The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 2, 1924, Page 11

* THE PANAMA CANAL - - - (Ivan Goll is one of the most brilliant writers of the younger school in Europe. Born in Alsace-Lorraine he had two mother tengues, German and French. He uses both languages like an artist, As a matter of fact he is both of the German expressionist school and the French futurist ten- dency. He has written poetry, literary and art criticism, plays. He has even written one playlet about Charlie Chaplin. Ivan Go'l is one of the few expressionists who did not abandon revolutionary ideas once the war was over. He has been very active in the Clarté group in Paris and helped the magazine Clarté a great deal. We are glad to introduce him to our readers.) * ¥ * * HE centuries of the primeval] forest still lay in the middle between the seas. The gulfs and inlets, eut out with golden prongs. With adamant hammer the waterfall shattered the resistant rocks. The trees swelled into the sensual noon, They had the red flower stains of lust. Hemlock shimmered and hissed on high stalks, And the slender grape-vine danced with wide-open hair, Like green and blue lanterns the parrots scurried thru the night of bushes. Deep in the slimy underbush a rhhoceros burrowed. The tiger came toward him in a brotherly manner from the stream. The sun circled fiery in the golden sky like a merry-go-round. Life was a thousandfold and eternal. And where death came to putrify: new life sprouted with double brightness. The old century still lay among the peop'e of the earth. I. Hereupon came the long, slow worker troops. The emigrants and the exiles. They came with struggle and with need. With trembling torments men came and struck the booming bells of metal. They lifted their arms as for a curse and rent the heavens in anger about their naked shoulders. Their blood perspired in the earth. How many lean children, how many nights of anguish were squandered on such days! The fists were uplifted like torch- es. Bent bodies. There was work. There was misery. There was hate. Thus. Spaniards turned once at the martyr’s stake. Thus negroes once cringed on_ their knees, bound. But these were the modern worker troops. Here were the holy, suffering proletarians. They lived in bar- racks and huts of laths. Smell of fried fish and unsavoriness of spirits overflowed. wooden against the coffins in the graveyard. On Sunday an ac- cordion longed for Italy or for Capcland. Some sick heart sighed for the thousand others. They danced together with heavy, slow foot. They wanted to stroke the earth, the morning was forced to ery out under the axe. Then they sipped raspberry ices for five cents. And again came the hundred days of work. Ill. They turned the earth into a_ sick-bed. Red fevers spread out of the air. And the clouds of mosquitos whirled about the sun. No tree rustled more. No flower-star bloom- ed more in this clay hell. No bird vaulted into the lost heavens. It ~was all pain. It was all refuse and sulphur. It was ail ery and abuse breast open in a dyna- , mite-cramp. Out of dripping clefts howled Seme of the —_ whistles. Dredgers cranes scratched up the Nicolai Lenin Founder of the First Soviet Republic. = By IVAN GOLL They died everywhere with the People died in this endless graveyard. Same torment. Out of the men escaped the mad cry to God, and they reared them~- selves like golden pillars. Out of the women were precipitated pitiful, pale children, as if they wanted to punish the earth with so much misery. They had come from the whole earth to serve as saves. All the dream- ers of golden rivers. All the desperate from a life of hunger. — : The righteous and the truthful were there, those who still believed in the sympathy of fate. And the dark clumsy oneg and the criminals, those sunk deep in the blight of their shame. 3 But the work was on!y a subterfuge. That one had twenty embittered generations in his heart to avenge. This one had to strangle the syphilis mother in hig blood. They all cried in struggle with the earth. IV. But they knew nothing of the Panama Canal. fraternization. Nothing of the great gate of love. ; They knew nothing of the spanning of oceans and of mankind. Noth- ing of the radiant revolt of the spirit. ; Each one saw a swamp drying up. A forest burning down, A lake boiling up of a ‘sudden. A mountain kneeling down into dust. But how should he believe in the greatness of mankind! He did not o mark how the cradle of a new sea arose. One day however the locks opened like the wings of an There- upon the earth groaned no more. It lay with open breast just like a mother. It lay chained in the will of man. On the wave-steps of the ocean the white ships clambered down. The thousand sister ships out of the thousand harbors, These with singing sails. Those with smoking funnels. The pennants chirped like captured birds, A new primeval forest of masts rustled. From ropes and cables crept festoons of vines. And the Pacific Ocean and the At- lantic stood joined in a holy kiss, Oh wedding of the white East and the Western evening star. Peaca, peace, was between the brothers and sis- ters. Now mankind stood astounded at the cen- ter of the earth. From the seething cities, from the buried des- erts, from the glowing glaciers arose the salute. The world squadron came steaming up. The blue sailor bands play- ed. Joyous flags from all countries fluttered. Forgotten was the sodden work. The _ Spades of the proletar- ians were buried. The brick barracks were tern down. Over the black work- er troops the waves of freedom struck to- gether. For one day they also were man- kind. But on the very next day new need threat- ened. » The merchant ships with heavy corn and oil left their poverty standing at the water-side, On the next day there was again mise- ry and hate. New chiefs shouted to them at new work. New slaves damned their abysmal fate. On the next day mankind strove again with the old-earth. (Translated from Nothing of the endless lakes. ¢ the German.) y PICCADILY - JOHN M. CHURCH Jitneys at Akron, ae Rhy POOR sia (By Ezra Pound.) (By Edgar Lee Masters.) AKRON, 0., Feb. 1.—Jitney buses Among the mountains I wandered and saw the blue haze and red crag and was amazed; On the beach where the long push ‘under the endless tide maneuvers, I stood silept: Under the stars on the prairie watching the Dipper slant over the horizon’s grass, I was full of or ts of war and reat men, pagean labor, soldiers and workers, mothers lifting their children—these all I touched, and felt the solemn thrill of them And then one day I got a true look at the Poor, mitlions of the Peer, Beautiful, tragical faces— Ye that were whole, and are so sunken; And, O ye vile, ye that might have Sin Geek: That are so sodden and drunken, Who hath forgotten you? O wistful, fragile faces, few out of many! silt The crass, the coarse, the brazen God knows I cannet pity them, per- haps, as I should do; But oh, ye delicate, wistful faces, Who hath fergotten you? The Daily Worker. Send in your sub- scription at once. . (ne a et The Land for the Users! Don’t be « “Yes, But,” supporter of| Watch the “Daily Worker” for the instalment replaced street cars in Akron today. T. J. Savage, city “bus boss,” di- rected the first fleet of 126 jitneys, Akron’s 25-year traction line fran- I was attorney for the “Q” And the Indemnity Company which insured The owners of the mine. I pulled the wires with judge andjchise providing a five-cent fare. ex- ‘ pired at midnight. The railway And upper courts, to beat the| company refused to renew the agree- im: ment, holding out for a new fran- claims Of the crippled, the widow and And made a fortune thereat. The bar association sang my praises In a highflown resolution, chise which would provide a seven- cent fare, Amalgamation means strength! eeiehaeaeacmteeceeiel And the floral tributes were many— Form Military Alliance But the rats devoured my heart PARIS.—A treaty between France And a snake made a nest in my /|and Checko-Slovakia was signed here skull! by Poincare and the Checko-Slova- kian foreign minister. The treaty guarantees an “understanding” be- ers se “A Week", the (0 opnaudlor engi’ general staffs of Russian revolution, countries, the brilliant young Russian writer, Work Daily for “The Daily!” Gra?