The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 23, 1924, Page 6

Today’s By IURY LIBEDINSKY Published by THE DAILY WORK- ER thru special arrangement with B. W. Huebsch, Inc., of New York City. Coyprighted, 1923, by B. W. Huebsch & Co. s* * €¢ *# (WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE) The Russian Communist Party branch is governing this frontier city and fighting the counter- revolution. Earlier installments tell of the fuel shortage that pre- vents seed grain from being fetched onthe railroad. The Party meeting decides to send the Red Army far away for fuel, at the risk of leaving the city open for bandits and counter-revolutionists. It also detides to conscript the local bourgeoisie for wood cutting in a near-by park. Varied types of party members are flashed on the screen: Klimin, the efficient president of the branch, who still finds time to have a sweetheart; Robeiko, the consumptiye, , whose devotion is killing him; Gernyikh, the brilliant youth of 19 on the Cheka; Matusenko, the luxury- loving place hunter,.and Martui- nov, whose middle-class anteced- ants allow him to fit with some difficulty into the movement to which his idealism led him. In the last issue the comrades have been called to arms and sent thru the city to collect the bourgeoisie and idlers for the wood-getting ex- pedition. It fell to Martuinov’s lot to go into the aristocratic home of the girl he would have married if the revolution had not divided them. (NOW GO ON WITH THE STORY.) * * * 7 He bowed to her. . .. “What for? . . . there was no need to do that” something said in the bottom of his soul, but no, he had. al- ready bowed. She leant over her mother and whispered something in her ear and her mother also looked in his direction. And who was that by her side, so tall, so good-looking, with a bold look in his clever grey eyes? Stalmakhov was carefully examin- ing his documents. . .. Perhaps her betrothed? ... “What, Vladimir Sergeivitch, or do you not know us?” came the proud, slightly lisping voice of her mother. “See, Andriusha, here is Vladimir Sergeivitch,” she turned to her husband. Martuinov felt a sneer in these words. There was a mixture of annoyance and fear on Rostovtsev’s face; surprise and amusement on those of the comrades. ... But he shook Rostovtsev’s dry hot hand, and the passive fingers of his wife, and replied to their uestions, what news from his Te- tions, what news from Siberia, and he was holding out his hand to Nadya, raising his eyes to hers, meeting her burning glance... . A fugitive smile ran across her face, quickly replaced by a grim- ace of tears, and she went swiftly out of the room. Martuinoy heard at his ear the insistent voice of Stalmakhov. “Get done quickly ... we are al- ready going.” And, leaving the house Martuinov confusedly ex- plained that these were old ac- quaintances of his, . . . “A very reactionary family. . . .” “Yes, I know,” broke in Stalma- khov. “Last Spring a son of theirs was shot, Lieutenant Rostovtsev. A suspicious crowd. You saw just In Prison By WILLIAM MORRIS. Wearily, drearily, Half the day long, Flap the great banners High over stone; Strangely and eerily, « Sounds the wind’s song, Bending the banner-poles, While all alone Watching the loophole’s spark, Lie I, with life all dark, Feet tether'd, hands fetter’d Fast to the stone. The grim wall, square letter’d With prison’d men’s groan. Still strain the banner-poles Thru the wind’s song, Westward the banner rolls Over my wrong. | Installment of “A Week” | What Do You Think of “A Weel” , The DAILY WORKER wants to know what its readers, think of the first serial novel it offers to its readers. We have already published three installments of this gripping story. Another appears today. What do you think of the story, its setting, its characters, as far as we have gone? We want our readers to let us know. Write down your views and send them in to the DAILY WORKER, 1640 N. Halsted St., Chicago, Ill. We will publish as many of these letters as we can find space for. Don’t delay. Write today. now some sort of Military Special- ist was sitting with them. Repir was his name. But his papers were all in order’... they had been countersigned by the Commandant of the town. And you had rela- tions who ran off with Kolchak?” Martuinov explained with dis- comfort. For he was of bourgeois family. His father was a capital- ist, the owner of the loca] leather factories. His family was now in Kharbin, but he, of course, had broken all connection with them. Stalmakhov said nothing and smoked.” They went into the next house, and were met again with frightened questions, “What do you want?” And, mechanically examining greasy documents, Mar- tuinovy thought how now all was finished with Nadya, but that he had stood the test and was worthy to be a Communist. But why then should Stalmakhoy be scornful of him. And in the Rostovtsev’s houses there was peace again, and all were sitting once more round the tea-table—all but Nadya—when Repin, handing an empty glass to the mistress of the house, asked: “That Communist who was here do you know him?” “Yes,” she replied. “He is of good family, passed thru the Gym- nasium, and often used to visit us formerly, but now, of course. .. .” “A self-opinionated, bumptious fellow he always was,” sharply replied Rostovtsev, “And now he has taken up with that filth. And to have the insolence to come to our house! For formerly he was not indifferent to Nadezhda ... that’s why she ran off. Nade- zhda,” he shouted loudly, “come here.” Sketch of Bust of Lenin “Andriusha,” said his wife re- proachfully, “leave her alone.” Before she slept Nadya prayed for Volodya more fervently than ever—not for that Volodya who ™many years ago had kissed her lips on the skating rink, whose letters were even now lying in here jewel- box, not for the handsome lad with blue eyes, healthy red cheeks and a merry loud laugh, but for the present-day Volodya, somehow new, thinner, big-eyed, such as she had met one day in Winter at the entrance of one of the Soviet Institutions, when she had noticed that his boots were falling to pieces and the soles tied to the up- pers with bits of new thread. She prayed, remembered and wept. “She wept because she loved him and did not understand that strange force that bewitched him and took him away from her. She wept because she wanted hig love, wanted a real, young, joyous ex- istence, but her eyes were: bound and she could not enter the bright road by which he had gone away, and she prayed for the soul of the sinful Volodya, and prayed also, desperately, that his life might be spared. In the sleeping town the merry work of several hundreds of Com- munists went on. Pickets stood in in the middle of the empty streets; the noise of horses’ feet sounded thru the town, the directors of the search riding round the districts; everywhere fgomrades, three to- gether were disappearing into the houses for ten minutes or a quar- ter of an hour, and then, as a result, were bringing out of the houses frightened men, and hand- ing them over to the pickets, who convoyed them to the central staff Sketch of Bust of Nikolai Lenin, Made by the Celebrated | ton!” It’s enough to mak Sculptor, G. Alexeef. It was purchased by the Central Executive | 204s te Be Placed Before of the searchers, where Gornuikh, who had not slept for three days and three nights, registered and questioned them, establishing their identity. The young, cheerful sun was ris- ing when Martuinoy wearily walk- ed home to his lodging. His head ached and it seemed to him that he “had grown somehow dirty from plunging into other peoples’ dwell- ings, and a kaleidoscope of rooms he had visited* during the night kept flashing in his eyes. Close by his lodging he saw a poster: a Red Army soldier in a ted shirt defending a mouzhik. in bast shoes. The mouzhik was sow- ing an impossible green field, and Martuinov caught himself in a motion of disgust at the primitive picture, the coarse colors and vul- gar drawing. (To be continued Monday) Youth Views By HARRY GANNES Chicago Boy Scouts Hard Up. Every once in a while the boy scouts all over the United States get hard up. But that state of affairs does not last long. Along comes a gang of Rotarians or some similar Babbits and shell out several hun- dred thousand dollars, and then: the boy scout leaders are assured of a steady job organizing the young kids in the spirit of militarism and pa- triotism for capitalism and hatred for working class organizations. Just now the Chicago boy scouts are broke. Nobody paid any par- ticular attention to them for a while. Despite the backing of all the church organizations, irrespective of denomination, the support of all the capitalist papers—even some trade union journals—even in spite of con= gressional sanction, only 10,000 boys were organized in Chicago out of a population of 3,000,000. With the whole-hearted backing of the Chicago Federation of Labor, the Chicago Young Workers League could do better than that with all other forces against it, Anyway, from Feb. 15 to 22 $150,- 000 was to be raised for the boy scouts. Here’s the way these cam- paigns usually work. The misdirect- kids are bamboozled from office to office, from shop to shop, and from store to store, collecting the lesser amounts, and then the petty busi. ness men donated a few more dol- lars; and when the campaign looks like-a failure some big banker proves that the American people are behind these future soldiers by donating say $139,000 to make up the $150,000; and the scout leaders are secure in their jobs; and capitalism is assured of the proper kind of teaching that will be disseminated amongst 10,000 to 100,000 boys in this city, and from 500,000 to 1,000,000 all over the United States. > + * Horse Laugh Greets Legion Bonus Meet HEN the horse laughs greeted the office of the American Legion who spoke at the bonus meet- ing at the Garrick Theater in Chi- cago recently there was more than comedy in the air. The ex-soldiers were visibly disgusted with the pussy-footing tactics pursued by the so-called world war vet leaders. The soldiers know that Andy Mel- lon, secretary of the treasury, is not working for their interests. They know that there is nothing to be ex- pected from the strike-breaker presi- dent. They know that they have been buncoed, and that the brazen at- tempts to stage a serious mass meet- ing to discuss the bonus question with speakers who are definitely lin- ed up against the bonus was occasion for sardonic laughter, You could hear some language at this meeting that wasn’t printed in the daily papers and that wasn’t ex- actly complimentary—language that questioned the ancestry of some of the Legion officers. ‘ What could you expect of the sol- dier audience when the remed ete was: “Keep your eye on Was ¢ the thous- of American graves in Flander’s Field shake with lish laughter, Get unity thru the Labor Party! ——