The Daily Worker Newspaper, August 9, 1924, Page 8

By EARL R. BROWDER Carrying civilization to the natives of the East and Near Hast by means of bombs has long been a favorite occupation of British Imperialism. When the Labour Party formed the Government, however, all the senti, mental ladies and gentlemen of the world thought than an era of non- violent and benevolent guardianship toward these weaker brethern was to be inaugurated. How horrified they were, then, when it became know?r that British (Labour Government) airplanes have been fly- ing over villages in Irak (Mesopota- mia) and dropping bombs upon them, with great loss of life among men, women and children. s ¢ Why does a “Labour Government” blow natives into kingdom-come by means of bombs dropped from the air? This question was raised thruot the local Labour Parties in England by the Communists who represent their labor unions therein. A _ flood of demands for explanation poured into the headquarters of the Labour Party and the offices of the Labor M. P. s. An explanation was demanded. An explanation was given. It was a most illuminating explanation. Mr. William Leach, M. P., Under-Sec- retary for Air of the Labour Govern- ment, explained the matter. And his explanation was a defense of the British military as “invariably the model of chivalry, patience, and good will’, who “dislike this work as much as a judge dislikes sentencing a pris- oner to death”. * . * So far so good. Mr. Leach explains that the military forces of the Labour Government do not kill the natives simply out of thirst for blood. They look upon the slaughter as a dis- agreeable job which they dislike very much. We are also. assured that the Labor Government that gives the orders is also much distressed by the mecessity to bomb the natives of Irak. Why, then, the bombings? Ah, it is By ART SHIELDS. This article which the editor of the DAILY WORKER magazine section asked me to write is addressed to the voluntary correspondents whom he wants to get on the job. I wish to put over this idea—that the influence of a revolutionary labor paper depends on the activity of the voluntary correspondents from whom the paper must get a large part of its news. . NEWS! That is the stuff that makes a paper if it is abundant and interesting—and kills the circulation if it isn’t suplied promptly. Theacir- culation of a newspaper depends first- ly on its news columns. Editorials have their importance in clinching the ideas developed from the news but they don’t break the ice into the big circulation pond as live news does. And it hardly seems to need stating that a sucessful appeal to the masses is impossible unless the masses are hearing the message. I do not wish the reader 4o think that I regard the news columns as mere bait to catch a subscriber for the editorials and special articles. 1 am arguing for the news for its own sake. I believe that no other depart- ment of a labor paper has the educa- tional value of the news pages if these really mirror the class struggle with accuracy. I am confident that nothing stirs a worker to action in this struggle as the running news pic- ture of the fight itself. News From 48 States. Ae revolutionary labor newspaper must burn with the news from the class war front of its city, country and the world—but first of all with the news close to home because that is what relates immediately to the life of the worker. Its columns must il- luminate the garment and steel strikes of its city, the stockyard “jungle,” a simple matter, if you understand Labour Party politics. You see, “we” —the British Government—“accepted the job (from the League of Nations, which means from ourselves) of straightening things. out” in this country which had been conquered from the Turks. “Quite early we converted that country into a monarchy by putting a king on the throne”, quietly says this astonishing Labour Secretary. . ’ Well, the story runs that the natives didn’t like the King, Feisal, that Great Britain had so kindJy given them. “They have harrassed both him and his Government with insurrectionary raids and sudden onslaughts”., “What could we do?” asks the in- nocent Mr. Leach, Under-Sectretary for Air of the Labour Government. It might occur to an ordinary mem- ber of the Labour Party that the imposed King might be asked to step out in favor of a Government of the choosing of the natives of Irak. But instead: é “In pursuance of the mandate, British troops with armoured cars were sent after them over mountain- ous territory and impassible roads”. But the natives got the best of it. “Costs went up enormdusly”, says Mr. Leach, “and it looked for a while as if there was nothing to show for it all”, Now comes Mr. Leach to the rescue. The army cost too much, and didn’t get results. So the airservice steps in. “This gave us prompt knowledge of brewing trouble. Warning notices were dropped which, when disregard- ed, were followed by bombs.” There! You see how simple it is! The reason whom the airplanes dropped bombs was because ordinary killings by the army cost too much! “The new methods produced im- mediate results’, says Mr. Leach. “British casualties in Irak have prac- tically ceased”. Peace and civilization had been established. King Feisal, appointed by Great Britain, was no longer an- and “Western Electrics.” If it id a national newspaper it must flash back the significant events of the farms and factories of the 48 states. It MUST do this to awaken national in- terest and achieve power. This news st be told in your workingclass newspaper but if the telling of it depends on the unaided efforts of the small staff which a class conscious labor paper can maintain then the reader will have to go hun- gry for most of the facts he bought the paper to find. A paper which does not get and does not want the support of the departmént store, banks and railroads that make possible the huge staffs of capitalist newspapers has to operate on a very low cost’ basis. Newspaper cemeteries are dotted with the crosses of labor papers that tried to run on too large an overhead. To live, a revolutionary labor paper has to cut its paid staff down to the bone, perhaps down to a-bare five editors, assistants and reporters. This means that the voluntary cor- respondent has to put his shoulder to the wheel if the nation’s news is to be done, Fortunately he is beginning to do it. But he needs to be spurred into ten times as much action as he is yet showing. Much Big News Now. Think of all the live news that is breaking today. A report has just come in of a strike of steel workers at McKee’s Rocks. can imagine how the editor of the DAILY WORKER is fuming if the local correspondents are not supplying the details. The Ku Klux Klan and the shipping trust has been raiding the wobbly marine work- ers at San Pedro. Fiendish atrocities: little girls scalded near to death in boiling eeffee vats; men _ frightfully beaten by the gangsters but un- daunted in their fight to organize the seamen and longshoremen. One good story comes in, then silence, The la- Civilization Through Bombs noyed by protesting natives who didn’t want him for a king. The graves of the men, women, and children, killed by bombs from the air, stood as a guarantee of the “stability” of the Feisal government. *¢e But “we”, the Labour Government, didn’t start it, protests Mr. Leach. We are not responsible. We merely in- herited it. “I am not discussing whether or not we should have accept- ed the job”, says Mr. Leach, But, he says, once we went into the Govern- ment we had to carry out the estab- lished policies. And there is the explanation of, not only of the bombings in Irak, but of the whole bankruptcy of the British Labour Party. It looks wpon itself as a simple continuance of all Govern- ments that went before. It is bound by the old policies, the old contracts are sacred obligations; it can only hope, thru infinitesimal changes thru years gradually to make the civili- zation process less bloody and more profitable; it must smother out strike movement of the British workers, carefully it is true, but surely; it is only another bourgeois Government with a Labour camouflage. s ¢ 8 The Leach statement roused a storm of protest thruout the British Labour Party. The smothering of strikes by |the British Labour Government had made the rank and file sensitive to bombings of natives in Irak. The Labour daily, HERALD, of London was swamped with letters of indigna- tion. Which gave rise to an even more damning document than that of Leach. Mr. Hamilton Fyfe, editor of The Daily "Herald, was worried about the indignant and astonished protests of his readers. So he wrote an article which he caculated would calm the storm. If Fyfe’s article does not arouse a hurricane that will topple some leaders off the back of the Labour Party, then it will be because that body is corrupted beyond all redemp- tion. News From the Class Struggle Front bor world wants to know what hap- pens. The paper doesn’t tell them be- cause the local comrades just ne- glected to put their pens to papery ‘These are events that are 4 place or have recently poole gs ee can be multiplied by the dozen. At the present time there is a cloakmak- ers’ strike in Baltimore; there are Amalgamated Clothing Workers’ strikes in New York, assaults on free speech in Pennsylvania, important political developments in Minnesota and a host of other happenings in the labor world. An ocean of news, much of which is printed and much of which is passed over because the corre- spondents have not been on the job. To the extent to which the corre- spondents are supplying this news to that extent the paper becomes a force in their locality. Active radicals accept the idea that the revolutionary press is their strong weapon in the fight. They get up pic nics to raise money for the press and they hustle out selling the paper. But not many of them realize the aid they can give to their paper by SENDING IN THE NEWS, Workers’ News in Russia. Over in Russia the workers have learned to send in the news. Anna Louise Strong told about it at the annual dinner of the Federated Press in Chicago last January. In Moscow and other Soviet cities the individual workers’ stories fresh from the job ar prominently displayed. They increase the circulation ofthe paper and they supply the specific data from the job which leads to the installathion of better management methods. If a technician is slighting his work he is likely to read about himself when he least expects it. If a new invention is applied in an industry the workers on the job tell how it sizes up. Here in America there is no work- ers’ administration of industry just 4 What Fyfe says is this: Of course our hearts are filled with indignation, astonishment, pity, disappointment and alarm. Good! That’s the way I feel too. Let us all continue to feel that way, for it’s really a good thing —it is our function. But, says Fyfe, “I am afraid that, were I in his (Leach’s) place, I might be behaving exactly as he behaves.” “Let us be fair”, says Fyfe. “Those who are in authority can never look at things from the same angle as that from which they looked when -they were irresponsible”. “We have put these Labour Minis- ters into office,” he says. “It is un- fair to expect them to behave as if they still had no official ties. We on the other hand, can keep our prin- ciples unaltered”. : * ¢ 8 Princiiples are nice, and we must carefully preserve our moral indigna- tion, but practice—ah! that is entirely different: Such is the attitude of the Labour Government officials and the editor of the Labour daily paper. Preserve your indignation; for it helps to keep every one feeling righte- ous and holy; but don’t expect a. Labour Government to be any differ- ent from any other capitalistic Govern- ment, But the workers are awakening, even in sleepy old England. They are. beginning to say: “To Hell with such. a Labour Gov- ernment, that boasts of being no dif- ferent from any other”, “To Hell with these leaders who keep their principles in one pocket and their practice in another.” “To Hell with a Labour Party and a Labour Government that is nothing more than a continuation, under camouflage, of the same old imperial- istic exploitation backed up with the murder of defenseless men, women, and children.” “If this is what ‘peaceful’ Labour Government means, then we are ready to turn to the Communists, and estab- lish the dictatorship of the proletariat, the Soviet Republic of Britain.” yet but there is a fight for this goal and there are revolutionary papers that are aiding in this fight. The in- telligent workers’ duty is to keep his Paper posted about the fight in his locality. As in Russia this voluntary correspondence will not only increase circulation—the first requisite for newspaper power—but it supplies the facts about the class war battles which other workers must have to check up with their own experience and improve their tactics of warfare against the common enemy, If the Russian workers, most of whom could not read or write until after the revolution, can SEND IN THE NEWS the American workers can also. : In another article I will tell how easy it is to write news reports, the easiest form of composition. There are a few simple rules to follow and Presto! the thing is done. By Henry George Weiss You can say what you like, It’s all very true, (I'm speaking of Mike), You can say what you like; But not when you strike! . The judge senf“him thru. You can say what you like! Russian Air Service. MOSCOW, Aug. 8.—Beside the Mos- cow-Kenigsberg air line, which is run regularly every day by the “Derulft’” Company, the Junkers Co, has opened new air routes Leningrad-Méscow- Kharkov-Rostov and Batum-Tiflis-Ba- ku (Caucasus), while the“Dobrelet” (Russian Volunteer Air Fleet) has in- augurated a Moscow-Hijni-Novgorod- Kazan line.