The Daily Worker Newspaper, March 13, 1926, Page 11

ni, "0- of m- 18, he n- m- ch of he he er d, it he -|selyes in the bitter struggles of April and May. -|a fighter back to the struggle with a hearty word, Women By |. STEPANOV. | ffrew type of relations between man and ‘8man that made the woman into a comrade lof the man certainly had great effects in the work lof the Commune and in the defense of Paris. /Wdmen fought for the Commune with the same ldeyotion as the men. The proletarian women en- | ter .4 upon the revolutionary scene from the very beginning—tthey played an important part in saying the cannon from the Prussians. priye the national guard of its artillery the women were the first to raise the alarm. The determined fight of the women, their attack on the soldiers, helped materially in bringing about an outeome fayorable for Paris. Nor did the: proletarian women spare them- bs March 18 when the attempt was made to de- In the very heart of the battle, amidst the rain ‘ lets of the Versailles, they would rescue t unded, they would penetrate the most ( ous places and thru their heroic example ol give courage to the tired and strength to ihe weak. In.the most; difficult -moments they never Jost. their -usuab cheerfultiess and brot many with a friendly look, with a merry joke . Many of the women themselves fought on the barricades with guns in their hands or stood by the cannon, Entire battalions of women were organized. The participation of the proletarian women in the struggle forms one of the most beautiful chapters in the history of the Commune. In their devotion, in their heroic indifference to danger and death only the youth and the chil- dren could rival the women. In the remem- brances of those who participated in the Com- mune are indelibly recorded instance after in- stance of heroism on the part of the women,,the youth, and the children, the like of which has {never been seen. The Versaillese realized this. And so in the blood bath they organized in Paris, in the mur- ders that, took place with. .or jwithout “trial,” in iheodeportations..and,imithe imprisonments, no exception was made’iir the case of the women or the-youth, ' ‘ Would it only have been possible, these bour- geois hangmen would not have hesitated to root out all of proletarian Paris with its men, women g|and children—the whole of Paris, with its new manner of life, with its new morality, with its new spirit that was a a death-warrant for the entire bourgeois society. destruction of the chapel erected in expiation of the execution of Louis XVI.” = is known, the Commune, partly because of its takes and extreme generosity, did not suc- ceq. in subduing the reaction. The Communards perished. But did they bring shame to or com- promise the proletarian cause, as Martinov is croaking in speaking of the possibilities of the future revolutionary government in Russia? —| Obviously not. Marx wrote about it: “Working men’s Paris, with its Commune, will be forever celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society. Its martyrs are-enshrined in the great heart of the working class. Its exter- minator’s history has already nailed to that eter- nal pillory from which all the prayers of their priest will not avail to redeem them.” {t seemed to us that our little historical in- quiry has not been without its lesson. It teaches us, before all, that the participation of the rep- resentatives of the socialist proletariat, together with the petty-bourgeoisie in the revolutionary government, is wholly. in principle, and in certain circumstances a direct duty. It shows us further that the real task which had to be fulfilled by the Commune, was above all the realization of the democratic, not the socialist, dictatorship, the car- rying out of the “minimum program.” And last, this reminds us that in drawing lessons from the Paris Commune, we should not imitate its mis- takes (they did not take the Bank of France, did not attack Versailles, did not have a clear pro- gram, ete.), but its successful practical steps whieh hinted at the right way. It is not neces- sary to take the word “Commune” from the great fighters of 1871, not repeat blindly their every slogan, but carefully select programmatical and practical slogans, which apply to conditions in Russia and which are now formulated in the words, “The revolutionary democratic dictator: ship of the proletariat and peasants.” : The White Terror After the Paris Commune By Lissagaray — ‘ RDER rules in Paris!' Everywhere ruins. . corpses... . bitter groans. The clang, of the officer’s-sword rings impudently thru the streets. Everywhere soldiers; some exhausted. by the slaughter sleep right out on the sidewalks; others are cooking their dinner and singing songs . The Versailles emigres, those shameless mobs, are celebrating their victory. Since Wednesday they have been flooding: the boulevards. See how these gentlemen throw themselves upon the convoys of prisoners! See how these ladies kiss the boots of these bloody soldiers! Outside of the coffee houses: among thick erowds of women the officers are recounting their deeds and the others follow suit—invent the most wonderful fiiry tales. One of them who has never passed beyond the Rue Montmartre tells how he him- self shot down twelve of the defenders of Chateau d’Kau! Ladies gaze with contemptuous curios- ity at the corpses that litter the streets. Play- fully they poke them with their parasols... “Liberated Paris” is handed over to the tender mercies of the four generals. The state of siege abolished by the Commune is again established. The army rules Paris! After the battles of Sunday, May 28, the sev- eral thousand people made prisoners were taken to the prison La Rocquette. The head of the battalion stood at the entrance of the prison, ‘examined each prisoner from head to foot, and boomed out, “Right! Left!” Right—that means the death penalty. No delay; the pockets of the condemned are immediately emptted; they are stood up against the wall and shot! No delay! Somewhere off on the side are two priests mur- muring prayers. ° In the period from Sunday till Monday morn- ing 1,900 people were slaughtered in La Roc- quette alone. The.same massacre took place at the military school,.at the Pare Mo ea, at the Luxembourg: «7 At, Ilixemih iy ihe esate soldiers were no longer able to hold up their guns and so they had to fire with their rifles pressed hard against the bodies of their victims!! The walls against which the condemned were mur- dered are covered with thick chunks of human brain!’ The soldier-hangmen trudge deep in blood! No words are wasted in these massacres! Some of the captured are brot before courts-martial with which Paris has been full since Monday. The members of these courts-martial are sitting quite at their ease, cigars in their mouths. The examination lasts a quarter of a minute. “You took to arms? You served the Commune? Show your hands!” If the behavior of the accused is full of determination, if his face does not. please them, the “court” does not even ask his name or profession. His case is not even entered in the records, 5 “He is dangerous! Now you... .” That is all! And so on till all of the prisoners are “disposed of.” Sometimes thru some. capricious accident i 7 ‘ > : ” the judgment.is; “Oh, he is an ordinary one... and the prisoner is held for trial at Versailles. There are no acquittals! The “dangerous” ones are handed. over to the military and taken to the barracks. There the gendarmes lock all gates, divide. the masses of prisoners into groups, and fire right into them! It often happens that some who were only wounded would begin -running about in despair and agony. The’ gendarmes would then start chasing these miserable onés and beat them down with the butts of ‘their guns’... Scenes of a similar kind were enacted at the Polytechnic School, at the Dupleix Barracks, at the railroad stations, at the botanical gardens and elsewhere. In Luxembourg Ahere was a little variation. The victims of the court-martial were first of all thrown into a long cellar resembling a sewer to whwich air could only enter thru some narrow cracks. The officers held their court-martial on the third floor in a room full of traitors with the tri-color on their sleeves, with police agents, with privileged bourgeois . . As everywhere, here also there was no investigation. After the sessions the prisoners were either returned to the cellar or they were immediately taken to the garden. There they were shot without the least ceremony. Here also the walls reeked with human brains; here also the soldiers walked ankle high in blood. Not all, however, had the “good fortune” to be judged by the courts-martial. Many were simply killed in court-yards, on the thresholds of their ‘Houses, in the public squares... . Bands of arm; ed murderers roamed the streets led™by savage traitors with the tricolor on their sleeves. The first passer-by who didn’t please these bloody murderers wag put under “suspicion” and _fin- ished up on the spot. Corpses .... blood.... groans! WENTY thousand men, women and children were slaughtered in those awful days. Thousands condemned to years of imprisonment and deportation! Seventy thousand women, chil- dren and old men left without any support or driven from France! Over one hundred thousand victims—such was the revenge of the big bour- geoisie for the two months’ revolution beginning March 18! The Organ of the Fat Boys By John Bernard. RE there any workers still so gulli- ble as to believe that the over- grown tapeworms who pose as Amer- ican labor leaders, and who thrive and fatten within the body of organ- ized labor, are not the deliberate, conscious agents of Big Business? If there are any such workers, they will do well to spend an evening read- ing the February issue of the Ameri- can Federationist. This is the official organ of the American Federation of Labor. President i Green is its editor. Here are a few gems taken from his editorials. “In making in- vestments members of trade unions should be on guard against non-voting classes as well as speculative values.” This is probably good advice for fat fakers with equally fat salaries, and will likely be heeded. by the wiser ones who realize that their weaning time is not so far distant. But the real workers in making théir “invest- ments” must consider whether they can derive more strength from beans than from meat, because their wages are usually too small to invest in both, O the farmers he hands a lot of blah-blash about co-operative or- ganization, He says: “Many busi- ness men and bankers realize the fun- damental value of co-operative organ- ot 41s RANE SADR NST atta me Come rena ecmmemte mo ization for farmers, and are helping to that end.” This will be very gom- forting to the farmer who has been kicked off his farm by the banker who held the mortgage. N speaking of the loyalty of the striking anthracite miners, he says: “We honor the crusading spirit of the anthracite miners and plédge them unswerving support.” Since Green wrote the above the strike has come to a close and these creatures of cap- ital ran true to form. Their support was unswerving, but all in the inter- est of the operators, IOLLOWING the editorials are va- rious articles by economists, pro- fessors, and nondescript shysters in which the workers are given the “low down” on such matters as interna- tional debts, insurance, reducing the cost of production by the elimination of waste and various other subjects. EW yess the heading, “The Fight Against Monopoly,” the following drastic remedy is suggested: “The American people nee’ to evolve a pub- lie policy to cope With it (monopo- listic control) in order that the under- lying population may have .a sem- blance of protection.” F course the customary snarl at the terrible reds is not missing. In this case it is a silly attempt to discredit the official report of the Brit- ish Trade Union Delegation on con- ditibns in Soviet Russia. After a lot of rambling blather the sap who writes it arrives at the remarkable conclusion that instead of going to Russia to get the facts first hand, the delegation should have gone to the contemptible counter - revolutionist Abramovitch for their information, F, after reading the contents of this “organ of Labor,” any worker is still undecided as to whether it is Big Business broadcasting, let him turn to the advertising section. Here he will find his old friend the enemy stripped of all disguise. Page after page of advertising, by whom? Well, here is a partial list of the most fa- miliar ones: Standard Oil Co., Gen- eral Electric, American Telephone and Telegraph Co., Western Electric, Util- ity Security Co., Henry L. Doherty & Co., Investments, Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, Proctor and Gamble, and dozens of others, R be it from us to disturb the serenity of those big, jovial, ‘la- bor” boys who are doing this work, but I can remember, back on the farm, when dad used to sort out certain hogs and move them to the fattening pen, we kids felt mighty sorry for them, a os EE : nome y