realities of stream and wood and hill and house and farm of which it is a conventional abstracion. I would, in short, have learned something about geography. The very word would have ,acquired a fascinating significance-the depiction of the surface of the earth! whereas all the word geography actually means to me now is-a very large flat book. And if an aviator should stop me and ask which is the way to Illinois, I couldn't for my life tell him: but if you brought me that old geography book and opened it to the map of the United States, I could put my finger on Illinois

-or any state-in the dark! You see, Illinois is for me not a part of the real world-it is a yellow picture in a large flat book.

In the same way, I have the impression that the American Revolution happened in a certain thick book bound in red cloth-not by any chance in the New York and New England whose streets I have walked in. (And, for that matter, as I have later discovered, much of the American Revolution of the school histories-such as the Boston Tea-Party as described-did not happen anywhere except in the pages of such text-books). The only thing I know about the crossing of the Delaware, for example, is that it is a Leading Fact of American History, and occurred on the right hand page, a Iittle below and to the left of a picture. And this conception of historical events as a series of sentences occur-ring in a certain order on a certain page, seems to me the inevitable consequence of learning history from a text-book.

There is, I feel, the most serious objection to the use of text-books in teaching history. But there are other objections which apply to text-books in general. One is their frequent perversion or suppression of truth for moral, patriotic or sentimental reasons: in this respect they are like practically all books intended for children. They are generally pot-boilers written by men of no standing in the intellectual or even in the scholastic world. But even when a text-book is written by a man of real learning, the absence of a critical audience of his equals seems often to deprive him of a stimulus necessary to good writing, and leave him free to indulge in long-repressed childishnesses of his own which he would never dare exhibit to a mature public. And even when text-books are neither grossly incompetent nor palpably dishonest, there is nevertheless almost invariably something cheap and trashy about their composition which repels the student who can choose his own books. Why should they be inflicted upon helpless children?

Even if all text-books were miracles of accuracy and order, even if they all showed literary talent of a high degree, their usefulness would still be in question. If children are to be given a sense of the reality of the events which they study, they must get some feeling of contact with the facts. And to this project the use of a text-book is fatal. Let us turn to history once more. I take it that a text-book of history, as intended and as used, is a book which tells everything which it is believed necessary for the pupil to know. Right there it divorces itself, completely and irrevocably, from the historical category. History is not a statement of what people ought to know. History is an inquiry into the nature and relationship and significance of past events. Not a pronouncement upon these things, but a searching into them. Now the chief fact about past events is that they happened some time ago. The historian does not, to begin with, know what happened, let alone how and why it happened. He is dependent upon other people's reports. His chief task is often to determine the comparative accuracy of these various reports. And when we read the writings of a real historian, the sense of contact we have with the events under discussion

September, 1918   17

comes from our feeling that we have listened to a crowd of contrary witnesses, and, with our author's assistance, got at the truth behind their words. More than that, the historian himself is addressing you, not as if he thought you had never read anything on the subject before and never would again, but with implicit or explicit reference to the opinions of other historians. He is himself only one of a crowd of witnesses, from all of whose testimony he expects you to form your own opinion of those past events which none of you will ever meet face to face.

Compare this with the school text-book. It was evidently written by Omniscience Itself, for it does not talk as if the facts were in the slightest doubt, as if there were any two opinions about them, as if it were necessary to inquire into the past to find out something about it. It does not condescend to offer an opinion in agreement or in controversy with the views of others. It does not confess any difficulty in arriving at a just conclusion. No-it says This happened and That happened. Perhaps it is all true as gospel. But facts so presented are abstractions, devoid of the warmth and color of reality. Even the schools have learned how uninteresting dates are. But they do not realize that dates are uninteresting because, since nobody can possibly doubt them, it does no good whatever to believe in them. It is only the truths that need the assistance of our belief that engage our interest. It is only then that they concern us. We are interested in politics because it is the process of making up our minds about the future; and we are interested in history, when we are interested, because it is the process of making up our minds about the past.

By eliminating the text-book, or by using it simply as a convenient syllabus and chronological guide to an inquiry into the significance and relationship of the events of the past, with the aid of every good historical work available for reference, the study of history would become a matter of concern to the pupil; and the past, looked at from several angles, and clown a felt perspective of time, would become real.

I am aware that this is done in the higher flights of the educational system. But why is it that the easy and profitable methods of learning are put off so long and the hardest and most profitless forced upon children? Is it that easier learning means harder teaching? I am not sure of that; the only difficulty about such a method as I have described would be in the mere change from the old to the new. No, I think the real trouble lies in the superstition of the Book.

This may be seen in the teaching of mathematics. Before they come to school, children have usually learned to count, and they have learned easily because they were counting real objects. The objective aspect of mathematics is almost immediately lost sight of in school. Even the blackboard affords no release from the book, for who ever saw a blackboard outside a schoolroom? Mathematics comes to seem some-thing horribly useless. The child simply does not believe that people ever go through these tortures when they grow up. Even the suggestive fables into which the " examples " are

sometimes cast, fail to convince him. " If a carpenter -" " A salesman has -" But he is neither a carpenter nor a salesman. He is a weary child, and he is not going to pre-tend to be a carpenter or a salesman unless he gets some fun out of it. The thing about being a carpenter or a salesman which appeals to the child's imagination is something other than mathematics. No, the printed word does not suffice. But let him be a carpenter or salesman for the nonce, let him with saw or sugar-scoop in hand find it to be necessary to add, subtract, multiply, divide and deal in fractions, and he will rise undaunted to the occasion. And, having found in actual practice just what his difficulties are, he will cheer-fully use book and blackboard. Where there's a will there's a way, and mathematics has only to come to seem a desirable acquisition to become an easily mastered one. I should say that the ideal way of teaching a boy of eight mathematics-including, if necessary, trigonometry-was as a part of the construction of a motorcycle. I remember that I gained in twenty-four hours an insight into the mysteries of English grammar which I had failed to get in the 1200 odd lessons previously inflicted on me in school-and I gained that in-sight in writing my first story. When an effect that you yourself want to achieve depends on a preposition or a fraction, then, and only then, are such things worth knowing.

If you want to see the most terrific and damning criticism of text-books, open one of them which has been used by a child, and see it written there on the margins in fretful and meandering curleques, which say as plainly as the handwriting on Belshazzar's wall, " I have weighed this book in the balance and found it wanting. It does not interest me. It leaves my spirit vexed and impatient." I have estimated that the scrawl-work in a single average schoolbook, if unwound and placed end to end, would extend along the Lincoln Highway from Weehawken, N. J., to Davenport, Iowa; while the total energy which goes into the making of these scrawls each day in the public schools of New York City alone, would be sufficient to hoist a grand piano to the top of the Woolworth building. The grand total for the United States of the soul-power that dribbles out into these ugly pencilings, amounts to a huge Niagara of wasted energy.

The Book, as the center of our educational process, must be abolished. It is a good servant, but a bad master. And only as a servant can it be tolerated-as an adjunct to the gardens and workshops and laboratories and kitchens and studios and playgrounds of the school-world.

(To be continued)

Soldierly

THE Garton Foundation in England finds that returned soldiers are among the most radical forces in the country, and in British Columbia a soldier running on a labor ticket defeated a Tory officer for Parliament. The Prussian caste system, with all its faults, does not seem to be catching,

18

CONTEM1

LATION

The Social Revolution In Court

I N the opening words of his statement why sentence of death should not be pronounced upon him, August Spies, one of the Chicago martyrs of 1887, quoted the speech of a Venetian doge, uttered six centuries ago-

" I stand here as the representative of one class, and speak to you, the representatives of another class. My defense is your accusation; the cause of my alleged crime, your history.

The Federal court-room in Chicago, where judge Landis sits in judgment on the Industrial Workers of the World, is an imposing great place, all marble-and-bronze and mellow dark wood-work. Its windows open upon the heights of towering office-buildings, which dominate that court-room as money-power dominates our civilization.

Over one window is a mural painting of King John and the Barons at Runnymede, and a quotation from the Great Charter:

No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned or be disseized of his freehold or liberties or free customs, or be outlawed or exiled or any otherwise damaged but by lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land-

" To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice. . . . '

Opposite, above the door, is printed in letters of gold:

" These words the Lord speke unto all your assembly in the mount out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice; and he added no more. fl,zd he wrote them in two tables of stone, and delivered them unto nre. . . . -Dent. V. 22.

Heroic priests of Israel veil their faces, while Moses elevates the Tables of the Law against a background of clouds and flame.

Small on the huge bench sits a wasted man with untidy white hair, an emaciated face in which two burning eyes are set like jewels, parchment skin split by a crack for a mouth; the face of Andrew Jackson three years dead. This is Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, named for a battle-a fighter

and a sport, according to his lights, and as just as he knows how to be. It was he who fined the Standard Oil Company thirty-nine million dollars. (No, none of it was paid.)

Upon this man has devolved the historic role of trying the Social Revolution. He is doing it like a gentleman. Not that he admits the existence of a Social Revolution. The other day he ruled out of evidence the Report of the Committee on Industrial Relations, which the defense was trying to introduce in order to show the background of the I. W. W.

" As irrelevant as the Holy Bible," he said. At least that shows a sense of irony.

In many ways a most unusual trial. When the judge enters the court-room after recess no one rises-he himself has abolished the pompous formality. He sits without robes, in an ordinary business suit, and often leaves the bench to come down and perch on the step of the jury box. By his personal order, spittoons are placed beside the prisoners' seats, so they can while away the long day with a chaw; and as for the prisoners themselves, they are permitted to take off their coats, move around, read newspapers.

It takes some human understanding for a judge to fly in the face of judicial ritual as much as that.

As for the prisoners, I doubt if ever in history there has been a sight just like them. One hundred and one menlumber-jacks, harvest-hands, miners, editors; one hundred and one who believe that the wealth of the world belongs to him who creates it, and that the workers of the world shall take their own. I have before me the chart of their commonwealth-their industrial democracy-One Big Union.

One Big Union-that is their crime. That is why the I. W. W. is on trial. In the end just such an idea shall sap and crumble down capitalist society. If there were a way to kill these men, capitalist society would cheerfully do it; as it killed Frank Little, for example-and before him, Joe Hill. . . . So the outcry of the jackal press, " German

By Art Young And John Reed

agents! Treason ! "-that the I. NV. W. may be lynched on a grand scale.

One hundred and one strong men. Most of our American social revolutionists are in the sedentary trades-garmentworkers, textile-workers, printers. At least, so it seems to us, in the great cities. Your miners, your steel and iron workers, building-trades, railroad workers-all these belong to the A. F. of L., which believes in the capitalist system as strongly as J. P. Morgan does. But these Hundred and One are out-door men, hard-rock blasters, tree-fellers, wheat-binders, longshoremen, the boys who do the strong work of the world. They are scarred all over with the wounds of industry-and the wounds of society's hatred. They aren't afraid of anything. They are the kind of men the capitalist points to as he drives past some great building they are putting up, or some huge bridge they are throwing over a river:

" There," he says, " that's the kind of working-men we want in this country. Men that know their job, and work at it, instead of going around talking bosh about the class struggle."

They know their job, and work at it. But strangely enough they believe in the Social Revolution too.

Hear this once more, their trumpet-call; the famous Pre-amble of the I. W. W.:

" The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working-people, and the few who make up the employing class have all the good things of life.

"Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system."

In the early morning they come over from Cook County

jail, where most of them have been rotting three-quarters of a year, and march into the court-room two by two, between police and detectives, bailiffs snarling at the spectators who stand too close. It used to be that they were marched four times a day through the streets of Chicago, hand-cuffed; but the daily circus parade has been done away with.

Now they fill in, the ninety-odd who are still in jail, greeting their friends as they pass; and there they are joined by the others, those who are out on bail. The bail is so high-from $25,00o apiece down-that only a few can be let free. The rest have been in that horrible jail-Cook County-since early last fall; almost a year in prison for a hundred men who love freedom more than most.

On the front page of the Daily Defense Bulletin, issued by headquarters, is a drawing of a worker behind the bars, and underneath, "REMEMBER! We are in HERE for YOU; You are out THERE for US! "

There goes Big Bill Haywood, with his black Stetson above a face like a scarred mountain; Ralph Chaplin, looking like jack London in his youth; Reddy Doran, of kindly pugnacious countenance, and mop of bright red hair falling over the green eye-shade he always wears; Harrison George, whose forehead is lined with hard thinking; Sam Scarlett, who might have been a yeoman at Crecy; George Andreytchine, his eyes full of Slav storm; Charley Ashleigh, fastidious, sophisticated, with the expression of a well-bred Puck; Grover Perry, young, stony-faced after the manner of the West; Jim Thompson, John Foss, J. A. MacDonald; Boose, Praricner, Rothfisher, Johanson, Lossiev. . . .

Inside the rail of the court-room, crowded together, many in their shirt-sleeves, some reading papers, one or two stretched out asleep, some sitting, some standing up; the faces of workers and fighters, for the most part, also the faces of orators, of poets, the sensitive and passionate faces of foreigners-but all strong faces, all faces of men inspired, somehow; many scarred, few bitter. There could not be

22   THE LIBERATOR

gathered together in America one hundred and one men more fit to stand for the Social Revolution. People going into that court-room say, " It's more like a convention than a trial! " True, and that is one of the things that gives the trial its dignity; that, and the fact that Judge Landis con-ducts it in a cosmic way. . . .

To me, fresh from Russia, the scene was strangely familiar. For a long time I was puzzled at the feeling of having witnessed it all before; suddenly it flashed upon me.

The I. W. W. trial in the Federal court-room of Chicago looked like a meeting of the Central Executive Committee of the All-Russian Soviets of Workers' Deputies in Petro-grad! I could not get it into my head that these men were on trial. They were not at all cringing, or frightened, but confident, interested, humanly understanding . . . like the Bolshevik Revolutionary Tribunal. . . . For a moment it seemed to me that I was watching the Central Committee of the American Soviets trying Judge Landis for-well, say counter-revolution. The great enclosure of the court-room assumed the character of delegates' seats; the high bench was the bar, or docket, whose one occupant, judge Landis, was typical of the old regime-the best of the old regime. . . .

And then I noticed the clumps of heavy, brutish-faced men, built like minotaurs, whose hips bulged, and whose little eyes looked mingled ferocity and servility, like a bull-dog's; the look of private detectives, and scabs, and other body-guards of private property. . . .

And I saw the government prosecutor rise to speak-Attorney Nebeker, legal defender for the great copper-mining corporations; a slim, nattily-dressed man with a face all subtle from twisting and turning in the law, and eyes as cold and undependable as flawed steel.   . .

A Sketch by Art Young

And I looked through the great windows and saw, in the windows of the office-buildings that ringed us round, the lawyers, the agents, the brokers at their desks, weaving the fabric of this civilization of ours, which drives men to revolt and dream, and then crushes them. From the street came roaring up the ceaseless thunder of Chicago, and' a military mand went blaring down invisible ways to war.

Talk to us of war! These hundred and one are veterans of a war that has gone on all their lives, in blood, in savage and shocking battle and surprise; a war against a force which has limitless power, gives no quarter, and obeys none of the rules of civilized warfare. The Class Struggle, the age-old guerilla fight of the workers against the masters, world-wide, endless . . . but destined to end!

These hundred and one have been at it since in their youth they watched their kind being coldly butchered, not knowing how to resist. They have mastered the secret of war-take the offensive! And for that knowledge they are hunted over the earth like rats.

In Lawrence a policeman killed a woman with a gun, a militia-man bayoneted a boy; in Paterson the privatedetective-thugs shot and killed a worker standing on his own porch, with his baby in his arms; on the Mesaba Range armed guards of the Steel Trust murdered strikers openly, and other strikers were jailed for it; in San Diego men who tried to speak on the streets were taken from the city by prominent citizens, branded with hot irons, their ribs caved in with base-ball bats; in the harvest fields of the great Northwest workers were searched, and if red cards were found on them, cruelly punished by vigilantes. At Everett, the hirelings of the Lumber Trust massacred them. . . .

The creed of the I. W. W. took hold mostly among migratory workers, otherwise unorganized; among the wretchedly exploited, the agricultural workers, timber-workers, miners, who are viciously underpaid and over-worked, who have no vote, and are protected by no union and no law, whose wage and changing abode never allow them to marry, nor to have a home. The migratory workers never have enough money for railway fares; they must ride the rods, or the " side-door Pullman "; fought not only by Chambers of Commerce, Manufacturers' Associations, and all the institutions of the law, but also by the " aristocratic " labor unionists. The natural prey of the world of vested interest; of this stuff the I. W. W. is building its kingdom. Good stuff, because tried and refined; without encumbrances; willing to fight and able to take care of itself; chivalrous, adventurous. Let there he a " free speech fight " on in some town, and the " wobblies " converge upon it, across a thou-sand miles, and fill the jails with champions.

And singing. Remember, this is the only American working-class movement which sings. Tremble then at the I. W. W., for a singing movement is not to be beaten. . . .

When you hear out of a freight train rattling across a black-earth village street somewhere in Iowa, a burst of raucous, ironical young voices singing:

Sketched at Random from I. W. W. Members on Trial to Show the International Character
of the Organization-Art young

24   THE LIBERATOR

" O I like my boss,

He's a good friend of mine, fI nd that's why I'm starving Out on the picket-line!

Hallelujah! I'rn a bum!

Hallelujah! Bum again! Hallelujah! Give us a hand-out To revive us again!"

When at hot noon-time along the Philadelphia water-front you hear a bunch of giants resting after their lunch, in the most mournful barber-shop rendering that classic:

" Whadda Ye Want Ta Break Yer Back Fee the Boss For?"

Or,

" Casey Jones   The Union Scab."

I can hear them now:

" Casey Jones kept his junk pile running,

Casey Janes was working double time;

Casey Jones, he got a wooden medal

For being good and faithful on the S. P. line!"

When you hear these songs you'll know it is the American Social Revolution you are listening to.

They love and revere their singers, too, in the I. W. W. All over the country workers are singing Joe Hill's songs, " The Rebel Girl," " Don't Take My Papa Away From Me," "Workers of the World, Awaken." Thousands can repeat his " Last Will," the three simple versus written in his cell the night before execution. I have met men carrying next their hearts, in the pocket of their working-clothes, little bottles with some of Joe Hill's ashes in them. Over Bill Haywoocl's desk in National headquarters is a painted portrait of Joe Hill, very moving, done with love. . . . I know no other group of Americans which honors its singers.

Not only popular singers, but also painters, musicians, sculptors, poets. This for example by Charles Ashleigh:

" TO .BEAUTY Your name, they say, is pale and old, And speaking of you leaves men cold.

New things, they say, have filled your place;

New thoughts and words, across the space

Of swaying time, have marched and sat

In the high place we worshipped at. But still for me your name can sing A hymn that blots my cavilling, An ecstasy that rocks my heart And tears the squalid veil apart. So long as I can feel your reign And sense your holiness again,

I'll throw my youth into your hands And bear your glory through the lands."

Wherever, in the West, there is an I. W. W. local, you will find an intellectual center-a place where men read philosophy, economics, the latest plays, novels; where art and poetry are discussed, and international politics. In my

native place, Portland, Oregon, the I. W. W. hall was the livest intellectual center in town. . . . There are playwrights in the I. W. W. who write about life in the " jungles," and the "wobblies " produce the plays for audiences of " wobblies." . . .

What has all this to do with the trial in Chicago? I plead guilty to wandering from the point. I wanted to give some of the flavor that sweetens the I. W. W. for me. It was my first Iove among labor organizations; I have had the honor of being arrested in an I. W. W. strike, and of being in jail with Bill Haywood and other worker-champions for a few days. I shall never forget the impression made on me by a young Italian striker, who read Robert Ingersoll eagerly aloud in the jail; and by Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, then at the height of her rebel beauty; and Carlo Tresca, one of the biggest souls in the world's labor movement; and Arturo Giovanitti, who writes English poetry to my mind more magnificently than any English-speak-

ing poet. .   .

It was in September, 1917, that the I. W. W. man-hunt began. From that time until April, 1918-seven months-the boys lay in jail, waiting for trial. They were charged with being members of an organization, and conspiring to promote the objects of this organization, which were, briefly, to destroy the wage-system-and not by political action.

All this leading inevitably to the " destruction of government in the United States." . . . This main count in the indictment would have been highly ludicrous if it hadn't been mixed up with the sinister " obstructing the War Pro-gram of the Government "; and there were dragged in the twin sins of Sedition and Opposing the Draft. .. .

And while the hundred and twelve were rotting in jail, a ferocious hunt was launched throughout the country; I. W. W. halls were raided, conventions jailed; papers were seized ; workers were herded into bull-pens by the thousand; and every organization of police, volunteer or regular, joined the campaign of violence and terrorization against the I. W. W., so widely labelled as German agents   

Of course the " Treason " phase of the case broke down completely. It was only inserted to disguise the real nature of the prosecution, anyway. The blood-curdling revelations of German intrigue promised the world by the prosecution at the opening of the trial did not materialize. The Government experts who examined the books and accounts of the organization admitted that all was in order. Finally, it was not proven that there was an I. W. W. policy concerning the war, or even concerted opposition of opinion to Conscription. . . .

Among other farcical incidents was the loudly-heralded arrival in Chicago of ex-Governor Tom Campbell of Arizona, with a " suit-case full of proofs that the I. W. W. was paid by Germany." For weeks he stood off and on, waiting to be called to the witness-stand. Then of a sudden he announced in the newspapers that the famous " suit-case " had been stolen by an I.W.W. disguised as a Pullman porter! .. .

25

September, 1918

In order that there should be no opportunity for sentimentality, the prosecution dismissed all indictments against women defendants; in order that the I. W. W. should not he able to testify about the worst outrages perpetrated against the workers, not one of the Bisbee deportees was put on trial, and not one of the Butte strikers who might testify to the " Speculator " mine fire. . . . But because of the latitude allowed by judge Landis, and the skill of Vandeveer , and Cleary, the defense has been one long bloody pageant of industrial wrong; Coeur d'Alene, San Diego, Everett, Yakima Valley, Paterson, Mesaba Range, Bisbee, Tulsa. . . .

From the very beginning, behind shallow legal pretexts loomed the Class Struggle, stark and implacable. The first battle was in the choice of a jury, which dramatically revealed the position of both sides. In examining talesmen, the attorneys for the prosecution asked such questions as these:

" Can you conceive of a system of society in which the workers own and manage industry themselves?"

" Do you believe in the right of individuals to acquire property?"

" You believe, do you not, that all children should be taught respect for other people's property?"

"You believe, do you not, that the founders of the American Constitution were divinely inspired? "

" Don't you think that the owner of an industry ought to have more say-so in the management of it than all his employees. put together?"

Any prospective juror who admitted a familiarity with Labor history, with economics, or with the evolution of social movements, was peremptorily challenged by the prosecution. The questions of the defense were invariably objected to, and the prosecution made a series of extraordinary speeches to the court, in which were remarks such as the following:

" Karl Marx, father of that vicious doctrine-the cesspool into which the roots of the I. W. W. have gone for much nourishment."

" This case is an ordinary criminal case, in which a number of men conspired to break the law. . . . Their crime consists in the fact that they conspired to take from the employer what is constitutionally his, and in the ownership of which the law supports him."

" The wage system," said Mr. Clyne, of the prosecution, " is established by law, and all opposition to it is opposition to law."

Another time Attorney Nebeker delivered himself of the following: "A man has no right to revolution under the law." To which judge Landis himself made remark, "Well, that depends on how many men he can get to go in with hint -in other words, whether he can put it over."

26   THE LIBERATOR

The defense sternly held to the Class War issue. Among questions asked the jurymen by Vandeveer and Cleary were:

" You told Mr. Nebeker that you had never read any revolutionary literature. Have you never read, in school, about the American Revolution of 1776? Or the French Revolution which deposed the king and made France a republic? Or the Russian Revolution that overthrew the autocracy and the Tsar? "

" Do you recognize the right of people to revolt? "

" Do you recognize the idea of revolution as one of the principles of the Declaration of Independence? "

" You have told Mr. Nebeker that you don't think it is right to take away property from those who own it. In our own Civil War, do you think it was right for Congress to pass a law which took away from the people of the South several million dollars' worth of property in the form of chattel slaves-without compensation?"

" You don't believe then that property interests are greater than human interests? "

" Suppose these defendants believed that a majority of the people would he right in abolishing modern property rights in the great industries in order to free a great number of

John T. Doran, known as "Red Doran", who concluded his five hour speech to the jury by saying: It is customary with I. W. W. speakers to tale up a collection; but under these circumstances, I think we will dispense with it."

working-men from industrial slavery-would that prejudice you against them?"

" Do you believe workers have the right to strike?"

" Do y o u believe they have the right to strike even in w a r times? "

" Which side usually starts violence in a labor dispute?"

"Would you be op-posed to the application

to industry of the underlying principles of American democracy?"

" Do you consider that one individual has an inalienable right to exploit zoo or 300 men and make protected profits off their labor?"

" Don't you know that 2 per cent of the people of this country control 6o per cent of the nation's wealth? That two-thirds of the people own less than 5 per cent of the country's wealth? "

" Do you know that one man had a greater income last year than the combined income of 2,5oo,000 other Americans? "

" Do you know what effect the wage system has had upon infant mortality?"

" Do you know that prostitution is largely caused by the fact that women in industry do not receive living wages? "

" Do you believe in slavery-whether it be chattel slavery, where the master owned the worker body and soul, or whether it be industrial slavery? "

And so on, for a whole month. What an education that jury had; and what an education the whole country would have had, except that the jackal press has " hushed up " or perverted utterly the story of the I. W. W. trial. Publicity could not help but win the case for the " wobblies "; and so the great prostituted newspapers ignore the most dramatic legal battle since Dred Scott-one whose implications are as serious, and whose sky is banked with thunder-heads. . . .

Day after day, all summer, witness after witness from the firing-line of the Class Struggle has taken the stand, and helped to shape the great labor epic,; strike-leaders, gunmen, rank and file workers, agitators, deputies, police, stool-pigeons, Secret Service operatives.

I heard Frank Rogers, a youth grown black and bitter, with eyes full of vengeance, tell briefly and drily of the Speculator mine fire, and how hundreds of men burned to death because the company would not put doors in the bulk-heads. He spoke of the assassination of Frank Little, who

Jampes P. Thompson, a promi-
nent I. W. W. Speaker

September, 1918   27

was hung by " vigilantes " in Montana, and how the miners of Butte swore to remember. . . . (In the General Head-quarters of the I. W. W. there is a death mask of Frank Little, blind, disdainful, set in a savage sneer.)

Oklahoma, the tar-and-feathering of the workers at Tulsa; Everett, and the five graves of Sheriff McRae's victims on the hill behind Seattle . . . all this has come out, day by day, shocking story on story. I sat for the better part of two days listening to A. S. Embree telling over again the astounding narrative of the Arizona deportations; and as I Iistened, looked at photographs of the miners being marched across the arid country, between rows of men who carried rifles in the hollow of their arms, and wore white handkerchiefs about their wrists.

Everyone knows how the deportees were loaded on cattle-cars, how the engineer, protesting, was forced to pull the train out, and how finally, arriving at Columbus, New Mexico, the train was ordered back and finally halted in the desert, where United States troops saved the wretched people from exposure and starvation. Many of the deportees had wives, families and property in Bisbee, some were not I. W. W.'s at all, and others had no connection with the labor movement in any way; a large number of the men owned Liberty bonds, and many were registered in the Draft.

At first the committee of the deportees telegraphed to Wiley E. Jones, Attorney General of the State of Arizona, as follows:

" Sentiment of the men deported from Bisbee is that they wish to return to their homes immediately, but they are aware that their arrival may cause acts similar to those of July 12th. We wish to avoid any breach of the peace, and so respectfully suggest that you incorporate in your report

judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis stands up or walks around the courtroom as the impulse moves him. He frequently walks over to the witness chair, leans down from his high vantage and asks questions with a curious intensity, which would frighten the witness if it were not accompanied by a look of sympathetic interest: A, Y.

6- t c

e-u tz

some method by which we will be enabled to return to our homes with adequate protection. We feel that we are not justified in longer accepting alms from the Federal Government so freely offered us in the situation forced upon the Government by the action of a lawless mob."

And to Thos. Campbell, Acting Governor of Arizona:

" On account of the troublesome times in the nation and the state, our men do not wish to be the means of causing any breach of the peace. We respectfully demand protection for return to our homes."

To the Hon. Wm. B. Wilson, Secretary of Labor:

" Will the Federal Government restore and make secure the constitutional rights of the men deported from Bisbee? . . . Or does the Federal Government join hands with the state of Arizona in thus notifying the people of America that its common citizens have no rights worthy of consideration by men elected and sworn to uphold the constitution? "

And again, to the Secretary of Labor and the President:

" Federal Constitution was violated when striking miners were deported from Bisbee. We are remaining here not because we want to be idle at Government expense, but because we believe that the Federal Government will return us to our homes and give us protection. Please say what the Government intends to do."

After a few weeks the blankets issued to the deportees were withdrawn, and a notice was posted up in the camp, saying briefly that beginning on the morrow the food aIlowance would be cut down, and would continue to be reduced until at last nothing would be given. All telegraphic pro-tests and queries about this brought no answer.

And so it was done, until the deportees were driven out of camp, to crawl home, without protection, the best way they could.

28   THE LIBERATOR

They telegraphed to the President, the Secretary of Labor, the Department of Justice, to Senator La Follette, Congress-man Meyer London, Congresswoman Jeanette Rankin. . . .

" The deportees intend to remain here insisting upon the restoration of their rights as citizens. If the Federal Government withdraws its support now the deportees will be in the same position as when the Government first came to their aid in Hermanas. Does a delay of two months nullify the rights guaranteed us by the Constitution? A definite answer is requested. . . ."

To all these telegrams there were just three replies. Tumulty answered that the matter would be brought to the attention of the President; Jeanette Rankin answered encouragingly, and made a fight for the deportees; Meyer London was silent; but the bitterest irony of all was a letter from the Department of Justice in Washington:

September 29th, 1917.

" MR. A. S. EMBREE. SIR:

Your letter of the tenth inst. with reference to the deportation of yourself and other persons from the state of Arizona to Columbus, New Mexico, has been referred to this department, and the statements and arguments made by you therein have received careful consideration. This department does not believe, however, that there is any Federal law referred to by you which would justify action by the Department of Justice.   Respectfully,

" For the Attorney General,

" WILLIAM C. FITTS,

" Asst. Attorney General."

There is no law, then, which can be invoked to prevent the inter-state deportation of workmen by private persons with guns! I believe that this letter will take its place in history beside that other great utterance of irresponsibility, " Let the people eat grass! " .. .

Listen to the scriptural simplicity of this:

" Well, they grabbed us. And the deputy says, ` Are you a member of the I. W. W.? ' I says, ` Yes' ; so he asked for my card, and I gave it to him, and he tore it up. He tore the other cards up that the fellow-members along with me had, so this fellow-member says, ` There is no use tearing that card up, we can get duplicates.' ` Well,' the deputy says, 'we can tear the duplicates up too.'

" And this fellow-worker says, he says, ` Yes, but you can't tear it out of my heart.'"

The humility of the workers is beautiful, the patience of the workers is almost infinite, and their gentleness miraculous. They still believe in constitutions, and the phrases of governments-yes, in spite of their preamble, the I. W. W. still have faith in the goodness of mankind, and the possibility, of justice for the righteous.

Take care they do not lose this valuable quality. Take care, most arrogant master-class in the history of the world-call off your Vigilantes, and all of your hypocritical flimflam which is invented in wartime to enslave the workers.

It will be an evil day for you if Toni Mooney hangs; it will be an evil day for you if the I. W. W. goes to jail-singing in a deeper tone, as one of its young poets, M. Rob-bins Lampson, is singing :

" Justice became a harlot long ago

And sold herself to every master's use.

Though some declare she died still pure, I know She compromised with Death, and signed a truce With Shame, who took her to his splendid house. . . ."

I sat listening to a very simple fellow, an agricultural worker named Eggel, who was telling how the " vigilance committees and the gunmen from the towns of the North-west hunted the I. W. W. farm-hands. Without emotion Eggel described how he and others were taken off a train at Aberdeen, South Dakota, and beaten up.

" One man would sit on your neck, and two men on your arms, and two on your legs, while a detective, Price I think

was his name, beat us up with a 2-by-4, and it was criss-y' " 5

crossed, notches made on it, this way and that way, so it would raise welts on a man . . . beat you over the back and your hips. . . .

" So they took me away in one automobile, and they took Smith in another, and then they gave me another beating. So after that third beating I came back to Aberdeen, and slunk in at night, and I slept beneath a livery barn, and the next day I crept down to the depot and took a train for North Dakota. . . ."

Base. c   -Z1 a--~~

o-r - Y W w.   ,ca .eLL

September, 1918   29

BOOKS

New Perspectives

Horizons. A Book of Criticisms, bye Francis Hackett. B. W. Huebsch. $2.5o.

BY one of the simplest twists of verbal jiu jitsu in con-temporary literature, Francis Hackett disarms the critic of his blackjack and stiletto as soon as his adversary steps on the threshold. In the brief .introductory note he forestalls the objection that this is not the usual collection of olympian essays that criticism is supposed to be by admitting that the volume is what genuine criticism actually happens to be, a frank record of preferences and prejudices. Without attempting an academic precision he says precisely that he has no illusions as to the character of his reviews which he calls " field-notes of criticism." " The deeper criticism as I see it," he writes, " is managed in a different way. . . . It calls for work spaciously planned and bravely carried on, with every art to serve it and its sights set for posterity. Its aspiration far surpasses the aspiration of reviewers; it mingles with the schemes of statesmen and the dreams of poets." . . . " But I do not purpose," he continues, after having extracted the cartridges from his antagonist's automatic, " to defer to the current American superstition that pedantry is the equivalent of ideas. To quote Simon Grynaeus's preface to the Lyons Plato of 1548 may be the clinching blow of the argument; it may also be, it is much more likely to be, a bit of portentous nonsense. A critic should be Iinguist, a philologist, a man who knows literary and aesthetic ideas as well as history, social and economic and political; but all of it is cold inanimation unless the flame of sympathy is touched to it. Criticism is an art limited by the capacity of the critic for emotion."

The " flame of sympathy " is scarcely ever absent from this volume; it even illuminates his studies of Mrs. Wharton's precise elegance, and the .smooth gentility of Winston Churchill with which Mr. Hackett is scarcely merciful. It is a generous warmth. He tries, if anything, a little too hard to " see good in everything." But his restraint does not neutralize his emotion. Like the heroic Kettle, to whom Hackett has given a splendid chapter, he believes that " to he above passion is to be below humanity," and his rage at smugness and pedantry finds expression in the keen chapters on The Sickbed of Culture, on the lovely lady who characterized " The Imitation of Christ " as " charming," on the bloodless correctness of Professor Stuart P. Sherman. In this last-named essay which, fulfilling the prophecy, comes first in this courageous volume, Hackett loses nothing by occasionally losing his temper. After analyzing Professor Sherman's distrust of science, his abhorrence of " naturalism " and his love of the accepted pattern, Hackett proceeds to reveal and then demolish the professor's flimsy platform.

" One might linger among the details of Mr. Sherman's Conservatism. If he is setting out to show that ' the old moral abstractions ' mean nothing to Germany, for example, he has his work cut out for him. The odium of scientific monism may be attached to certain ruthless Germans, especially German legalists, but you cannot start out to annex such a convenient equipment as the old moral abstractions without hearing a loud squawk from the Kaiser. The trouble is, Mr. Sherman's counter-revolution has in it a preposterous -amount of that German specialty, instinctive obedience ' ; and, as he says himself, ` we have trusted our instincts long enough to sound the depths of their treacherousness.' But the fact that German junkets hate ' windy innovations' quite as much as Mr. Sherman does, and that official Germany equally adores the ` ideal pattern,' does not go to the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter, so far as understanding Mr. Sherman is concerned, does seem to be in recognizing his profound conviction that life is in no sense an experiment, but is in reality' an ingenious examination-paper set by God in conjunction with Mathew Arnold."

The Urbana professor is handled with little urbanity when Mr. Sherman repeats the old slander that a training in science " leaves the moral nature undisciplined," or when he attempts to identify the " efficiency " of H. G. Wells with German efficiency, or when he reaches the crowning prurience of his quotation from " The Brook Kerith " to show George Moore's " indecency." Hackett, by his slashing attack on these absurdities, will doubtless be accused of attempting to violate the Sherman law by the Brander Mathewses, the Barrett Wendells and the other self-appointed judges of our superior if not supreme court.

But even when Hackett is not wielding the scalpel he is amazingly incisive. In his estimates of Sherwood Anderson, of James Joyce, of William Dean Howells and Whitaker's Almanac, of Bertrand Russell and the Ziegfeld Follies, he is adroit without being acerbic; penetrating, as it were, without a puncture. His two articles on Henry James, for instance, are something far different than the puzzled or perfunctory " interpretations " to which we have been accustomed. With a poetic intensity he defends the feline grace, the mincing particularities of James' method, and by a skillful mixture of analysis and quotation he shows that the enjoyment of style is by no means an over-refined or esoteric pleasure. Here is an illuminating passage:

" Take, for example, the quite casual characterization of New York architecture. Looking at the Tiffany building, Mr. James does not dismiss it as a handsome reproduction. To him New York is an ' ample childless mother who con-soles herself for her sterility by an unbridled course of adoption.' He does not baldly state that he prefers the Public Library to a skyscraper. ` Any building that, being beautiful, presents itself as being seated rather than as standing, can do with your imagination what it will; you ask it no question, you give it a free field, content only if it will sit

(Continued on page 32)

e

30   THE LIBERATOR

INTERNATIONAL LABOR

By Alexander Trachtenberg

Bohemia

A recent conference of the Tchech National Socialist Party, a radical nationalist group, declared itself for Inter-national Socialism and changed its name to " Tchech Socialist Party." Members of the " Realist Party," founded by Professor Mazaryk, who styles himself Commander-in-Chief of the Tchecho-Slovak forces in Siberia, have also joined the new party which is led by Socialist Deputy Klofak. The representatives of the Tchech Social Democratic Party, Nemek and Stivin, who attended the conference, expressed the hope for an early union of both organizations into one formidable International Socialist movement of the Bohemian working-class.

Spain

A carefully planned attack upon the government was recently started in the Spanish Cortes by the six Socialist deputies, who charged the government with misuse of authority in employing military power in suppressing the great strikes last year. Four of the Socialist deputies, having been imprisoned for leadership in those strikes, were armed with facts and the government was forced to yield to their demand that a commission be appointed to investigate the whole matter and submit a report to the Cortes. That the Socialist Party has become an important factor in the political life of Spain is admitted even by its foes. It is significant that Professor Besteiro, who lost his position in the University of Madrid upon imprisonment for activity in the August strikes, was reinstated upon his election to the Cortes on the Socialist ticket.

Scotland

The twenty-first congress of the Scottish Trade Unions, recently held at Ayr, placed the Scottish workers squarely behind the international policy of the British Labor Party. Notwithstanding the presence of members of the American Labor Mission, the congress by a vote of rob to 35 adopted a resolution favoring a democratic negotiated peace based upon the principles of no annexations, no indemnities and the self-determination of peoples, and demanding that the British Government cancel all treaties having for their object territorial aggrandizement and economic warfare. The Seamen's resolution urging a boycott of Germany for five years after the war suffered a crushing defeat. The harsh treatment of conscientious objectors was denounced.

The position of the congress on economic reconstruction was distinctly revolutionary. The congress declared for a six-hour day, for industrial unionism, and for collective ownership of the means of production, with the significant pro-

visa that " all nationalization of industry and commerce, to be satisfactory and to meet the legitimate aspirations of the working class, must provide for their effective control by the industrial organizations concerned in partnership with the state."

Austria

The anti-war movement among the Austrian and Hungarian workers is growing steadily. Numerous strikes of political significance have been inaugurated in different parts of the Dual Monarchy. Strikes in munition plants are common occurrences, and threats of a general strike for the purpose of ending the war are being heard.

A recent conference of the Socialist Party called upon the governments of the Central Powers to offer a peace based upon the following principles:

i-A League of Nations, general disarmament and arbitration.

2-Renunciation of annexations and indemnities. 3--Granting the right of self-determination to the border states separated from Russia.

The conference also condemned the Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest treaties as proofs of the imperialist designs of the Central Powers, and called upon Austrian workers " to hold themselves in readiness for the final struggle at a favorable moment, which cannot fail to come."

Mass demonstrations of workers are frequent in Vienna and Budapest. The cry, " We 'Want Bread and Peace," heard on such occasions, suggests the fateful March days of last year in Petrograd.

France

Albert Thomas, former Minister of Munitions, last of the Socialists to withdraw from the French Cabinet, must soon answer charges brought by his party that he aided former Premier Ribot in secretly rejecting the Austrian peace proposals of 1917 and explain his alignment with the so-called " Quarante " group, the forty " Socialist " deputies who are opposing the movement for an International Socialist Conference.

This " Quarante " group consists of a few nationalistmajoritaire Socialists, led by Alexandre Varrene and a number of the Radical Socialists, known as " bitter enders," who together formed the Socialists of the Right. There. is nothing new in Thomas' position. Among the majoritaires led by Renaudel he was the right-winger. It was the growing influence of the minoritaires, who really represent the bulk of the Socialist Party membership, strengthened by the British Labor Party, that forced Thomas into unwilling support of the International Conference.

September, 1918   31

AND SOCIALIST NEWS

Germany

George Ledebour, Independent Socialist, voiced the defiant attitude of this party when he declared recently in the Reichstag " it is the duty of the German proletariat every-where to issue a summons for a revolution."

Henry Bartels, Independent Socialist, recently won an aldermanic seat in Berlin over a Majority Socialist by a vote of 966 to 8i•i, notwithstanding the bourgeois support given his opponent. This is considered significant. In fact, the growing influence of the Independent Socialists among the German workers is at Iast driving the Majority Socialists to a critical attitude toward the government. .Their refusal to vote the last budget was probably not due so much to a conversion to revolutionary Socialism as to a desire to prevent their utter annihilation as a Socialist movement.

Canada

Recently published statistics of the organized trades in Canada show an increase of 44,223 members in the Canadian labor unions in the past year. Most of the Canadian labor organizations are sub-divisions of the International Unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. The Canadian unions, however, are growing radical and are beginning to exert an influence in the public life of the country.

The second arrest and imprisonment of Isaac Bainbridge, editor of the Canadian Forward, is causing a great deal of excitement .among the labor people of Canada. Bainbridge was convicted for reprinting in his paper the defense of Fener Brockway, editor of the Labor Leader, the official organ of the British Independent Labor Party, who was sentenced to 112 days' imprisonent for disobeying a military order.

Great Britain

The conference of the British Labor Party held in London, June 26-28, although it did not vote fora complete break with the government by the withdrawal of Labor Party men from the cabinet (the measure urged by the I. L. P.), did vote to end the " political truce." This means that the Labor Party will hereafter contest all bye-elections. Robert Smillie, veteran leader of the Miners' Union and head of the formidable " triple alliance "-representing 1,3oo,ooo miners, railwaymen and transport workers-led the fight for the I. L. P. proposition. "'We are not as strong as we should be if our labor men were outside the government," he argued. And again, " There is no dignity left to the labor movement if the government refuses ad-mission to our invited guests and refuses Maggie Bondfield because she doesn't think as the government thinks." (Refserence is here made to the refusal of entrance to Peter Troel

stra, leader of the Dutch Socialist movement, who was bringing to the conference replies from the Socialist parties of the Central Powers, and to the denial of passports to Margaret Bondfield, fraternal delegate to the A. F. of L. convention.)

After expressing opposition to coalition with bourgeois parties and urging uncompromising, independent political action, the conference adopted twenty odd resolutions, comprising the famous Nottingham Reconstruction program, so widely discussed in labor circles during the last half year.

The absence of Troelstra with his message from the German and Austrian Socialists prevented further action on the Interbelligerent Conference proposal, although Emile Vandervelde, Chairman of the International Socialist Bureau, Hjalmar Branting, of Sweden, Albert Thomas and Pierre Renaudel, representing the French majority, and Jean Longuet, of the French minority, were present as guests of the Conference, especially to hear Troelstra's report.

The " bitter-enders " or " never-enders," as they were called at the Conference, could have drawn little comfort from the prevailing temper of the delegates. Even the cautious Henderson, .hearing that members of the re-turned American Labor Mission were intimating that British Labor would abandon the International Conference, delivered a stinging rebuke to those who were misrepresenting the British Labor movement in America. And it was Jean Longuet, the indefatigable leader of the French minority, who received the greatest ovation. Longuet spoke frankly. He ridiculed the idea that the capitalist governments would inaugurate a revolution in Germany. " The German people will not rise at the appeal of the capitalist governments of England and France. But they will rise at the appeal of the working class. This," Longuet said, " is why we want the International meeting."

Although the British government saw fit to deny the British Labor Party the right to receive a trusted comrade bringing a long-awaited message, it was not possible to keep the message out of England. On July 13th, Arthur Henderson announced that both majority and minority Socialists of Germany, the Socialist Party of Austria, of Hungary, and of Bulgaria had accepted the terms of the Inter-Allied Memorandum as a basis for an International Conference.

Outside of the extreme right wings of the Socialist movements of the Allied countries and the American Federation of Labor, which is in a class by itself, and which has never participated at international Socialist gatherings, all the labor and Socialist forces of the world are for an early and full meeting of the International. We are probably now only a few short weeks from such a conference, despite the presence in England of a little crusade of ex-Socialists from America under the leadership of John Spargo, who are doing their best to prevent the calamity.

32   THE LIBERATOR

and sit and sit.' Similarly he can hit off New York in one phrase as ` all formidable foreground.' He can criticize its gridiron form for its ` longitudinal avenues perpetually, yet meanly intersected? He can defend a desired ` vulgar ' conformity on Riverside Drive by saying: `A house-front so " amusing " for its personal note, or its perversity, in short perspective, may amid Iarger elements merely dishonor the harmony.' He can illuminate his own diminutive boyhood in New York in a single reference to the great dim, bleak, sonorous dome of the old Bowery Theatre.' And the clearest note in suburban architecture is struck by his acute response to the houses' ' candid look of having cost as much as they knew how.' "

Being a collection of articles that have appeared in journals other than The Nation, there are occasional lapses in taste and what to the purists will seem errors in judgment. One is disposed to quarrel with a reviewer who, wishing to eulogize Edgar Lee Masters, chooses-of all Masters' volumes-his " Songs and Satires." And one would like to discover what psychoanalytic impulse made the young iconoclast spell Professor George Edward Woodberry's last name with a " bury." And one resents Hackett's resentment to Wells' shunning of " familiar names for most of his characters. Blupp, Mottisham, Clynes, Tumpany, Bulch, Pipes, Toomer, Waulsort, Rumbold, Kindling, Crupp, Flack, Paddockshurst, Plutus, Panmure and Quackett. I resent all of these names, especially Quackett," says Hackett. With-holding comment on the last-named of the horrendous list, one wonders in what way Crupp is any more outlandish than Krupp, Kindling than Kipling, Rumbold than Rumely, Paddockshurst than Bensonhurst, Tumpany than Tumulty. Or, for that matter, whether there is a single proper name in all of Wells' volumes as weird as those of such well-known English writers as Oliver Onions, Martin Farquhar Tupper, Gordon Bottomley, Siegfried Sassoon and the unforgettable Percy Bysshe.

But all such carping verges on the crapulous. It is doubly captious when one looks at the dates of some of these es-says and realizes what new perspectives, what fresh perceptions it took to praise the harsh beauty of J. M. Synge when literary America was acclaiming the flaccid loveliness of Stephen Phillips. A glib compromiser, a skillful evader would never have dared to write the review of " Crime and Punishment " in 1911 or the unritualistic exposition of " Tono-Bungay " in 1909. Reading the chapter devoted to " The Way of All Flesh " (written in 1810, when the only Samuel Butler known to our librarians was the ancient author of " Hudibras "), one knows that these are not the impressions of a straddling pundit but of a pioneer.

With an enthusiasm that is both restless and critical, a curiosity uninhibited by a mawkish code, a dexterity that is both Irish and impish, Francis Hackett here fulfills the promise of his early brilliant sections in the Chicago Evening Post. " Horizons " is a volume of criticism that makes one see far beyond the object at hand. It deserves its title.

LOUIS UNTERMEYER,

A Minority Report

I WISH to protest against the view of criticism to which my friend Louis Untermeyer gives expression above. First, and incidentally, because it does an injustice to Mr. Hackett. The piece of prefatory jiu-jitsu to which Mr. Untermeyer so admiringly refers, is actually an apology for what the author of this book of criticisms evidently recognizes as their inadequacy when measured by certain stringent standards. He does not reject nor ridicule those standards. And when he proceeds to attack the pedantry which sometimes masquerades in the garb of serious criticism, he is not attacking that serious criticism, nor pre-tending that his own " field notes " are more honest or more valuable than such serious work.

Mr. Hackett has the gift of sympathy with modern ideals in life and literature; and to people like Mr. Untermeyer and myself, his writings will of course be more agreeable than the writings of mandarins like Professor Sherman, who hate and fear modernity. But what Mr. Hackett calls " the deeper criticism " begins where sympathies and hatred alike leave off; it endeavors to understand the movements and tendencies which arouse these emotions.

That is an intellectually second-rate, though a humanly valuable, kind of criticism which seeks simply to justify, to make out a case for, one's preferences and prejudices. It is a kind of tenth-rate criticism, if it is to be called criticism at all. The statement of a preference or a prejudice may be entertaining, it may even be illuminating; and sometimes it is the best that one can do. But so happy an escape from the hard work of thinking is scarcely to be dignified by so reputable a term as " criticism."

The endeavor to understand, and to make others under-stand, is what constitutes criticism; and I think it would be more generous to credit Mr. Hackett with his efforts in this direction than to congratulate him for having avoided the task altogether.

F. D.

Tattle

National Miniatures, by " Tattler." Alfred A. Knopf. $1.50 net.

J~ RE these the men and women that rule America and

mould its opinions? What a sorry lot, with only a few exceptions-Wilson, Baker, Brand Whitlock, Jane Addams. Almost all provincial, unable to see beyond the limited horizons of their office and their positions. And the delineator of these men and women, a male gossip who goes by the name of " Tattler " (of whom the publisher boasts that only four persons know his true name), appears to have as limited a vision and as petty a conception of the qualities that constitute true greatness and leadership as the most undistinguished of his subjects. He really takes his clay figures seriously.   H. S.

" August, and two weeks' vacation at last! What can I read that has nothing to do with the war? "

" Have you read Max Eastman's

Journalism versus Art?"

,,

No. It sounds good. Where can I get it? How much does it cost? "

" It costs one dollar and you can get it through the Liberator Book Shop. I tell you there's more humor and wisdom and searching truth summed up in those four essays than anywhere I know-It's illustrated, too, twenty drawings-quite unusual-by Boardman Robinson, John Sloan, Arthur B. Davies and others-the famous Masses crowd. But the best thing in the book is what Eastman says about Lazy Verse, " It's easy to be free by simply . . .

" Hold on-hold on-don't tell me any more-I'd rather read it. I'll send a dollar for the book today."

" All right, but why don't you make it a dollar and a half and get the LIBERATOR for a year besides? "

WHY NOT?

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34   THE LIBERATOR

Two Letters

D EAR MAX: I'm going to have to resign as one of the contributing editors of the LIBERATOR. I've thought about it a long time, and I make this decision not without emotion, remembering our long work together on The Masses.

But I feel I must take my name off the editorial page. The reason is, I cannot in these times bring myself to share editorial responsibility for a magazine which exists upon the sufferance of Mr. Burleson.

Of course, this does not mean that I want to stop contributing to the LIBERATOR. And in the happy day when we can again call a spade a spade without tying bunting on it, you will find me, as you have in the past,

Yours for the Profound Social Change,

JOHN REED.

DEAR JACK: I haven't a word of protest-only a deep feeling of regret.

In your absence we all weighed the mat-ter and decided it was our duty to the social revolution to keep this instrument we have created alive toward a time of great usefulness. You will help us with your writing and reporting, and that is all we ask.

Personally I envy you the power to cast loose when not only a good deal of the dramatic beauty, but also the glamour of abstract moral principle, is gone out of the venture, and it remains for us merely the most effective and therefore the right thing to do.

Yours as ever,

MAX EASTMAN.