The Daily Worker Newspaper, August 16, 1924, Page 10

ogee BEET tr I Arrive in America »0itiissen LL our hopes are shattered. We are not likely to land before Sat- urday noon; and so it is reasonably certain that we are doomed to remain aboard ship at least two days longer —that is: we of the steerage. Swarming about the giant vessel are hosts of tiny traft, playfully wrestling with billowy crests. They seem bent on teasing the giant. They nudge his ribs. Shouts of command rend the air. proceeds slowly and majestically on his way. New York, at last! We all hug the railing. Someone, apparently familiar with America, ventures to explain (the optimist is by no means an extinct specie): the second-cabin pasengers, surely allow us to land.” A German, on his second visit to the States, exclaims skeptically: “Not on your life!” He points to the slow pace of our steamer, adding “The first thing I'll do will be to take out my first papers. I'll pretend—I wish I were a ‘citizen’ now.” Everybody winks knowingly. What a splendid thing, indeed, to be a full- fledged citizen. We had ample op- portunity to realize this back in Bre- men. Everywhere they were given preference. Nor do they have to ‘go to Ellis Island; they can leave the steamer at ofice, no need to wait wh- til Saturday noon. Oh, what luck! Our boat seems eager to resist stub- bornly all the buffeting it is subjected to. Shrill sirens are heard. All sorts of vessels are cruising about. Spa- cious ‘barges cleave the grey waters. A freight-boat passes close by. Some- what farther away a canal boat dumps its cargo of garbage into the watery depths. Along the shore is a sand-barge. . . Anda tiny pup. . + @ bouncing, yelping bit of a pup. We all look at the dog. It symbol- izes the coveted land beyond the har- bor. “This is what I call life,” observes a Polish youngster, “not like in Bre- men.” “That’s because they fleeced us of everything,” says a German, elicting general sympathy by the story that he had been robbed of ail he possessed. In his pocket he carries a document making him the owner of a bakery. Of this he is exceedingly proud; later: “a lot do I care about the kindness of my relatives. I can well enter with- out them. And. . New York! Mysteriously lies the city before us. The sky-scrapers are shrouded in its misty cloak. Gazing at them from they'll The steaming colossus} jare built differently from those “After they’ve disposed of) this distance, one cannot conceive of . them as integral parts é6f a pulsating city,—a city which to all appearances is submerged in gloom. But there I see something ashore which is alive. It is a castle, a fortress teeming with gnomes. i “Heavens, what’s that?!” exclaims a wench whose Slavic origin is all too obvious, And the tanned Slovak from Upper Hungary, who has been in America before, immediately .explains: “It’s merely a house. .That’s how they are built here.” ‘ “Oh, yeh!’ the girl murmurs, bewil- dered by the thot that the houses here in her native Trenchen. Of course, it was the pessimist’s day. Not till late in the afternoon was the steamer towed into port. A young girl cried out: “Oh, how happy I am.” -She is to be met by her betrothed. A piece of good luck indeed. They are to be married right on the boat and will be permitted to leave this very day as man and wife. We were apprised of all this by a ecablegram. which the girl had re- ceived. Now everybody rushed over to the other side of the vessel. Surely we must see where we land; _ besides, there are throngs of people waiting on the shore. I marvel at the speed with which our luggage is carted ashore. A Jewess is particularly agitated. “Wonder is Rebecca will come to meet me? Do you think she'll be al- lowed to come on board?” she in- quires of a German thoroly familiar with American customs and appar- ently quite willing to furnish informa- tion. “By no means. The boat is guarded like some precious treasure,” The ship’s bell rings out. To many it portends happiness. First-cabin passengers are released immediately. “Motor cars—not Ellis Island— await them,” remarks the German. “Does such injustice exist here, too?! exelaims the lad from Poland. “IT thot that ours was the only coun- try to tolerate it.” He read voraciously all through the journey and studied English most dil- igently. Very likely expects to be- come a mililonaire. He leans over the railing, unfurling a tiny American flag: “That will be my country.” The German heir to bakerydom emits an angry snarl: “Jerusalem is your country.” The youngster deigns him no an- swer, He merely blushes to his very heart. Memories of pogroms sud- denly stir his mind. A small village. Polish soldiery. The knout. “Clear out to Jerusalem!!” “But so many of us ‘couldn’t go there,” he sadly said . . “They're dead, . .my_ father among them,” ; Time is too short to pursue these thoughts, Crowding and surging fairly sweep one off his feet. American citizens search for their luggage. The names of favored ones are first called out. Orders are hurled thru the air. The stewards don their best shore clothes. The pier is a teeming, seething mass of humanity. Some of them elbow their way to the exit but are rudely repulsed by two guards. ‘ The German relates that once a man and a woman were detained and deported because “they were discoy- ered entering into an illicit relation- ship.” The little wench from County Tren- chen whispers into the ear of her companion in Hungarian: “Do you think he noticed anything?’ , She blushes to,the roots of her hair. There is an air of unusual depres- sion and anxiety. Everyone is con- fronted by -a dilemma, as it were. “The authorities are merciful.” Thig form a Magyar, who hails from Buda- pest and has been thru the mill be- fore. The general tension and alarm gradually vanish. First-cabin passen- gers hurry away to the hotels of New York to rest, while those of the sec- ond-cabin find themselves on the Is- land;—even the Americans have left the boat. Only the steerage passengers re- main, unable to shake off the worry: “will we be admitted?” The bride’s companion tells us that “the poor thing is teribly upset be- cause her fiance has not yet arrived.” Sad news indeed. Only the bakery aspirant refuses to hold his tongue. “We Germans are pretty clever. I’d rather have a bride than relatives.” Then, with a grin: “I've come to New York at the call of a bakery.” Whereupon all sympathy for Ger- many goes by the board. ‘ A deep dusk envelopes the ship,— a greyness that gradually turns into stygian blackness. Tiny lights glim- mer in the distance. And far away, somewhere near the heavenly bodies, glows brightly a,¢rimson star. “That over there is the top of the Singer building, and shows the exact time,” explains the sympathetic Ger- man (not the bakery heir.) We gather into small groups. A feeling of hopelesness grips us. No one is homesick. There is one, and only one question uppermost in the minds of all: “Will we be ad- mitted. Will the quota not be ex- hausted too soon? Are our documents hore. eS One calls the experienced German aside. masses |Poor Rebecca, |ica—this “Tell me,” he blabbers precipitately, “won't they send me back because I'm somewhat short of the necessary $25.002" ’ . = The German, in his good-natured way, tries to cheer him. “You need not show your money. In fact, you needn’t tell the truth!” he advises emphatically. This seems to be the most sensible counsel he can give to the new entrant at the gates of the Promised Land. “Poor bride!” says the little wench jfrom Czecho-slovakia. But suddenly the cry rings out “The groom is here, the bridegroom fs jhere!” There is genuine general rejoicing. “If my Rebecca could only send me a note,” says the Jewess with a heart-rending sigh. Rebecca cannot send such a note. Sven here—in Amer- Mame seems to have an odious sound. m The girls sit in a circle surrounding jthe 15-year-old lad from Poland. He picks up his guitar and strums sadly soul-lifting airs. The Slovak maiden cuddles up to her companion. They lean out over the railing. They gaze at the myr- iads of lights—and count the number of times the star hovering over the Singer building alternates its green and crimson hue. Then they cuddle ever closer. As they ascend the narrow stairs, the girl asks fretfully: “and what if they refuse to let me in?” “Oh, you dunce!” replies the man, slaps her heartily on the back and crushes her even closer to himself. A most convincing bit of evidence. The plaintive voice of the guitar fills the deck. 2 And in the sky a crimson star glows and beckons mysteriously. MARCEL CACHIN Leader of French Communist Party Idealism Versus History (Continued from page 5.) Who bufit the prisons? Who cried “holy war?” Who sacrificed a million lives of men— Pawns in a lying game of num- bers? be Who thrust the masses mouldering kennels, | That they must bear today The filthy burden of your yester- day? Who rebbed his brothers of their human face, Made them mechanic, Forced and abused them to be cogs in your machines? The State! You! , Her indictment weakens into words of love—but he stumbles out. The Nameless One enters, also to congratulate her; she has no doubt recovered now from her pacifist de- lusions. They are to escape; two warders have been bribed, and the third, at the gate, shall be struck down. But she refuses to gain her life by this man’s death. into The Nameless, The Masses have a right to you. The Woman. What of the waréer’s right? The warder is a man. The Nameless. As yet there are no men. On this side men of the Masses; On that side men of the State. The Woman. To be a man is plain, is primal. The Nameless. Only the Masses are holy. » The Woman. The Masses are not + holy. Force made the Masses. Injustice of possession made the Masses. ... You are not. release. You are not redemption. I know you, who you are, “You are the bastard child of WES alias Unholy every cause that needs to kill, The nameless spokesman of the Masses leaves the cell with the words, “You live:too soon,” thus echoing the last scene in Saint Joan, but with this difference: Joan fought with uncom- promising and logical emthusiagm for the collective cause in spite of her associates’ mean and selfish intrigues; Sonia refused to fight at all because of her private conscience, The woman is led out and execu and two women convicts, gossiping |r over the trinkets in her cell, over. the coffin—‘“a yellow box”—that is ready for Sonia in the washroom, over the officer's golden uniform, are startled by, the sound of the shots into crying, “Why do we do these things?” And Toller leaves it at that, so that an un- scrupulous London producer can re- there could be no more unfair perver- sion of Toiler’s intention. Toller explains that in his artistic capacity he questions the validity of the various social forces and relations between human beings whose objec- tive reality he assumes in his political capacity. Yet I do not think the