The Daily Worker Newspaper, January 2, 1927, Page 12

cS after talking about professional sports, SPORTS Phooie! What an odoriferous business this |} Professional , = baseball. Two of Fert —""| the game's great- fh ;est players, | {8} Cobb and Speak- er, managers of ball clubs, are now being given an airing after be- ing given the air. It develops their “resignation” was by request—of the notoriously labor-hating Judge Landis. They just raised this old bird’s salary to $65,000 a year to do the disinfecting. There is hardly any need for this bug to be lifting the lid , any more. The-odor of it all pervades the country, ' AS a local sports writer snappily put it: “What was baseball’s breath of scandal in 1919 becomes de vwastating halitosis in. 1926.” You tell ’em! And knowing pro ball for what it fs. we know the old judge is going to be kept busy enough to earn his salary in the future. Do we need workers’ sports? Like an egg needs salt and pepper! * A * a This is a special Scotch item. Proving agaln that goif Is a great Scotch game (golf—not gulp!). We bring to your attention the fact that Charles Ghung, Chinese, has been made the golf professional at the Rediands (Cal.) Club, after winning many golf | honors thruout the state. Our Scotch comrades will Rote that there are now two Scotch items assuming taternationa! interest, * . * ° After the last Olympic games, “Mying Finns” @aoght the sporting world’s attention. Nurmj and other white guard athletes of Finland copped all running honors. Other good Finnish runners who were Reds would not participate or the sport- ing world would have been even more startled. Nurmi’s trip to this country, like Queen Marie's, helped. draw attention to Finland "for thé Purpose of a loan. At that time, sports writers—no jok- ing—printed a lot of fish stories for suckers showing why Finns made good run- ners. Now Willie Ritola, another | Weally splendid distance man, speaks some sound ) Sense on the matter: “All the talk of eating fried t fish or any other Finnish dish is foolish. We Finns ; @at what we like, but we eat sensibly. That, coupled f with the fact that we are conscientious and con- ; sistent with our training, makes us good distance * funnere.” Ritola is a carpenter, and after a day’s word makes ita point to run six miles to his home.” Workers’ sports organizations might be develop- Img many fine athletes. We hear they are. This Bug, however, is convinced that among them there are none that can wrestle with a little English or } throw a couple paragraphs far enough for our read- @Pe to see them. We know they exist. But don’t keep ® a secret, comrades! a s . * ° Mickey Walker’s manager only wants $200,000 @r « championship bout for a championship he won : by the grace } of god and the i gamblers. He religiously also refrains from mentioning the Tigerish Par- son who knock- ed Walker for a row of Irish shamrocks the last time they fought. Phooie—such champs, and phooie some more such a \\ i A business ! ae WA Ha nan 5 We'll have to 1 disinfect our typewriter rib- ER ere enema € ‘ With the Authors Men in War, by Andreas Latzko, Bon! and Liver- right, New York. $.95. \ Dubliners, by James Joyoe, Boni and Liveright, New York. 3.95. Men In War will never be recommended to the young manhood of America by the American Legion or the officilaldom of the American Federation of Labor. It is a blasting, damning picture of the hor rors of war. It is one of the most powerful pictures of war ever painted In words. Gibbering human wrecks drag themselves thru its pages, Fractured legs in plaster casts while their owners worry that the limbs will hitch up too soon, The great Pooh Bah, the military genius who won @ big battle, this military genius who spent the previous 39 years in a state of chronic semi-bankruptcy. Here he ‘was now, far away from the bursting shells with a The City That Sobbed. ‘By and by your ear becomes Accustomed to confusion, Immune to all the mutter, To the grumble and the thunder Of the torrent flowing traffic Roaring through the sluicelike streets. Uproar blends again to silence ‘ Through the sum of all its sounds. Silence that in turn is shaken By a subterranean sobbing Rising from the root of things. City of aspiring steeples, City of sky seeking buildings, Broadly based and heaven-heaving, Can it be that all you weight Rests upon the stricken shoulders Of the workers, whose reward For the blood and sweat they spent In your planning and erection, In your dreaming and perfection, Is to squirm beneath your feet? * The City That Shouted The foundations stir. A broad fist shoots through a baliroom floor. That schoolgirl complexion Flakes from the enamelled ugliness Of the frightened Four Hundred. Smoke ceases in chimneys. Smoke issues through gateways. Smoke surges into the streets, Strengthens, and shapes itself, Shouts—and ig marching machinery, Shouts—and is marching men, Marching Tomorrows. 7 The City That Sang. Skyscrapers turn somersaults, Tenements tumble And disappear in the dust Where street meets street and dances. Forever out of the cellars, Forever out of the subways, The forgers of the future Gather, and gaily Sing at the common task, The love and the learning. Ah, to be one of the chorus, Saluting the coming creation! But ah, still more, to contribute My all to its realization! Laie wd. 8. Wattace. nation at his feet. While heads are being blown off in the trenches, on the Austro-Italfan front, and uniforms, rifiés and torn bodies are mixed up in an infernal stew on the battlefields, the great gem eral delivers himself thus on the glories and joys of war: “Just look! I should like to show this picture to our pacifists, who always act as though war was nothing but a hideous carnage. You should have seen this hole in peace times, It was enough to put you to sleep. Why, the porter at the corner is earn ing more today than the biggest merchant used to earn before the war. And have you noticed the young fellows who come back from the front? Sun burnt, healthy and happy! Most of them before the war were employed in offices, They held themselves © badly and were diesipated and looked cheesy. [ assure you, the world has never been so healthy as it is now. But if you look at your newspapers, you read about a world catastrophe, about a blood drained Europe, and a whole lot of other stuff.” (Like what the Chicago Tribune would turn outd This ts a. GRBAT book. Yon will read and dama the system that breeds wars as inevitably as & = ~ swamp will breed mosquitoes, Those who wera unable to wade thru James Joyce’s Ulysses, despite the verbal appetizers sprinkled thru its pages and the advertising value of booklegging, may hesitate to diminish their finan- cial resources in the acquisition of a Joyce book. Dubliners, which is a collection of short stories of Dublin iffe written in 1905 makes delightful reading. Joyce is a good story teller. He winds up when he has painted his picture and lets it go at that He does not have to walk the floor at night wonder ing what he is going to do with characters that have outlived their usefulnesa, There are fifteen stories in the book with an intro- duction by Padraic Colum who ts a general favor ite with American publishers and Hterary reviews, tho Colum is chiefly interested in fairies, tinker, priests and nuns, and modern Irish writers have Uttle good to say of those types with the possible exception of the tinkers. The gods have been kind to Joyce in the matter of publicity. For some unknown reason his pub Nsher refused to bring out Dubliners for seven years. The moralists pinned the verboten sign on Ulysses. So Joyce can afford to live in Paris while the moral fats cannot. A book you will enjoy. Portrait of a Comrade. (Continued from page 2) age, he would have been too early rotten with its cowardice. Watchéd all night? More women than I have watched all night. Glad and proud I am that I do not watch for those who come ashamed, be- cause they come too soon.” c She faced my father, blazing. “You spoke a word of blame for this night’s work? You? Then I shall tell him. If he had done anything else at all he would not have been his father’s son. And all I ever asked for my life was to bear his father a son.” My father and I had been held dumb. But ag she fell silent, the excitement of the last few days ed in my veins. if “Mother!” I stammered, “Mother!” Then a mem ory of a night long ago swept across me, “Comrade!” 1 cried. She turned and for a flash a veil lifted. I think it was given me to see that once, the girl my father found in prison. Then the shyness of her unusual’ outburst engulf- ed her, and the embarrassment between mother and son. We should both have sought refuge in the com monplace, but that my father spoke gravely. “If that is your word, then you have come inte your own, For because it is not refused to the least it is a title for the greatest. Because it is giver you freely you shall spend your life earning it. Go,” my son. I was wrong. Do what you must do and, to know what that is, look nowhere but into your own. soul.” ‘ , My mother and father talked late together that night. I never knew what they said. But the day -before yesterday, in the street fighting, my owa young son was wounded. Now I can guess what my father and mother talked of that night. Years later I went one night alone to Say good- bye to my mother lying covered with white flowers. My father came out of the room, his face carved with sorrow and passed me, without seeing. I must have known in any case that he had just gone from her. For only the hand she loved hest in the world would have laid among the white flowers over her heart one blood-red rose, Her son’s voice went to silence. He looked off thru the dark as tho he saw again the grave which the people that day had laureled, Down the street came the sound of men singing together, AME ne OR RRR