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4

THE LIBERATOR

Vol. 1, No. 12   February, 1919

EDITORIALS-

T HE British election has completely enthroned the reactionaries and empowered them to do their worst. The French Parliament by an astounding vote of 38o to 134 has authorized the oldest man in France to put through the oldest policies. In America a victory election had the same result, so far as it could have. In Italy the last timid liberal has withdrawn from the Cabinet. In none of the Allied countries-not even England-has there been any authentic move to restore freedom of speech, press and assemblage to the people. The people are blandly permitting their destinies, and the destiny of the whole world, to be determined in secret conferences by three or four old men. Such is the disaster of victory.

Meanwhile Germany is proceeding with free and popular volition toward Socialism.

We were always doubtful whether this was a war for democracy, and that doubt got us into a good deal of trouble. We might be in worse trouble now if we thought it was a war for democracy, because honesty would compel us to admit that Germany won the war.

The Twilight of Liberalism

T HERE is perhaps something more than the stupid complaisance of victory indicated in those events. In the British election especially there was not only a triumph of the right wing, but a disappearance of the middle. It was the middle, too, that withdrew from the Italian Cabinet, and the middle-or muddle-concealed behind the sanctimonious rhetoric of the White House, that was defeated in the United States. The President exudes an opaque ethical vapor, in the midst of which, like an octopus, with bland face and busy members, he might be doing almost anything he pleased; but we gradually become aware, by examining his wake, that he is doing practically nothing at all but exude that vapor. The forces of imperialism and military and industrial reaction are a little alarmed by it perhaps, the forces of liberty not in the least assisted. The defeat of the President was an expression of disgust from both sides of him. It might be described as a repudiation by God and the devil in unison of the mere odor of sanctity.

That is not what liberalism is, at its best. To be liberal is to be able to enter with one's imagination into any pointof-view that is proposed. This is a dangerous gift, but it is not fatal if one has the courage to stand by one's own pointof-view to the end-if one has the courage to suffer a per-

sonal defeat. A true liberal is one who when he repudiates an idea does so as one who knows what it is to believe it. And when he accepts an idea, he knows what it is to reject it. Iie knows by a sympathetic intellectual experience-he is to that extent gifted with imagination and curiosity.

And this poised and temperately generous person presents for ultimate times perhaps an ideal of mankind, but in a revolutionary age he will have difficulty finding any place or any function whatever, for the depth and force of the conflict compel all men to abandon themselves to one side or the other completely. They can no longer exercise judgment between two parties, because the underlying standards of judgment are in question. The issue is no longer as to the weights of evidence, but as to the acceptibility of the scales. This, I think, is what we see indicated in the British elections-the dawn of a revolutionary age, the forcing itself for-ward of a conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat as absolute, the temporary twilight of liberalism.

Professor Irving Fischer, speaking at a Congress of Economists the other day, voiced the immediate program of the liberals. " There can be little doubt," he said, " that we are facing a great peril today, the peril of perverting the democracy for which we have just been fighting with such devotion. It is our opportunity and our duty to dedicate ourselves to the task of working out economic measures in the interests of humanity and democracy as against the selfish interests of either the capitalist or the laborer as such.

" If we jealously guard our independence and impartiality we shall gain for our profession the enviable position of being the logical arbiters of the class struggles now beginning-arbiters which both sides can trust. We may and should take sides, but only as a just judge takes sides when he renders his decision and only after a fair weighing of the evidence."

That this position is an absolutely impossible one, appears the moment we realize that it is not against injustice, but against justice, as conceived in a capitalist society and founded upon the habits of that society, that the struggle of labor will be definitely directed. Irving Fischer will find himself irresistibly driven by these struggles which he fore-sees so well into the position of an advocate of capital-driven more irresistibly the more resolutely he clings to that judicious and, for ordinary purposes, noble, attitude he has outlined. There can be no judge when justice is on trial.

The Nature of the Choice

C ERTAINLY nothing could be more " illiberal " than Lenin's challenge to our whole bill of rights, con-

THE LIBERATOR

tained in his " 1VIessage to American Workingmen," which we printed last month.

" While all the old bourgeois democratic constitutions," he says, " proclaimed formal equality and the right of free assemblage, the constitution of the Soviet Republic repudiates the hypocrisy of a formal equality of all human beings. When the bourgeois republicans overturned feudal thrones, they did not recognize the rules of formal equality of monarchists. Since we here are concerned with the task of overthrowing the bourgeoisie,, only fools or traitors will insist on the formal equality of .the bourgeoisie. The right of free assemblage is not worth an iota to the workman and to the peasant when all better meeting places are in the hands of the bourgeoisie. Our Soviets have taken over all usable buildings in the cities and towns out of the hands of the rich and have placed them at the disposal of the workmen and peasants for meeting and organization purposes. That is how our right of assemblage looks-for the workers. That is the meaning and content of our Soviet, of our Socialist constitution."

That paragraph has implicated in it the very heart of Socialism as a militant program   the concept of a dictator-ship of the proletariat as a means for bringing all society to membership in the proletariat.. And yet it is shocking to most liberals, and even to many of the tender-minded Socialists, because it is not an ultimately ideal state of affairs. It is not a state of affairs. It is an act-a part of the act of economic revolution. And all social idealists are going to have to choose between this act, involving such idealistic partisan-ship and temporary illiberality as it does, and the opposite act-throwing over the bill of rights, as we are doing in this country, in order to suppress, imprison and slow-murder the agitators of economic revolution, and protect the'profits of capital. The one thing is done with the great vision and purpose of a more real and universal liberty-the other with no vision and no hope of better things to come. It is natural that a majority of the liberals should fly at first to the latter, the well-tried policy. But it is not impossible that many of them-those who are not wholly bound up in a capitalistic profession-will upon reflection discover a wiser course. They might find a use for their temperament, if they would accept the prospect of economic revolution in its completeness, not in trying to " modify " it or make it liberal, but in trying to educate so many to an understanding of it that it may he peaceful if possible.

Roosevelt

T HE death of Colonel Roosevelt was a shock, I think, to everybody who loves life. No man ever lived who had more fun in sixty-one years. And yet his death-with that last frantic reiteration of Americanism and nothing but Americanism fresh from his pen-was like a symbol of the progress of life. The boyish magnetism is all gone out of those words. They die in the dawn of revolutionary internationalism.

Bolshevism and Socialism

T IIE National Security League in outlining its post-war program announces that it is not going to combat Socialism, but it is going to combat Bolshevism. I quote from an official statement:

" The league emphasizes the fact that its efforts will not be directed against socialism, as such, but will be confined entirely to counteracting the various un-American influences parading under the guise of socialism. The league is definitely op-posed to entering into any discussion on the economic claims of socialism. The league has no is-sue as a patriotic organization with the Socialists on their economic doctrines any more than with those who uphold free trade, single tax, or prohibition.

" Our attack is to be made on the Bolshevist op-position to American government, American ideals, and America's war. All good Americans will agree to the necessity of suppressing activities and propaganda of any group aiming at revolution, believing in government by the minority, antagonizing the Constitution and the Supreme Court, and moving to undermine democratic government. The published Constitution of the Soviet Government and the doctrines of Lenine show that the Bolshevist program includes ideas on labor control which are absolutely contrary to the ideals of American labor."

This statement, and many like it that are being made in newspapers and pulpits the country over, present a direct challenge to the American socialists that they ought to meet and reply to officially. For our part, though we have every respect for the historic role of the United States Constitution and form of government, we are not satisfied with them and we want them changed. One of the most obvious changes would be the abolition of that senile veto upon the will of the people which is enshrined in the Supreme Court. We are not among those who will urge the working classes to get out on the barricades and be mowed down by machine guns before they have organized the industrial power to achieve their liberation, but we believe that it .is only by means of a fundamental revolution-a transfer of control to their organizations-that they can ever achieve it. America is not Russia, to be sure, and we shall have our own problems, but the main outlines of the labor republics of the future are laid down in the Russian constitution, and the " doctrines of Lenine " are the doctrines of revolutionary Socialism the world over.

The heart of these doctrines for immediate purposes is contained in Article IV. of the Constitution of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic-the article which determines the location of the sovereignty. I quote it in full.

February, 1919   7

Article IV.
THE RIGHT TO VOTE.
Chapter 13.

" 64. The right to vote and to be elected to the Soviets is enjoyed by the following citizens, irrespective of religion, nationality, domicile, etc., of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, of both sexes, who shall have completed their eighteenth year by the day of election:

1.  All who have acquired the means of living through labor that is productive and. useful to society, and also persons engaged in housekeeping which enables the former to do productive work, i, e., ldborers and employes of all classes who are employed in industry, trade, agriculture, etc., and peasant and Cossack agricultural laborers who employ no help for the purpose of making profits.

2.  Soldiers of the army and navy of the Soviets.

• (c) Citizens of the two preceding categories who have to any degree lost their capacity to work.

• (d) Note 1-Local Soviets may, upon approval of the central power, lower the age standard mentioned herein.

" Note 2-Non-citizens mentioned in Para-graph 20 (Article 2, Chapter 5) have the right to vote.

" 65. The following persons enjoy neither the right to vote nor the right to be voted for, even, though they belong to one of the categories enumerated above, namely:

" (a) Persons who employ hired labor to obtain from it an increase in profits.

(b) Persons who have an income without doing any work, such as interest from capital, receipts from property, etc.

• (c) Private merchants, trade and commercial brokers.

" (d) Monks and clergy of all denominations.

• (e) Employes and agents of the former police, the gendarme corps and the Okhrana (Czar's secret service), also members of the former reigning dynasty.

• (f) Persons who have in legal form been declared demented or mentally deficient, and also persons under guardianship.

• (g) Persons who have been deprived by a Soviet of their rights of citizenship because of selfish or dishonorable offenses, for the period fixed by the sentence."

That is what Bolshevism is. It is a transfer of sovereignty to the working-class, leaving every sane man and woman free to renounce his capitalistic privilege, join the working-class, and become a partner in the sovereignty if he wants to.

And that is the kind of constitution and form of government that we intend to establish in the United States. And, though it may not seem to the National Security League an example of old-fashioned Americanism, it is a good deal more American than the program of tyranny, suppression and war-censorship in peace-time, that they have laid out for them-selves. The idea contained in that constitution was first embodied in human statute, as a matter of fact, in the old American colony of Jamestown, Virginia. When starvation and pestilence and the incursion of savages threatened the life of that colony, Captain John Smith proclaimed it upon his word as law that " Those who will not work shall not eat." And that law in that emergency saved the colony, and saved American civilization, for the time, from ruin. Now, again, American civilization is faced with an emergency, for it is an emergency when sixty-five per cent of the people possess only five per cent of the wealth-and there is starvation, also, and'pestilence and the danger of civil war, which is more awful than the incursion of savages, and in this emergency again we are going to save our civilization with a revolutionary law. Only we are going to be a little more moderate than Captain John Smith. We are going to proclaim that those who do not work, and live upon the product of their work, shall not vote. And when that simple thing is accomplished, and the power is there and the organization to enforce it, the life, liberty and civilization of America will be relatively secure.

Testimony

Sometimes you hear something about " the brains of the socialist movement." We have never been able to locate any exact spot in which they are situated, but we believe that the heart of the Socialist movement of America still beats in the breast of Eugene Debs. And when Debs stood up in front of that jury of retired merchants and farmers in Cleveland, about to sentence him to live and die in a felon's cell, and declared his solidarity with the Russian Bolshevik government, his adherence to the class-struggle, his sympathy and respect for the I. W. W., and when he turned to his judge with a magnificent gesture of superiority and said to him,'" Your honor, it is true that I am opposed to our form of government "-the keynote of American Socialism for the coming years was sounded, and no manifestoes of the National Security League, and no contrary testimony from our more prudent parliamentarians can change it.

A League .of Which Nations?

S OME good friends of the LIBERATOR are disturbed at our want of enthusiasm for the League of Nations. We believe in a League of Nations as the one thing that will ever remove the menace of nationalistic war from the earth. We believe that it must be a definite, concrete, continuous and working federation of the peoples. We believe

S   THE LIBERATOR

that such a thing may come to pass in the near future, and we will work for it. But we do not discover in the victorious governments that are meeting in Paris, nor in any of the delegates of these governments, the least disposition to establish such a federation of the peoples. We are not free to say all that we might of these governments, but we can say that the hands they clasp over the council table will be red with the fresh blood of the freest people on earth.

We have read with diligence the manifesto of the " League of Free Nations Association " to which are signed the names of many radical-minded people, and one at least who used to call herself a revolutionist, and we subscribe to much of the abstract wisdom therein contained, but we find the manifesto altogether timid and reticent upon the one question that will determine whether the League is to be a League for peace, or a League for counter-revolutionary war-the question of the admission of Russia. Having been thoroughly drilled by one of the chief sponsors of this association, Professor John Dewey, in the knowledge that every question that arises in the complex of events is a specific question, we do not ask ourselves, " Do you support a League of Nations? " we ask ourselves, " Do you support this League of Nations? Do you think the international proletariat ought to support this league of nations? "

And our answer is, they ought to support it when the Soviet Republic is invited to enter it upon equal terms with the rest. Until then they ought to concentrate their mind and energy upon their own league, their own nations. They ought to see to it that the great power and determiner of the world's future shall not be the League of Business Politicians at Versailles, but the New International, the League of the Working Classes of the World.

And the sharpness of this alternative-let it be understood-is the work of the Business Politicians, not of the revolutionary proletariat. The Soviet Republic has demanded admission to the armistice, has applied for representation at the peace conference, has appointed its delegate. Its envoy at Stockholm has offered terms and concessions to the Allied governments that shock the heart, they show so sacrificing a devotion to the ideal of peace. And the reply has been silence, or criminal slander and renewed invasion of Russian territory. Upon this foundation there can be no league of the peoples of the earth, there can be no peace.

Those radical-minded idealists of the League of Free Nations Association might see this, I should think, and even though they cannot take their stand with the proletariat, they might concentrate their zeal for the League of Nations, upon a bold demand for the recognition of the Soviets-without which the League will be a compact of tyranny, and with which it may conceivably become a means to make the world' more peaceful, more reasonably resigned to the agony of its transformation.

T HE only revealing thing Wilson has said in Europe is that he " would go crazy if he didn't believe in Providence." Most of the people in Europe apparently

would go crazy if they didn't believe in Wilson. Let us hope that Providence has some sense of personal responsibility.

Political Prisoners

T HE Department of Justice reports that there have been 1,281 cases under the Espionage Act. Of the defendants, 252 pleaded guilty and were sent to prison, 237 were convicted after trial, and 792 cases are pending. The Department does not report any acquittals. In addition to this there are no doubt thousands of- cases under the draft act. There are hundreds of conscientious objectors-some of them technically classed as deserters.

A complete catalogue of all these cases is being prepared by the Civil Liberties Bureau. The Department of Justice has declined to furnish them with any statistics beyond the figures above, and they are compelled to gather their information from the press and from personal sources. Readers of THE LIBERATOR who know of cases which they believe deserve to be included in a general amnesty, are re-quested to communicate with the Civil Liberties Bureau, 41 Union Square, New York. Send them the name of the defendant and your address, so that they can write for more information if they require it.

W E are happy and proud to add the name of Eugene V. Debs to our list of Contributing Editors.

THE LIBERATOR

A Journal of Revolutionary Progress

Editors, Max Eastman

Orystal Eastman

Associate Editor, Floyd Dell Business Manager, Margaret Lane

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS :

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

Published monthly and copyright 1019, by the

LIBERATOR PUBLISHING CO., Inc.

34 Union Square, East   New York

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Problems for Beginners

Hun-Hating

AMERICAN soldiers in Germany immediately get on friendly terms with the inhabitants, but in New York it is compulsory to hate the Hums.-How much hating should a man do who lives in San Francisco?-In Mars?

Government Ownership

T T HE increase in railroad rates under federal administration proves that government ownership is impractical. The decrease in telephone and telegraph rates proves the same thing.-Bring about a reconciliation between these conflicting statements, and show that government ownership is revolutionary, confiscatory and subversive.-Try to imagine yourself an elderly Southern banker.

Reasonable Self-Determination

T ERRITORIAL problems at the peace conference are to be solved by the rule of self-determination.-How many exceptions will be necessary to prove this rule; and vice versa?

Shrinkage

T HERE is a report from Russia that the Soviets have raised an army of 3,000,000. A London paper says that 180,000 would be nearer the truth. The New York Evening Post drops a cipher and guesses 18,ooo.-What should be the size of the Bolshevist army in the Chicago Tribune?-In the Portland Oregonian?

Revolutions

R 'S revolution is complete and overwhelming and is denounced by the newspapers. G's revolution is con= demned as incomplete and therefore insincere.-How mays a revolution keep on good terms with the newspapers?

Indemnities

T AKE the largest number you can think of and multiply it by four. Prove that Germany should be made to pay that much as an indemnity and should not be allowed to earn it by honest toil.

Illiteracy in the Senate

S ENATOR POINDEXTER says that H. G. Wells and William Hohenzollern are very much alike in their views. (I) Point out 87 errors in this statement. (2) Is illiteracy increasing or decreasing in the United States Senate?

Denatured Suffrage

H IS elected mayor of a large city by the votes of the mass of the people, the tax-payers generally opposing him. As mayor he moves to cripple all the people's departments for the benefit of the taxpayers.-Show how the disadvantages of universal, secret suffrage may be overcome.

The Law of the Naval Increase

B EFORE the war we increased our navy; during the war B we increased our navy; now that the war is over and the League of Nations is in sight we are going to increase our navy.-When and under what conditions may a navy be decreased ?-Why not?

Conspiracies

T WENTY-FIVE mine owners and officials were indicted for forcibly deporting twelve hundred striking miners from the town of B. Ninety-three other men were indicted for being members of the I. W. W. The twenty-five were dismissed without trial and the ninety-three were sentenced to prison for Boo years and fined $2,500,000.-Show that this is in accordance with the larger principles of justice.

Russia at a Glance

RITE a short treatise on the situation in Russia, prov-

ing that the Bolsheviki are on their Iast legs; that they are increasing dangerously ; that they are low-browed assassins; that they are impractical idealists; that Nicholas was killed but is still living at various places; that five grand dukes were slain in a well but are still in good health; that in the interest of democracy we should recognize a military dictatorship in Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka, as an all Russian government.-Prove all your statements from current news-papers, leaving loop-holes for escape.

HOWARD BRUBAKER.

10

The socialist Party on Trial

Impressions by William Bross Lloyd

N OT a trial of the Socialist party, positively not---the trial at Chicago, before Judge Landis, which began December 9th and lived into the new year. So the prosecuting attorneys .scrupulously emphasized. So the Judge echoed time and again. Only a trial of five individuals joined in conspiracy to pester the military program of the United States. The reading into the case of every pronouncement about war of the American parry, of similar declarations from every European country in 1914, and of the international resolutions-all merely to show " state of mind." . . . Nothing to do with socialism or socialists as such, nothing at all.

The conspirators: Victor L. Berger, Socialist Congressman-elect, member of the National Executive Committee since the party began, editor-in-chief of the Milwaukee Leader, a Socialist daily, international delegate of the party on many occasions; Adolph Germer, National Secretary of the party since May, 1916; J. Louis Engdahl, editor of the party publications; William F. Kruse, National Secretary and Director of the Young People's Socialist League; Irwin St. John Tucker, knight errant of socialist evangelism. There is a lingering doubt about the proper handle to Tucker's name; it was " Father" on direct examination and " Mister " on cross-examination. There is doubt, too, about this defendant's conspiratorial talents; he is so Tucker= minded. . . . There seems to he a semblance of the Socialist party on trial.

The conspiracy: under the Espionage Act. There you have it. District Attorney CIyne asked each juror, in precisely the same tone intonation of solemnity, " Are you in sympathy with the Espionage Law? " Answer, " Yes," with unfailing rejoinder, " As you are with all laws of the United States." It is quite plausible that Christmas and New Year imprisonment has diminished this spontaneous sympathy with the Espionage Law on the part of the jurors, but it is altogether beyond question that nothing has occurred since December 9th to add to their understanding of the law. In fact, nothing has happened since June 15th, 1917, when the law went into force, to give it definition.

The Espionage Law, legalism aside, is a clumsily subtle way of lending to the Administration the aid of the courts in enforcing the official war morality. The language of the law would seem to bear on actual military happenings, but hardly any of the Federal judges have so read it. Criminality under this law cbnsists of any attempt to impugn the idealistic advertisement under which the war is being imposed. And conspiracy is a joint attempt.

The Debs trial had the severe simplicity and intensity of Greek drama. It was a five day-act performance, vibrant

with the piercing personality of 'Gene Debs. But this party conspiracy trial is scattered, episodic and largely trivial. It takes relief in the few chances offered to the defendants to transmit themselves to the jurors, and in the astonishing revelations of aggressive personality on the part of a half dozen witnesses who took the stand in behalf of the defendants.

`Assistant District Attorney Fleming, who leads in the prosecution, is an agreeable looking young man who looks better than he sounds and sounds better than he thinks. 'When embarrassed he blushes and whatever he says or asks he emphasizes, simply varying the

degree of emphasis.   All in a full, metallic voice,

yielding a grating monotony. The importance of Fleming in my present thought is that I owe him some recognition for the twenty days of irritating stupidity he has inflicted upon me. Secondly, Fleming and Clyne-and Landis and the jurors-make understandable the skirmishing against the class war in Federal court-rooms. Assassination without risk, I call it, with some talent to give grave solemity to nothingness. This young man is curiously in earnest about what he is doing.

Having included Landis in the foregoing generalization, let me pause now to take him out-and promptly to put him back in again. His Honor has figured in these pages before, under pen of jack Reed and brush of Art Young. I will not venture on rivalry in description. Landis is the only interesting judge I have ever seen in action. Judges are not usually in action. Landis is. He is one of the alleviating circumstances of trial tedium. First, you must find him. Then you can study his pose. When he speaks he is either extremely quiet and expressionless or vigorously in eruption, with his eyes flashing fire out of a pallid, dissipated face, _given distinction only by his shaggy crest of gray. Landis is distinctly not stupid, which clearly differentiates him from district attorneys. But his judicial unconventionalities only mark an intense realism, not a diminution of faith in his judgeship. He is dead in earnest about his job, its essentials, not its frills. He takes his judgeship straight.

Landis wanted to try this party case. He undoubtedly gave himself much satisfaction in his disposition of the wobblies." His wholesale distribution of twenty-year sentences and maximum fines, after the automatic verdict in that case-about one-half minute per defendant-was a rare example of judicial ferocity. The refusal to allow bail pending an appeal evidenced a clear consciousness of the remorse-less nature of the fight behind the court-room fight. But Landis disdains sanctimonious pretense in serving the social system in which he functions " willfully " and " knowingly." IIe denied a motion for a change of venue. A judge rarely

February, 1919   11

insists on the prerogative of trying a case simply because it is on his calendar. There is no person in the court-room who .has any doubts about the sentences if there is a verdict of guilty. They will be the limit.

Fleming, inspired by a romantic young braggart named Schiller, once the reddest of the " red " among Yipsels, now the pillar of the prosecution against the American Socialist party, has made the " conspiracy " turn upon the use of the Y. P. S. L. by the Socialist party to carry out an actual assault against the war. The youngest defendant, Kruse, apparently ignored in the indictment, as National Director of the Y. P. S. L. becomes the pivot of the " conspiracy," and most of the Government's testimony centers on him. The details of a convention of the Chicago branch of the Y. P. S. L., held in May, 1917, were repeated ad nauseam. On this one local meeting, by Fleming's insistence, is to turn the " criminality " of the American Socialist party-at a time when the whole world is veering so swiftly toward the new civilization of the dominant proletariat under socialist inspiration that the minds of men are dizzy with joy and fear.

In May, 1917, the young Socialists were in a quandary. There was the war, and the imminence of conscription. There was the St. Louis protest. The authors of the anti-war proclamation and the National Executive Committee failed to make definite the implications of the party position in relation to individual military service. This was unnecessary in April, 1917. It was crucial when compulsory service was ordered.

This was the first time young Americans had faced this problem. American military experience had left only the precedent of ease in raising a volunteer army. There had been nothing more than the skirmishes of marines during the lifetime of those required to register for draft on June 5th, 1917. The European experience was not enlightening, be-cause founded on a principle of permanent militarism, which had always been spurned as un-American. Even so, it had been vehemently argued that the European Socialists should have met death by turning against their exploiters rather than against each other. Whatever counsel came from the older American Socialists to their young comrades, when not enigmatical, was to obey the law.

William F. Kruse is a young man who should make him-self count strongly in the future of American socialism. He was born in jersey City, of German and Danish parentage. His father was a sailor. Kruse went from the factory to the Rand School, and is now completing a night law course. His physical endowments fortify his mental gifts. A tall, stalwart blond, finely featured, Ioose-jointed, of mild expression, a clear thinker and forceful speaker, Kruse has exceptional equipment for party leadership. His spiritual experience of May, 1917, was exactly what might be expected of a young man of fine sensitiveness facing the political and personal problems of conscription simultaneously. He is not the absolutist type, one whose personal actions are rigidly deter-mined by his intellectual conclusions, like the witness Carl Haessler, whom I shall describe Iater. Kruse is strongly

imbued with the organization sense; he sees himself as a unit in a mass, rather than as an individual against the universe.

The prosecutor unconsciously went to the heart of the whole matter in turning his assault primarily against Kruse. I have not the patience to detail here the material by which he aims to prove that Kruse was the responsible mover in anti-draft registration and anti-military-service campaigns, abetted by the propaganda and active co-operation of the other defendants. - But he realized that Kruse presented the opportunity to make graphic to the jury the precise relation between anti-war sentiments and refusal or attempted evasion of army service. And, in a subconscious way, it is true that the test of socialism as antithetical to war is in the spirit of resistance of its young adherents. That resistance, carried to the last extremity by some of the young radicals, has been rewarded by imprisonment and torture. Teaching the spiritual basis of that resistance, whether inspired by economic philosophy or religious faith, has brought ten and twenty year sentences to teachers, poets, agitators and prophets. In this trial both these manifestations of " criminality " have been developed simultaneously.

As the facts stand, Kruse expressed ardent sympathy and admiration for the handful of Yipsels here and there who accepted the party declaration against the war as a mandate against personal service, at the cost of ten-year, fifteen-year and even longer penitentiary sentences. Kruse wrote a letter on the day before the registration expressing uncertainty as to what he would do himself, though he had taken a clear stand against the Y. P. S. L. as an organization going on record against compliance with the draft law. Then, on the day, he registered and advised others to register. The jurors may speculate as to the potential insubordination which Kruse revealed to them on the witness stand, and forego any discrimination between Kruse as an individual and as a secretary.

Carl Haessler came to the witness stand in convict garb. The clash between the man and his clothing was an instantaneous impression. The oversized gray shirt and brown trousers seemed to have little contact with the wearer. In sharp focus was a face to rivet attention, pale and wasted, but alert, of eagle decisiveness-an exceptionally fine fore-head, auburn hair and flashing eyes. Asked to be sworn, he responded in a clear, firm voice: " I do not swear; I will affirm." I never experienced so sudden a change of emotional atmosphere as in that court-room in the moment when Carl Haessler stood erect, hands at sides, looking past Judge Landis to the clerk who read the affirmation.

Haessler came in at the end of two and a half weeks of the trial. Just before him came Mrs. Haessler, a demurely sad bride of " a year and a day." In the hope of persuading the young couple to put the blame of Carl's imprisonment-twelve years at hard labor for refusal to don the uniform-on the advice of Victor Berger, who was his friend and counsellor, Clyne had gone to Fort Leavenworth to inter-view Carl, and Fleming had brought Mrs. Haessler in from

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an Illinois town where she was teaching school to his Chicago office. And it was to reveal this attempt on the part of the prosecution and its utter failure that the defense called both to the stand.

Mrs. Haessler answered under stress of high emotion in a tender voice, giving a sense of hunted bravery and pride. (Carl had been brought into the court-room, handcuffed, while she was on the stand.) Mrs. Haessler stated that she was dismissed by the school authorities immediately after the unsatisfactory interview at Chicago. She had received the impression that if she answered Fleming's questions satisfactorily it might be of help to Carl. Victor Berger, she knew, had urged Carl to put on the uniform because he believed individual protest was not effective.

Then came Carl Haessler, graduate of the University of Wisconsin, a Ph.D. of Illinois, Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, professor of philosophy-convict. The play of his mind for an hour under cross-fire was one of the rare sensations of a lifetime. There was no person in the crowded court-room who missed it. He became an anti-imperialist, he explained, by virtue of the Oxford influences, in contradiction to the purpose of the great imperialist Cecil Rhodes in founding these scholarships. He doesn't know that he has a conscience; his opposition to service in the war is not private, but public in its nature. He was against our entrance into the war be-cause of its imperialistic impulse. He is suspicious about ad-ventures in democracy undertaken by governments controlled by imperialists.

. The answers came quick, clear, decisive and pleasant. The examining lawyer attempted to introduce a note of pathos, which Haessler deftly countered by exhibiting a tempera-mental incapacity for resentment, an impersonality above taint of sentimentalism. Berger was not fast enough to travel in his company in politics and economics. He tried to act as moderator; tried to keep the witness out of jail. Berger was proud of the Socialist record of observance of law; he argued that Socialists in jail are of no use to the movement.

Then Haessler was asked to tell about his talk with Clyne at Leavenworth, and he went on at a terrific rate for about twenty minutes, uninterruptedly, with brilliant answers to Clyne's questions, none of which he seemed to have forgotten -until Clyne begged the court for mercy.

" The St. Louis platform? " A very moderate document, satisfactory as far as it went, but should have included individual as well as mass resistance to the-wa