The Daily Worker Newspaper, April 13, 1927, Page 6

MRC NCO YR AN Soa 8 ' Page Six THE DAILY WORKER, Now YOR! America, Inc. By SENDER GARLIN i. “THE NATION”—IT DEPLORES. | The current ue of The Nation (April 13) contains a number of articles of exceptional interest and value. | The press has already carried the news of the cable | which was received from G. A. Kennedy, a Chinese- speaking American, stating that J. E. Williams, the American missionary and other fore ed in Nanking were killed by retreating troops and th the soldiers of the Peopl y ale. “It ion, “that four ot he time the soldiers threat- xs immediate) y h wa: as bi s the cable were with Williams dye ened. revolver and w shot dead.” | Imperialist “ Re In the In onal (usually the most \ 8. Gannett, one , describes the French, Eng international out that erialist seen acquired simply the “rights' powers are toda: by use and not “To the foreign throughout cighty years of the J foreign might is right, and nothing else counts.’ * * * foreign ¢ | Baldwin Turns To The Left. A report of the Brussels Conference Against Imper- | falism is contributed by Roger Baldwin, now enroute to| Soviet Russia. Baldwin is surprisingly enthusiastic about the fact that “behind all the speeches and resolu- | tions burned the fire of the class struggle.” The ar-| ticle is interesting, but suffers from the Nation’s charac- teristic inflated optimism. Likes To Look At Bright Side of Life. There are the usual number of editorial paragraphs “deploring” this, and “expressing gratification” at that. One is therefore not surprised to read that “President | Coolidge has appointed five men of distinction to repre- | sent the United States at the Economic Conference to} be held in Geneva in May, There are Henry M. Robin-| son, etc., etc. . . . The country is therefore assured of | a... powerful delegation.” How can one share this! naive radiation? Henry M. Robinson happens to be a rabid labor-hating, open-shop bank president of Los An- geles. The other members are Norman H. Davis, as-| sistant secr y of the treasury and of state in the} Wilson administration, and . . . | Interesting Features. | Henry Van Loon’s oons continue to be dull; the} Drifter is ever engaging; Mark Van Doren is still pre- | occupied with his rare Oxford reprints; and the Posi-| tions Wanted (‘secretary seeks opportunity for Euro- | pean travel—cultured, ete.”; “Young college man wants literary work—compensation secondary”) remains one of the most poignant, dramatic, and intriguing depart-| ments of the magazine. “THE NEW MASSES”—SIGNS OF SPRING.| “Something has happened to The New Masses since | the last issue went tq press. . . . It has died miser- ably, and gloriously been born again.” So-announce the editors of the magazine in the April issue. Lack of Finance Capital. | The resurrection was apparently not in vain. The | New Masses for this month is indeed revolutionary, | Whether it is the result of a sudden sociological conver- | sion of its editors or whether the basic cause for its in- | surgency is to be found in the New Economie Policy which calls for non-payment to contributors, it is diffi- cult to say. But this much is certain: The much- maligned symposium on “the correct, proletarian, revo- lutionary attitude on sex” has happily disappeared. How About China? The article on the present situation in China for which the crowd in the New Masses bleachers have been call- ing so insistently is still missing. At the same time, | however, the April number contains by far the most} brilliant collection of radical cartoons that have ever ap- peared in the magazine. An Historic Document. | A stirring challenge, “Where Are We Going?” by Henri Barbusse is translated by Mary Reed. This is a} fragment of a pamphlet called, “An Appeal To The| Intellectuals.” Says Barbusse: “The intellectual world is going through a | stage of uncertainty, of fumbling around, of | restlessness. This restlessness is an organic re- | action, the pangs of approaching deat! A change is coming. : | Let him ignore it who | will.” ie yet i For Fumbling Intellectuals. we hee ae meet i gate bie ge are. aaly a dumb ache | aot principles of Marxism enable us to OR HARD TIMES: no work! weary’ agony. . . . Iam talking to the Com- straighten out the disorder of our transition weeks, . . . despairing months: No | munists +». the haters of wars, the stage, to get at its causes and to recognize that | work . anywhere —- anyWhere!/enemies of exploitation, the fierce it is ‘the result of a perfectly logical sequence |The machinery the workers made | lovers of the poor and down-trodden of events. It enables us to realize the role and ...the factories they built...) ... the vanguard of the working importance of ideology in rallying together a substantial number of the restless spirits of to- ‘day. “It must be said once and for all that paci- fists and moralists who dream of perfecting the human nature, who idolize love and kindness, are allies of the old order, “The conservatives may say: ‘He who is not against me is with me.’ But the revolutionists must say: ‘He who is not with me is against me.’” The Vanguard Press could perform a revolutionary service by republishing Barbusse’s manifesto complete in the United States. George Grosz, and Others. Julian Gumperz, a former editor of “The Rhote Fahn,” and at present in New York, has written an ex- tremely interesting tho somewhat sketchy description of the evolution of George Grosz, master caricaturist of the German Communists, “The Class War is Still On,” is a series of graphic snap-shots of company unions, fake brotherhoods, and other poorly disguised schemes for jolly class collaboration in the U. S. A. The photography was skillfully accomplished by Robert Dunn, . ee oe Mary Reed describes fascism in Italy; the white ter- ror in Horthy’s Hungary; reaction in France; social- democratic betrayal of workers in Germany; and bread- | lines all over Europe. “The Liberator.” Max Eastman, glorious Appolo, who just blew into town after a five-year wander-jahre.in Soviet Russia and very-southern France, has contributed to the April issue a somewhat mysterious poem entitled, “Morning Song of the Proletarian Poet.” SEND IN YOUR LETTERS The DAILY WORKER is anxious to receive letters from its readers stating their views on the issues con- fronting the labor movement. It is our hope to de- velop a “Letter Box” department that will be of wide interest to all members of The DAILY WORKER family. Wife... You dreamed dreams...as @ working-girl. Then your dreams came true. . you married. Out of the frying-pan into the fire! your slavery is now many times greater than it was. shop girl gets organized. But what power have you, a wife and mother | | —isolated: in the kitchen, alone in your struggle? Pak gh A STRIKE: perhaps you don’t un- derstand your husband, the father of your children. What is he striking about... haps you dont see that he downs tools to make the boss give you and yours |a little more bread, a little more life.| you . . You would drive him back to the shop . . . to scab! you don’t know what or- ganization means to the workers. An isolated kitchen-woman, you make it harder for your husband in- battles. except your husband . . Your voice nobody hears— . he hears a | nagging wife! ae ee And supposing you do understand a little. The struggle to feed your children in strike time is a bitter struggle. For every pang of hunger your child feels you feel too. In the night, for every restless moment, every faint ery, you have an hour of heartache, tears +.+ you would do. are you able to do? nothing! Al starving his family? per-| . + but what| (made and piled up by the workers’ own hands . . . But you—you starve, .| all of you! You go to the corner grocer... |the butcher ... the baker... Torn like one going to the gallows . . . but }you go... you must! you beg a little credit... And then they stop giving... | poor slaves too, they are.. \them. You would give them of your flesh to eat, of your blood to drink ... but bread you cannot give | them! | The fires of revolt burn fiercely in . Hunger, despair, |torment! But you stand alone... | Who hears your cry? Who? * * * | OR WAR TIME: you come to see | that shut factories mean open guns: | stead of helping to fight his class|that bosses make war for fear work- ers will make revolution. You see your husband, your son, marched | away to other lands to kill workers like themselves—to be killed. Your heart cries: If only I could do some- thing—do something? hears you...no one... . * . Wife ... mother! I am not talk- ing to you... you do not hear me. I am talking to those who can hear | me talking to you. I am talking to |my comrades—to those who can or- ganize you... YOU! the fiercer |half of the working class... . . Your} | children starve before your very eyes | . and you have no power to help) misery, | but no one | eee tek OR THE BUSY SEASON with its overtime: the long evenings alone) ... the children too scarcely seeing their father ... the exhausted man staggering in late at night his body} broken with pain .. . out of bed at/ dawn still broken, to drag himself to/ the slave-pen ... while your whole | being cries out in revolt... . But must make your cry heard, in the wilderness ... a life robbed of hope. No, wife! | Iam talking to those who can and FOR UNTIL YOUR CRY IS JOINED TO THEIR CRY theirs is a voice crying and your life| mother! unorganized, | dimly conscjous: I am not talking to/ you. I am talking to those who hear | you when you do not hear yourself ; ithe mills, the mines, are there .. .| ‘all there. The raw material waiting ‘to be used... the Gates to Work . shut... shut! The bosses say you shall not eat, you, your chil- | \dren, your men. Plenty piled up, class . knowers, the path-finders ... the ultimate conquerors for you and your class! They hear you! and they will make you articulate till your voice is heard in every corner of the earth, Department of Justice Bars Daily Worker __.. From Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary oe ri DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE | UNITED STATES PENITENTIARY . LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS | The Daily Worker, 33-First st, New York Oity,N.Y. Gentlemen, April 8,1927. . . the fighters, the doers, the | Your publication "The Daily Worker" addres: to Inmates of thie Institution will not be delivered, the Rules of the Department of Justice governing thie Prison will not permit the delivery of Newspspers of this character. Yours Truly, B20 0ree Clork.. D/M The U, S. Department of Justice, the present system of capitalistic exploitation, prohibité the reading of The Send in your letter today to “The Letter Box,” The NAILY WORKER, 33 First street, New York City. } } DAILY WORKER, wherever it has the power to do 80. bs THE NANKING BOMBARDMENT AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE By E. ETTLINGER With the bombardment of Nanking and the feverish war preparations of the imperialists in China, the Chi- nese revolutionary struggle enters a new phase. | great extent on the various war lords to crush the Chinese revolution, and liberally supplied them with money, arms and men. With the capture of Shanghai and Nanking, and the collapse of the northern armies, | the imperialists have lost all faith in the power of the war lords and have decided to come to open grips with the Cantonese army. Two Wrong Ideas. In this connection we must get rid of two erroneous ideas. The first is that the capitalist powers in China have experienced a change of heart and after four decades of the most ruthless exploitation.and oppression are now chastened and will make concessions to the New | China. This belief is held in pseudo socialist and liberal \circles and is sponsored by the Chamberlain memoran- jdum on China and the vague proposals of Secretary | Kellogg of his willingness to enter into a conference with a united China, This ideology sedulously cultivated by the capitalist powers hides behind fair words their real policy of aggression in China, The second mistake which we must guard against is that the capitalist powers are beaten in China and are now ready to withdraw their military forces and to abandon their system of economic exploitation in that country. The real facts of the situation are that the imperial- ists in China are now openly preparing to fight by force the further advance of the Chinese revolution. That is the meaning of the Nanking bombardment, of the screaming headlines of war, Chinese atrocities, of the necessity of quelling “CHINESE MOBS” by steel, of the incessent anti-Chinese propaganda now filling the cap- italist press. The basis of this campaign is to create a war psychology to develop the ideological campaign for The sending of additional troops, | the barbed wired entanglements, the setting up of bar- ricades in the international settlements, the provocative tone of the imperialists in China all mean that the issue between the Chinese revolution and imperialism will be settled by force. foreign intervention, Atrocity Stories. In order to hide the real significance of the struggle in China, that is to hold at all costs their economic and political priviféges to exploit ruthlessly the Chinese masses, the capitalist press is spreading the atrocity scare headlines about the massacre of women and chil- dren, about the fear of a foreign uprising, ete. What the imperialists®are aimirig at is to provoke an uprising of the Chinese which will give them an excuse to con- duct war on a large scale. In this new development we must understand the part being played by American imperialism. With the rush- ing of marines, sailors and warships to China, with the | American bombardment of Nanking and the defense of |the international settlement at Shanghai, the United | States government has dropped its pretense of friend- ship for Chinese nationalism and has arrayed itself on |the side of British imperialism with a view to crush the |Chinese revolution. This in spite of the very sharp {economic differences between the interests of British and American capitalism in China. These differences have not keen obliterated. They still remain, but for the moment have been submerged by the recent events. Two Tendencies, There are two powerful tendencies at work in Amer- ica in regard to the policy to be adopted towards China. One advocates the withdrawal of all Americans from China and a policy of friendship towards the conserva- tive elements among the Chinese nationalist movement, the second group advocates close co-operation with Brit- ish imperialism and a joint policy of intervention. The policy of co-operation with British imperialism has tri- umphed and this is due primarily to the fact that the American ruling class is beginning to recognize the real revolutionary character of the Chinese revolution, a movement not only of national independence but one directed against world imperialism and in order to stem this tide of revolution, America has joined in a united front against China, The policy of British imperialism, the policy of the mailed fist, of a strong display of force has triumphed and Imperialism is endeavoring to close its ranks and strangle the Chinese nationalist movement before it becomes too powerful. Can it do this? The peda is, “Not if the Working Class of the World pre- vent it, The Mass Front. The fate of the Chinese revolution will be decided not only in China but also by the action the working class take to support the Nationalist movement. The thesis of Lenin that the fate of the World Revolution is insep- arably bound up with the struggles of the exploited colonial peoples for freedom is clearly born out by the Chinese events. More and more the struggle becomes one between Capitalism and the forces of World Revo- anxious to preserve as long as possible |lution. In order to assure the success of the Chinese revolution the working class must mobilize against the imperialist policy of intervention. FOOTNOTES Hitherto the capitalist groups in China relied to a/ By EvucEne Lyons = JUDGMENT. For the great epic of the class struggle, if ever it is written, there is a prologue ready-made: Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Judge Webster Thayer facing each other in a courtroom in the town of Dedham, Massachusetts. Judge Thayer on the rostrum of authority, A nar- row, shriveled figure, mumbling dead words. Words cold and precise as corpses. Words disinterred from the morgues of statute and precedent. Words that evoke a musty ingrown past. And Vanzetti in the prisoner’s cage. Alive, far- seeing, reaching out for words to express a new vision, groping for electric words to light up new vistas. Find- ing words that touch off the imagination and explode the walls of the narrow courtroom, : Behind Thayer, the dead accumulations of precedent and wealth and privilege, guarded by bayonets. A nar- row world that is organized, rigid and unfeeling. Be- hind Vanzetti, the multitudes, as yet unorganized; the amorphous multitudes, surging forward and retreating and surging further forward, their live bodies and’ their live hopes against the dead past and its bayonets. Thayer barricaded by statute books and surrounded by bayonets is yet a weak shrinking figure, frightened by his own black cowl, by the sinister memories of witch- burners, by the sting of light on eyes accustomed only to shadow. He rises to pronounce the verdict of death upon two workingmen and there is neither fire nor power in his pronouncement. Only the clatter of a dead formula. “The jury did it,” he mumbles, “the jury, not I, The jury and the law and the court—not I.’ And Vanzetti standing, it seems alone, but erect and unafraid, speaking with the voice of millions. He too pronounces a death verdict. It is directed against the decaying past; not against the lonely frightened figure on the rostrum of authority but against the whole putrid foundation on which it rests. He speaks for millions of workers everywhere. He speaks for the millions who have been drawn to America from other lands and pressed into the mold of industry. For the despised and the intimidated aroused to a sense of their own invincible strength. Vanzetti does not explain or apologize. He con- demns with words of fire and challenges with the*reson- ance of a million throats. Thayer—old, worn, dyspepsic, bitter—has come to judge the men in the prisoner’s cage. But he shrinks from their words,and their gaze. The skeleton clatter of his formula is an in the echoes of Vanzettis verdict. For it is Vanzetti—calm, hopeful, eloquent in the aware- ness of the multitudes .speaking through his voice— who does the judging. The scene in the town of Dedham will bite deep and clear into the memory of mankind. The verdict will not be erased. There Is No Ill Wind, Etc.—The disorders in China which are depriving that unfortunate country of the ministration of several thousand missionaries are bringing unexpected benefits to the peo- ples of other lands. Many of the missionaries, an A, P. cable advises, “are being diverted to the Philippines, Siam, Korea and Japan, where they will continue their efforts pending re-establish- ment of order in China.” Great demonstrations of joy and feasts of thanksgiving will doubtless convulse these lucky lands as soon as news of their good fortune reaches them. Bo TO THE |, NEWS) i | | | Millinery Patriots—Maybe you haven’t heard of J. C. Backsiael Neither did we until Carl Haessler sent us some of his stuff. But now we know. J, C. is vice-president of D. B. Fisk & Co., a millinery concern in Chicago. And he is a champion of American womanhood, There is some- thing really oyympian about his courage. Sooner or later the women of this great republic will put up a statue to him. We excerpt only f sentence! “In to Paris in recent years. . . her taste and her type and doesn’t care whether it bears the Paris stam; or not... they wanted to see them carried out. . . headway (Godo word for a millinery revolution.—Ed.) that today Ame: styles set the pace for the rest of the world. . . we vwait herself what is best suited to her and the ideals she represents, and Pari: has to follow her... . s* but you'll get the drift: former years,” this millinery patriot declares, “we always looke to create our styles. . . . But a decided change has come about . Our American girl selects a hat or dress that suit . The American women . . . had ideas of their own, an . This movement created suc! .,The day is past when for Paris to tell Milady what to we: Now Milady decides fo: mind,” The Princess And The Papers—-What the American papers did to her is no fault of Miss Alexandria Kropotkin. If anything, she deserves our sympathy. She is a nice, harmless and insignifi- cant woman well over 40 who was seized upon by the sob sisters a she entered the port of New York for the reason that her father was a Russian prince. One of these wet sisters, Elizabeth Custer, has a piece in the New York Telegram which is really a masterpiece of misinforma- tion. “Princess Kropotkin,” she recounts, “has come to America to learn how to wear a crown,” namely the crown of charm. A title does not mean much to her, since she has no “love of the pomp to which she was born.” And towards the end, by way of a historical note, Miss Custer records that: “In 1915, when Kerensky established the provisional govern- _ment the princess and her father, Prince Peter Kropotkin, re- turned to Russia from exile and shared in the destinies of Kerensky. In 1919 Prince Peter died and Princess Alexandria remained /in Russia until 1921, imprisoned a good part of the time.” Maybe Miss Custer won’t mind being set right on a few details. First, Miss Kropotkin is not really a princess. While in exile her father, the great anarchist theoretician, united his life with a Jewish comrade, Of this union Alexandria was born, and as the illegitimate daughter of a Jewess she did not inherit the title. Second, she is not really a Russian, having been born outside of that country and having remained outside of it almost all her life. Third, she was born into the poverty of a radical home and knew nothing of pomp. Fourth, having taken no part in the labor move- ment, she was never in prison either in or outside of Russia. Fifth, Kropotkin never shared the fate of Kerensky because he never had anything to do with Kerensky and remained in Russia after Kerensky beat it. Sixth, Kropotkin was not imprisoned after his return to Russia; on the contrary the ancestral lands, con- fiscated by the Czar were returned to him by the Soviet government and he lived there in peace and quiet. Seventh, the woman is not in exile, having lived outside of Russia’ anyhow. i oe from these and a few more details, the Telegram story is 4 th She is simoly wearing the creations of her o' 4 | Did you see the dispatches from Mexico, about the Crom another case (as Kenneth Durant points out) of labor lerying “Wolfe!, Wolfe!” wanting to deport Bertram Wolfe, who is in New York? It is Ps } | ‘