The Daily Worker Newspaper, April 10, 1926, Page 11

(Translated by LYDIA GIBSON) night. From the hilltop you look over he village. You know it’s there, but you 1an’t see it, the wind is so black. A few chalk ines are drawn on the blackboard that the ght makes in front of your eyes. That is day oming; it grows lighter quickly and the cold ind thrusts the great hollow of the valley efore your eyes, Standing on the slope above the valley you n build the scene like a panorama. Helped y the wide shapeless light of dawn you can ick out the village, the woods, the fields, the ountains, all in miniature, from under the ceiling of melting shadows. - , Far below appear a lot of tiny square things, hich become ruddy, then red. Tile roofs: The ouses range themselves évenly, side by side in eir fenced yards: ‘Lights ‘prick through this hessboard:" in‘ this ‘housé and in’ that, people putting é night out of doors)'Further off; and squares of poplar trees lift themselves ul) of the shadows, and the last poplar of all, ith only a little bundle of leaves at its very p, seems like the greased pole at a fair. Near- er, right in the middle of the village you can see the public square, with the fronts of the shops around its edges. Little moving specks, which each have\ what you can’t see from here; at the top two eyes eS SS ase ee eS ee ee. GF ee ae - the group of them on the bank. It’s queer how the people of the brickyards and the farms, themselves invisible, show the tangled skein of _all their goings and comings to the watcher on the hillside. The cemetery, which does nothing at all—the seamy side of the village—is spread out beside the village, and it is there that the sunlight first touches the immense box of the valley. JF you approach the village going down the hillside, you pass through rookeries, full of crows. And at every footstep, a big rapacious -| bind, flaps.up,.with a noise.like a shaken-out ‘overceat...Xou see the pinecones on the pine trees, like flowers of wood, and warm soil un- derfoot; you hear distant cries, the rooster’s mile-long crowing, the bells. You hear the heavy sound of a cart. Then it’s one and an- other that you see, of the people who live around here. But above all, you see him. Over there, you see him. He must look like any other farmhand to you as he stands be- side the shop where the baker is putting little naked rolls into the oven. There he is, that’s the man. Good Lord, that’s him. He’ll begin to talk, and it’ll be more and more himself. at ruddy and well-built man, he’s content, lfc he sings. e tells the truth; he smashes everything elAAlh puiaibaieite taadle tendhinen i te tei dadeia? WMLME Melati Wie eon and particularly clearly developed it in the polemic with Rodbertus in “Theories of Surplus Value.” Nationalization of the land provides the possi- bility of abolishing absolute rent, leaving only differential rent.. According to the teaching of Marx, nationalization means the most thoro re- moval of mediaeval monopolies and mediaeval relaitons from agriculture, the greatest freedom of commercial~ operations with the land, the greatest facility for adapting agriculture to the t | market. It is att irony of history that the Popu- - | list movement, in name of a. “struggle” ) against capital in agriculture, conducts an ag- rarian program, the complete realization of which uld mean the most rapid development of cap- f= in agriculture. What economic necessity, in one of the most | | backward peasant countries of Asia, has caused the diffussion of the most advanced bourgeois- , | democratic land programs? It was the necessity ; | for destroying feudalism in all its forms and , | manifestations. , The more China lagged behind Europe and Japan, so much the more was it threatened with dissection and national disintegration. China could only be; “restored” by the heroism of the masses of the people, capable of E fon Chinese Republic in the political t | sphere, and able to ensure in the agrarian . | sphere, the most rapid Prom, ood progress by | meang of nationalizing the -] As to whether this will (a and to» “The Crier” a] is with the truth that comes out of him. “That fellow? You say he always tells the truth?” “Always.” “To everyone?” “To everyone.” “It can’t be done!” “It is done all. the same, my good sir. He’s a sort of a queer one, I know, and his wife has left him, . . But he clubs you with the truth like a god.” “THAT pale lanky man beside him is his brother. We thought he couldn’t tell hi that he was so sick that he is going to die so becatise it’s impossilbe to tell such things. ; “And how did hé ‘treat’ that thin brother: used like a machine ‘by his’ illifess?” ° "Well he'{: told him that he was going'to' die: pos ' “He’s insane, he’s dangerous. . . what your man is!” - “No, he’s not crazy. More than that, if you like, but better.” Everybody said about the brother, ‘He is dy- ing!” but nobody said it to his face. There was a conspiracy of silence around him, deceiving him like a husband to whom for a long time nobody dares to tell the scandal about his wife. When he was around, faces divided into two; 1e the side toward turned others, a grimance that’s inside a heart, and outside, paint. The wash-|-f pity, on the side toward himself, the mask erwomen. You can’t see them separately, these | £asmile. But the brother guessed it; he knew washerwomen, but you can see the water of |he wasn’t up too much, and was losing weight, the brook running cloudy with soapsuds below !and coughed—and he made scenes with one and another of his neighbors, trying to make them verify his fears. “You are going to die very soon.” A brutal gesture? Something more beauti- ful than that, believe me. It. was something big, a terrible warm instinct that overflowed, a wound, quivering with emotion and pity! It was certain that he couildn’t help speaking, and that he would have kept still if he could. And it was certain that he would have changed places with his brother if that. had been pos- sible, No one knows in what corner of the village this strange-thing had sprung up, this wing of an angel, this Holy Ghost: the great truthful ord. efy Sart mens wun a funny look) that you didn’t see him when he was speaking. His face must have shone in the eyes; in the openings, like a face in a stained glass window. His brother didn’t believe it. He listened, without hearing, to the word, though he had begged for it. He himself suffered more than the doomed man. He wept. The sound of his tears in the darkness was a fountain that bled gently, like himself. Even before that dark fate which he saw in the darkness, he wept as he will weep after it has happened. It was a sad joy but it was Peat lls nbc Ohmi icss mse ithaca A Berd A atekax: Stein wR Mlb Abe hasta He went, to degree, is another question. Various countries have brot into force varying degrees of political and agrarian democracy during their bourgeois revolution and, moreover, in the most variegated combinations. In China it is the international situation and the co-relation of social forces that will decide matters. The emperor will probably unite the feudal landowners, the bureaucracy, the Chinese clergy, and prepare a restoration. Yuang-Shi-Kai, representative of a bourgeoisie which has hardly had time to become liberal- republican instead of liberal-monarchistie (will this be for long?) will conduct a policy of.man- euvering between the monarchy and the revolu- The revolutionary bourgeois democracy represented by’ Sun-Yat-Sen is* correctly seeking a path to the “resuscitation” of China’ in develop- ing the greatest independence, determination and boldness of the peasant masses, in the way of political and agrarian reforms. Finally, in accordance with how the number of Shanghais grow in China, so also will the Chi- nese proletariat grow. It will probably form some kind of Chinese Social-Democratic Labor Party, (i, Communist Party—Trans.) which, while criticizing the petty bourgeois utopias and the reactionary views of Sun-Yat-Sen, will be sure to select with care, to preserve and develo revolutionary-democratic nucleus of his potdent and agriarian program. (Translated especially for the Saturday Magazine Section bw hiv enone WORKER by t! Brie Verney.) FAURE ORO Pere You may ‘well regrét—(you giving’ me ‘such: By Henri Barbusse and fro really in light. When I talk, speak, when I avow something, it is my heart that does something. To tell the truth is better than to avoid suffering. (PHAT woman, now, who is standing near him,- she once was his mistress. Listen. We can hear what they are saying. The moon is full. In all this emptiness, so blue, so white, so rich, and near the wall plast- ered with light, these two small beings have met again. They are really completely separated from each other, The ghost of shared caresses does > |not hold. them together though they do not hate each.other because of that, like so many others. ft “Tt’s true, I don’t love you any more,” says she. “T never did love you,” he answers. At this, she is distressed, even though the past is only a poor painted decoration now. “Don’t say that! Today, yes, but once!—we loved each other.” “No, we used each other.” “TI remember that we loved each other,” she says less confidently. “I remember that I needed your body, but that I did not love what you could love, and I didn’t even care. To have you—not your dress, not your soul—that was all. Is that love? What I felt for you was nearer anger, because I couldn’t do without you. . I shouldn’t even have known your name,” his voice was like a cry, “If I hadn’t asked it. . And when you were ill, I told myself I was wasting my time with you. When we first knew each other, you planned to go away. I was going to lose you. But the dreadful thing that happened to you, you know.” “Yes.” “That dreadful thing forced you to stay and I could see you whenever I liked, and my heart beat and I sang for joy when I heard of the terrible sorrow that had befallen you.” She looked at him with suspicion, thinking visibly that there was something back of all this, and she bent her head. Why do you talk to me like this? Why do you hurt me?” “Nothing but the body,” he repeated, cutting memory to the quick, as you cut something with a knife. “Giving yourself, possessing each other, that meant but the body, and violence.” “Because it is strong,” said the woman. “It is strong, and it’s necessary. But love, the miracle of two becoming one, that’s great- er.’ She said only: “You hurt me!” and she closed her eyes, so as not to see the present man nor the man of the past. He talked to people like that. When you’ve done that you can do anything. And what came of his talk? A cleaning of the spirit, his own and the others’, a throwing out of the thick rubbish that stuffed them. And the splendor that he could not keep back, and which was also in the others. Say what you please, he glowed with some of that light. There’s no doubt about. it, we all live im- prisoned in ourselves... But he Had a way of unchaining our real selves, and they were born like children. But that frightens people, “T understand that! andI. . .” “Yes, they don’t like that operation of truth a bit. When he appears, clear as a mirror, they’d rather turn their backs or tighten their hands at their sides. They don’t want to be pened like cupboards and their things all pulled out!” QNE day he passed a very old woman sitting _.on a step. Through the open door you could see her window, covered with newspapers to keep out the cold. On her wiry body was a jumble of shapeless rags. She spread. her gnarled and discolored hands out on her apron, her face was yellow and her hair fluffs of dust, Beside her slept a mangy dog. The man watched her attentively while he spoke to the others, saying that there is always, between human beings, either love or the op- posite of love. Everyone, without exception attracts or disgusts the other more or less, through the flesh, or if you want to call it that, love. An old dog ‘is an old dog. Old people are detested by all. That day the certainty came to some of them > 1D giigoanas Lenitlion (Continued on page sia) ant Lo I Wi Vivo