The Daily Worker Newspaper, January 16, 1926, Page 9

i eo ES A RN A _stnennetenteernretnsetnin scanner ES RR The Fiend of Packingtown | PACKIN GTO The Slave-Driving System in Chicago Meat Packing Industry, Recently Intensified, Spells Terror for the Workers. LENIN, THE COMRADE By Nikolai Bucharin. ENIN is dead. Never again shall we see that mighty forehead, that powerful head from which revolution- ary energy radiated in all directions, those lively, piercing, attentive eyes, those hard, strong hands, that whole firm-hewn figure that stood at the borderline between two epochs in the life of mankind. Now it is destroyed, - the central station of proletarian thot, will, feeling, which speeded like un- seen currents along a mililion wires to all parts of our planet where prole- tarian hearts beat, where the building of the consciousness of a great class goes on, where weapons are forged for the fight for liberation. Dear! Unforgotten! Great! “Comrade Lenin is the only man whose like will not return for cen- turfes. Nature and history created in him a wonderful combination of mighty intellect, superhuman _ will, personal courage and rare humanness, which is peculiar only to the elect. It was the completeness of all these forces which gave us the genius of Viadimir Dlyich. Comrade Lenin was first of all, a leader, a chief of the kind that history gives to mankind once in a hundred years, and by whose name an epoch is known. He was the mightiest organizer of the masses, Like a giant he walked in the fore- front of the stream of men, giving direction to its movement, building out of innumerable human units a disciplined army of labor, throwing this army into the struggle, crushing the enemy, mastering elementary forces, lighting with the searchlight of his mighty intellect both the straight ways and the dark alleys where sounds the rhythmical tranip- ing when the gray lines of the work- ers march under the banner of revolt. What was it that made Lenin such a gifted spokesman of the millions? It was first of all his unusual in- stinct for the problems of the masses. Lenin had some kind of unexplained sixth sense, which allowed him to hear with his sensitive ears the grass growing under the earth, to hear how subterranean creeks leap and ripple, and the thoughts that grow in the minds of the innumerable workers on the earth. He could listen to these as nobody else. Patiently and atten- tively he listened to the soldier of the old army, to the peasant from the remote border province, to the metal worker. Thru a chance talk with a peasant woman he felt the pulse of the peasantry. By the questions written on scraps of paper and passed up to the speaker at a meeting, he knew the ways of the thoughts of the working class. Out of every man he could, with an ability peculiar to him- self, pull out thousands of threads of thought—a group of social connec- tions with complicated tangles and knots—and before his eyes there rose the picture of the life of millions, of the class relations in an immense country. Lenin had a peculiar ability to talk with men, to approach them, so that they came to him with ‘all their doubts, their needs and ques- tions, With all of them Lenin found a common speech, Hating with all the power of his mighty soul the enemies of the working class,, breaking ab- ruptly with them,—decisively and ir- revocably—Lenin could nevertheless patiently convince and clear up the} doubts of “hig own,” the struggling working people. That was his peculiar attraction. He fascinated men. They came to him not as to a chieftain, even of the proletarian army, but as to the best friend, comrade, the wis- est, most experienced counseller. And he bound men to himself with bonds no power could break. Can there be found in history another leader of such caliber, who has been so loved by his closest co-workers? All these had towards him a peculiar feeling. They literally loved him. They appre- ciated not only his mighty brain and iron hand. No. He bound men to himself with bonds of intimacy, he was an intimate friend, a relative. He was in the full sense of the word a@ comrade—a great word, to which the future belongs. So shall the rela- tions between all men yet become... The utmost simplicity was the main feature of Lenin’s policy. It was not the simplicity of the naive. It was the simplicity of genius. He found simple words, simple slogans, simple solutions of the most complicated problems. Nothing was so alien to him as evasion, pretense, sophistry. He hated all that, scorned that damn- ed inheritance of the past which still clings to us. He understood the value of the matter-of-fact-and hated deeply all empty fuss. Lenin led the party and thru the party all the toilers. He was a dictator in the best sense of the word. Concen- trating in himself the essence of the stream of life, remodeling in the wonderful laboratory of his brain the experience of hundred and thousands, he at the same time led with a strong hand as a man of power, as an author- Vladimir Hyitch Ulianov (Lenin) A drawing by Abe Stolar. ity, as a mighty chief. He never dagged along at the rear, he never merely registered events after they had happened. He could go against the stream with the whole power of his passionate temperament. So must the true leader of the masses be. Comrade Lenin is gone from us forever. Forever, Let us transmit all the love we felt for him to his own child, his own successor—to our party. May it live in his spirit, in his understanding, in his will, in his self- effacing courage, in his dévotion to the working class. May we all to gether listen as attentively to the masses as did Lenin—our common leader, our wise teacher, our dear, irreplaceable comrade. 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