The Daily Worker Newspaper, December 4, 1926, Page 14

2 SPORTS | A little old- fashioned but still quite popular. A famous indoor sport. Aa cR great player has passed | baseball history. “Spoke” | Speaker has resigned. Not only had | hé) proved a ‘manager of. ability but | in his many years as a big-leaguer he | had few equals in socking the old ap- ple, throwing ‘em home, stealing bases | and fielding. You Bugs who have sun- burned noses from sitting out in the | bleachers, will recall how that bird | could field. His close playing back of second base and his ability to go “back In for ’em,” was famous. And how he} could sock ‘em! Ty Cobb and Speaker no more! Walter Johnson is playing his last year—if he plays it! This Bug was only knee-high to a grass-hopper when they began their big-league ca- reerg, And now they are gone. Hm, . maybe we're getting old? * a * OTE this successful Chicago Workers Sports Club. The Workers Sports Alili- ance’s two soccer teams, members of the International Soc- cer League, are _re- ported to be bowling over their opponents quite yoguarly these days. Last year the first team tied for the honors of the second division of the league. More power to their feet. Their head- work is alright. You can see that by tiie fa€t they have formed a Workers Sports Club. ow, * The Federated Press brings to our attention an exhibition given by the Chicago Labor Sports Union at the Imperial Hall this week. Fifty men and wo1yen participated in drills, pyra- mids and jumping. Formal presenta- tion of medals was also made to the winners of the Inter-Racial Tennis Tournament held last August under the auspices of the Labor Sports Un- ion at the Prairie Tennis Club courts, These were awards in the first tourna- ment of its kind ever held in this country. Participants came from many states. Another touranment is being arranged for the coming year. Tennis is a duece of a nice game, so to speak. Even Bolsheviks “love” it. And mind you it is played on a court, with judges! And they can easily fall imto the net! Excuse the racket. This Bug sometimes gets that way. But getting back to normalcy, we are re minded that the Prairie Tennis Club is holding an installation of officers and dance at the Elks Home at These friends of Workers’ Sports should be visited. After al dancing is—well—yes, it’s a sport! Or ig it? ASE your eyes on the insignificant sum of $30,000,000 which was paid by the Bugs thru- out the country to wit- ness the football games, These are the fruits of only one “amateur” college sport. This is why ever larger stadiums are being built; why ever tégger salaries are pafd to coaches; why ever more attention is being paid to develop a good team than to develop good grey-matter. As wil ers, owr national comedian wise-cracked the other day: “Your for narrower minds and broader stadt KAZAN-SARAPUL By LARISSA REISSNER. HE chronometer on deck of the torpedo boat is astonishingly similar to the clock in the Peter-Paul fortress. But instead of the Neva, instead of the .glistening granite and the golden spires, her’ precise accents play about the unfamiliar banks and the clear, capricious waters of the Kama, and in the distance, the for- lorn islands of the small villages. It is dark on the bridge deck. The moon barely illuminates the long, Slender, eagerly advancing bodies of the war vessels, .The sparks flutter lightly from the smoke stacks, the milk-white vapor hangs its curly mane down on the water, and the ships, with their proudly erected | posts, appear in this primitive space not as the latest achievement in tech- , nique but as war-like, inconceivable sea horses, A queer light. Isolated faces are pale, and as in day time, plainly vis- ible. The motions are noiseless, and yet exact. ‘A sailor draws the heavy jacket off the cannon, with a jerk, as one pulls a vei from an enchanted, frightful head. His ‘movements are, from years of training, epical and un- constrained as in ballet. Dancing hands of the signalist, with their little red flags dance laconical- ly and with conviction the ritwal dance of orders and replies. And over the restrained commotion of the ships preparing for battle, over the reflection of the glowing furnace hiding its smoke and heat in the depths of the ship-hull, over the bridge-deck and the masts, between Softly vibrating yards — rises the green morning star. The advanced post which we usual- ly occupy lies far back, beyond the bend of the river. The ship is close to the bank; its commander, Ovtchin- nikov, the ever-calm, determined, pre- cise, and silent mag, is one from the glorious ranks of Asin’s 28th Division which has traversed all, Russia, from the cold Kama te-Baku, the city cov- ered with ashes by the yellow winds. Somewhere to the right a treacher- ous flame flickered and disappeared —perkgps it is the Whites, but it may also be a division of Koshevnikov, who is ‘Stirring about in the deep hinterlands of the Whites and some- times emerges suddenly from the brush-wood hiding the banks of the Kama. Under the first rays of the morn- ing sun this bank is unusually beau- tiful. At Sarapul the Kame is broad and deep, flowing between yellow clayie slopes, branching off between islands, and bearing on her smooth, oily surfaces reflections of the ce- dars. Kama is free, Kama is quiet. The noise of the torpedo boats does not disturb the magic peace of the river. . On the sand shoals hundreds of swans are spreading their white wings, shining in the October sun. A flock of little pellets—ducks—glide smoothly across the water, and above the white church in the distance an eagle is sailing about in a circle. And altho the opposite meadow bank is occupied by the enemy—not a single shot is audible in the low brushwood. Obviously they did not expect us in this region, and are not ready to en- counter us. A pale, smoke-covered mechanic emerges as far as the waist out of the machine shop and inhales with relish the sharp morning air which overnight has become autumnal and northerly, The boatman on the bridge deck, dishevelled and robust, with his gray hair and sheepskin not unlike a. syl- van demon—is prophesying early frost. “It smells like snow, one scents the snow in the air,” and again he si- lently seeks the narrow path of the ships between the treacherous curling of the shoals, the rocks, and the fog. This night we have covered 100 kilo- meters—now the fine lacework of a railway bridge and the white cupolas of Sarapul loom in the distance. The crew is resting, splashing at the water faucet, and teasing two dogs who were raised with great affection on hard voyages and undeg the roar of cannon, A quick shout from the observer. “People at the shore on the left.” And again—tense waiting. But they at the shore have already recognized us; red strips of cloth are fluttering merrily in the wind. Farther along the shore, on the bridge and also be- hind the sand banks, Httle red. flags are flickering up. Tiny figures of foot soldiers are racing along the shore, waving, shouting, and throw- ing incomprehensible benedictions over on the steel deck of the torpedo | blood. boat. * We pass the bridge, turn in to the left, and already a machine gun sput- ters in back of the last ship of the flotilla. It is the Whites, "who are shooting at the bridge guard because he had run to the ‘shore to get a closer view of a steamer of our squad- ron, The entire quay of Sarapul, now visible with a telescope, is occupied by Asin’s Division, besieged on all sides by the Whites, and finally, thanks to the arrival of our squadron, united with the armies farther in- ward. We approach the shore. On the roofs, on the balustrade, on the road —everywhere Red armyists, bright kerchiefs, beards, all friendly, joyfully surprised faces. The orchestra on the hill rumbles the Marseillaise, the drummer stares at the boats and with his clattering makes a breach in the melody, the horn gets ahead of the ir- ritated director, peels blaringly notes into the air, unrestrained and unruly, like a horse which has thrown off his rider. The tows are alreaily taken up, the edge of the ship-board places itself slowly against the wharf, sailors dis- perse on the shore, the conversation is in full swing. “How did you get by? Did you beat up the ships?” “Of course we beat them, and chas- ed them into the White River.” “Tt is the honest truth.” A woman, still young, her face cov-| ered with tears, pushes thru. the crowd. “A sailor's wife,” say those standing about. Then the complain- ing and lamenting begins anew. The weeping of the mother and wife, a penetrating, monotonous weeping: “They have taken him away from me, carried him off on a tow-boat. He was a sailor like you.” The kerchief of the woman flies from one sailor to another, her face is wet with tears, she caresses the blue serge of the jackets—her last remembrance. Yes, every war is cruel, but civil war is terrible. How much deliberate, cold, intellectual brutality have those re- treating enemies already committed. Sarapul—all these spots are covered with blood. Like blazing brands the Tchistopol, Yelabuga, Tcheiny, and names of modest villages burn in his tory. At one place the wives and children of the Red armyists were thrown into the Kema, even infants were not spared. In another—the vik lage streets are still covered with black, congealed blood—the gtorious red of the maples round-about seem to have adopted forever the color of <— The women and children of those slaughtered do not flee abroad, do not write memoirs in which they re late the burning of their old country home with its-Rembrandts and lite rary treasures, and the Chinese cruel- ties of the Tcheka Never will it be known, no one will bring word to sensitive Europe of the thousand sol diers killed on the banks of the Ka ma, buried by the stream in sticky marshes and washed ashore. Was there ever a day—remember, you who~ were on board the “Rastoropny,” the “Pritky,” and the “Retivy,” on the battery “Seryosha’ on “Wanya,” the “Communist,” on ail our clumsy, ar- mored turtles—was there ever a day when at the rim of your ship-board-a silent back,.a soldier head with little hair (after typhoid) or an arm was not seen dancing over the waves. Was there ever a spot on the Kama where you were not received with la- ments, where on the shore, among the happy and distracted faces you did not see a dozen abandoned wives and dirty, famished workers’ children? Remember the weeping, those heart- rending sobs that could not be stifled even by the clanking of the boat chains, the wild heartbeats, the over- strained voice of the executive chair- man hailing you already at a distance of half a kilometer: “Samara is oc- cupied by the Reds!” In the meantime, another woman has come up to the first, a small, lean old figure. Over her face, too, grief has drawn its furrews. . “Weep not; speak calmly.” And the woman tells her story, but her words are lost in lamenting, and nothing can be gathered from them. But it was thus: While retreating, the Whites took 600 of our men on a boat and carried them off—no one knows where to; they say to Ufa, perhaps even farther . . An hour later a piercing siren calls the’ sailors scattered along the shore, and the commander gives the order: The squadron is going up stream im, search of the towboat with the pris- oners. Emphatically his words ring out, arousing the crew: “600 men, comrades.” (To Be Continued.) SSS et See eSNS (Continuued from page 6) issued proclamations accusing strik- ers of interfering with the laws of God,” meaning the laws of capitalism. It fights the strikers by propaganda, threats, mob, outrages and murder. And it always carries on these activi- ties in the name of “Hundred per cent Americanism, and hundred ‘per cent Christianity.” Does the protestant church, uphold- er of law, order and the right to ex- ploit, oppose the violent and bloody deeds of the Klan? Most of the or- ganizers and speakers are ministers. There are 32,000 protestant ministers in the organization (Catholic priests, Jewish rabbis, foreign born sky pi- lots and black shepherds are not in- vited to join this exclusive group). These figures we have on the unques- tionable authority of a minister, the Reverend Oscar Haywood of South Carolina, in a speech made on the 21st of October, 1925, These American fascists boast not only holy, but millionaife organizers. David C. Stephenson, a millionaire | coal company promoter of Evansville | and Indianapolis, took over the: or- ganization of the Indian territory in 1923. He asserts that he increased the membership of the Indiana Kian) to 380,000, and the Ohio Klan to 225,- | 000 members, tN eae THE USE VALUE OF GOD Jealous of the part the Catholic church has played in promoting ig- norance and misery, in defending capitalism from a class conscious pro- letariat, the K. K. K. has become the protestants’ champion in the fight. But where the Catholics preach inter- nationalism, under the absolute dom- ination of the pope, the K, K. K. preaches nationalism; and the only alliance possible between the two chief forces of religious reaction is a bitter war on Communism. So religion with its million forms, whether it wears the flowing robes of the papacy, or the ghost clothes of the Ku Klux Klan, is at heart the same. Sometimes it masquerades as liberal, as the Y. W. C. A.; sometimes. it proclaims itself reactionary, “fun- damentalist,” as do the Saas at of the Christian creeds. Whatever its costume for the minute, however styles may change outward appear- ances, it is the legitimate descendant of the spook with which priesthood first frightened the lowly of the sav- age tribe. Formerly it was the wea- pon of feudalism. Now it is the tool of capitalism? It is always wielded by the ruling class of the age and country in whieh it finds itself. ~ | Markets may fluctuate and business ‘face bankruptcy, but there is no | change for the capitalists in the ase ‘value of god. ee CY —_ enon NRE SEE EE AREA gS PER ASIN HAL EGP EF