The Daily Worker Newspaper, November 21, 1927, Page 6

Page Six THE PATLY WORKER, NEW YORK, MOND NOVEMBER 21, 1927 DAILY WORKER Published by the DAILY WORKER PUBLISHING CO. Daily, Except Sunday a 33 First Street, New York, N. Y. Phone, Orchard 1680 | Cable Address: “Daiwork j SUBSCRIPTION RATES : | By Mail (in New York only): By Mail (outside of New oYrk): $8.00 per year $4.50 six months $6.00 per year $3.50 six months 0 three month three months. s and mail out checks to , 33 First , New York, ing the imperiali ot the House of Morgan all the eminent patriots were claiming some degree of credit for their participation in the “crusade to make the world safe for democracy.’’ Then it was considered an honor to have helped launch the conflict, the ry to end wa Tod ten years after, when the agents of imperialis still striv to conceal the imperialist designs under p slogans, the last war is not regarded from the exalted heights of Wilsoniana. Now the war-mongers are busy disclaiming respon- | sibility fcr the last war. | Only the other evening Thomas W. Lamont, a partner of the | House of Morgan, in whose interest the saintly Woodrow declared war against the central powers, declared before the annual dinner of the Academy of Political Science at the Hotel Astor, New York, that it was not the international bankers but the statesmen who ‘were responsible for the world war. Thus one of the masters of | finance capital places the blame for the slaughter upon his po- | litical flunkeys. | Certainly we hold no brief for the #atesmen who formulated | the deceptive slogans beneath which were concealed the interests of the banking houses who had invested in the war on the side of | Britain, France and Czarist Russia. But in order to keep the | record straight we cannot let it be forgotten that had it not been for the billions of dollars invested by American banking houses, | of which the House of Morgan was the most deeply involved, the | United States never would have entered the world war, thousands | upon thousands of young American workers who furnished ban- quets for buzzards upon the shell-torn battlefields of France would still be alive and tens of thousands of the blinded, shell-shocked and crippled—the living dead men of the war—would be of sound | mind and body today. No, Mr. Lamont! You and your kind claimed the glory at a time when the government of the United States, your servant, made it a crime to expose your hand, and now that, in retrospect, some of the sanguinary facts of the war are known, you and your class will have to take the responsibility. Collectively the capitalist class is responsible for the mass murder of the working class and the time will come when collec- | tively it will answer for its crimes. « Mexican Supreme Court Decision on Oil Lease Is By No. Means Final When the supreme court of the United States renders a de- cision it is the last word short of revolution. From the decisions of a majority of the nine corporation lawyers who are appointed for life to the highest tribunal of the government of the United States there is no other appeal. In the constitution of the United States the supreme court was conceived as the final and most authoritative of the series of checks and balances devised to de- feat the will of the legislative branch and even the executive branch of the government. Most Americans regard all supreme courts as possessing sim- ilar powers and ‘hence when the announcement was made on Fri- | day that the supreme court of Mexico had ruled in favor of cer- | tain American oil interests it was interpreted as final. This, how- | ever, is not the case. The decision upholding the contentions of the Mexican Petroleum company, an American concern and a sub- sidiary of the Standard Oil company of Indiana, declared articles XIV and XV of the Mexican oil laws unconstitutional. This, in spite of the fact that the famous Article XXVII of the 1917 Mexican constitution specifically makes provision for such legislation as a means of restoring to its rightful owners the vast tracts of land and oil and mineral resources placed in the hands of imperialists of both the United States and England by | the notorious Porfirio Diaz and other traitors to the Mexican peo- ple who succeeded him at intervals during the past seventeen years. The twenty-seventh article of the new constitution makes | it possible to recover the stolen land and resources. Article XIV of the laws passed under authority of that new constitution stipulates that all oil land titles acquired prior the adoption of the new Mexican constitution, shall be abolished and that fifty-year concessions shall be substituted. The American oil concerns fought this clause because they wanted the right to hold such lands in perpetuity. Article XV declares the titles to such lands forfeited when no applications to have the fifty- year concessions confirmed were made before January 1, 1926. Most American companies, in their ineffable arrogance, did not even attempt to comply with the oil and land decrees, hence their enforcement met with the most savage resistance and re sulted in the American state department launching a campaign against the Calles government in Mexico, that has furiously raged down to date. Before the sections of the law referred to in the present de- cision can finally be held unconstitutional even in the lower fed- eral courts of Mexico there must be four more similar decisions, the new constitution specifying that the five decisions are required to make a legislative act unconstitutional. This is not considered a formidable obstacle, however, and the American oil and land holders expect to be able to obtain four more decisions as the} supreme court of Mexico is largely composed of reactionaries and individuals who can be influenced by wealth. But even though there are five decisions of the Mexican supreme court they are not final. According to a note from the Mexican government to the state department at Washington | dated January 20, 1926: “The decisions of the Supreme Court of Justice, when prece- dents are set by them, are only binding insofar as they interpret the law to the federal courts, but they can never bind nor be obliga- tory upon the legislative power, as this is the only one authorized “to enuct laws for general observance throughout the republic.” Thus, the Mexican supreme court, instead of being the final arbiter, has no power over Jegislation. Unlike the United States supreme court, the Ley 9 supreme judiciary cannot formulate mnt HES 5 TEY ARE EASILY SATISFIED Se WILLIAM GREEN: ‘We leave with the impression that against which we have complained.’”"—News Item. { MacDowell Qoiony, and become a dig- nified poet of old-fashioned Amer- jican individualism. As one of his adorers puts it, very haughtily, “Mr. Robinson does not wish to preach anything. He does not consider the (Continued from Last Issue.) XXVI. Money Writes By Fred Ellis he is going to make a very thoro investigation of all the things -_——y | By Upton Sinclair he nearly lost his own mind; indeed, some think he did—his hair turned white, and his face became haggard, and the students, when they pass him, tap their foreheads and say, “There’s a nut!” Just so they said Of course I recognize the right of a poet straining after an effect to mix; his metaphors now and then. I re- member that Hamlet spoke of taking | arms against a sea of trouble. But if Hamlet had talked about blowing | | P Red Rays E was suggested a few weeks ago in thé Daily Worker that the problem of organizing the traction workers of New York City into a labor union could be solved speedily despite all the obstacles placed in the way of its accomplishment by Frank the trade union movement in this city decided to act as one big organizing committee. The Bricklayer’s Union has set a splendid example to other organizations by urging: its member- ship to become voluntary organizers the employes of the I. R. T. and the B. M. T. with a view to bringing them into the Amalgamated Asso- ciation. * * * HE Amalgamated officials cannot lay the blame for failure to or- | Sanize the traction workers on the | alleged apathy of the rank and file of the labor movement, There is no miore unpopular capitalist group in the United States than the brigands who have looted the city and exploit- ed their employes for years under the cloak of service. The trade union- ists of this city are laying for the traction barons. If the other unions follow the example set by the brick- layers, Hedley’s injunctions will be jabout as useful to him as a pair of blind eyes at a burlesque show. * * * HILIP MARSHALL BROWN, pro- fessor of international law at Princeton University, is probably five feet seven in height, weighs ninety-five pounds and suffers from diabetes. The reason why I have reached this unscientific conclusion is because of an article the professor wrote in the Princeton Alumni Week- ly declaring war to be the right of a nation and depreciating the value of peace. Those bloodthirsty writers are usually anaemic individuals or occupy positions that guarantee them immunity from violent participation in war, The “blood and thunder” editorial writer of the Chicago Trib- une is a heavy user of smelling salts. A few years ago he wrote an editorial reflecting on the masculinity of Ru- dolph Valentino, but when the latter offered him a choice of pistols or gloves the warlike editor degenerated into a pacifist. * * * Choose Your Poet URING the days when I was a hungry hack-writer, there appear- ed in a New York newspaper a letter making known to lovers of litera- ture that a man who had revealed gifts as a poet was earning his living digging the New York subway. The name of the poet was not given, but I learned later that it was Edwin world as in the immediate path of salvation.” And so, as the years go by, we see happening to him what happens to all gentlemen poets — his writing ;comes to possess what the critics praise as “subtlety.” Having nothing really important to say, and no deep creative impulse, the poet concen- trates more and more upon his man- music out of a star to quech drums of death with fire that sang and had never been felt before—I would sure- ly have said that he ought to have stopped and got clear in his mind what he was trying to convey to mine. ‘ And now the new book, “Tristrem.” I debate whether out of a sense of loyalty to my job I am going to wade |hundred others who have extended about Dante long ago, and about John Bunyan, and William Blake, and a | ett Ingersoll Watch Company has developed a clever scheme for selling its wares. When you pur- chase an Ingersoll watch you are in- formed that it carries a year’s guar- antee. Well and good. In a few week’s time this piece of junk that ticks like the engine of a steam rolier ceases to tick. You take it to where the boundaries of the soul’s experi- ence. And now, which would you rather read about: Isolt of the White Hands, who pined away because her hushand loved another woman, or William El- lery Leonard, Professor of English at ner of saying things; he racks his mind to devise intricate and compli- Arlington Robinson; and presumably |some help must have been found, for ; : G \the si ay laborer devoted himselt | ©ated and involved modes of utter |to writing, and has just published a|~ T wed te ba fooled by that. When {long apa which I on ee |T was a youth I read every word of is the greats: pee that as yet! Robert Browning, patiently consult- been written in America.” A part of ing footnotes, looking up names in | it was read in a theatre in New York, lencyclopedias, digging out learned |and a great audience showed tremen- | papers of the Browning Society to dous ght. Do I need to tell you find out what “Sordello” is about. that this masterpiece does not deal} put now that I am as old as Brown- nae cigging of subways, nor| ing, I know that he did not have sue i other aspect of ae many original or profound ideas; he bake Seabrepaties: 0, it is called “Tris-| asa Victorian gentleman of travel tram, and theme is a domestic | and odd learning, who liked to wrap up obvious and commonplace state- ments in mystifying. language; fill ing his poetry with references to for- gotten persons and things, of as much consequence to you and me as the triangle in a royal family dead some half dozen centuries. Here and there I have found some ure in Mr. Robinson’s books: for mple, his “Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,” who “cursed the common- pl place” and “missed the medieval|telephone directory of Kalamazoo, !grace of iron clothing.” That is a} Michigan. sample, of the acid with which this| I take up a recent volume by Mr. poet does his etching. You note that| Robinson, “The Man Who Died | an individual foible he deals| Twice.” It tells the story of a mu- nd it is always thus. He is y, entirely lz ng in a so- sense. His experience in the sub- ay trenches taught him nothing. He had no feeling of kinship with his fellow-toilers; all he wanted was to make his escape from the slave- world, and live comfortably at the tion. I open the volume. at random, and find myself reading about music Blown down by choral horns out of a star To quench those drums of death with singing fire Unfelt by man before. legislation under the pretext of “interpreting” acts of congress In that respect the framers of the Mexican constitution deliber- ately avoided following the example of the secret conference that drew up the United States constitution that was imposed by bribery and terror upon the people of the American colonies. With a hundred years record of usurpations by the United sourts before them, the Mexicans who drew up their 1917 itution avoided some of its pitfalls, with the result that even bourgeois constitution it is far ahead of the United States. It is to be hoped that the Mexican legislature repudiates this ision of the reactionary court and enforces to the letter its nd land d s who are in } great natural re <ico only for the purpose of despoiling it of ources and enslaving its population. « The very name of the United States capitalist ruling class sing and a by-word among the vast majority of the peo- é Latin America. ‘The frightful suppression of the duly tituted government of Nicaragua, following the dispersal of the governments of Haiti and Santo Domingo, which in turn fol- lowed the Panama Canal steal; the black reeord of colonial ruth- lessness in the Philippine Islands; the duplicity; the intrigue of the United States has created a wave of fury against dollar im- perialism that is steadily rising higher. In Latin America, Mex- ico is the logical country to take the initiative in launching a! movement for an anti-imperialist bloc of nations against the United States and not for one moment should it concede anything to the imperialist despoilers. History itself has imposed upon | Mexico the necessity of repudiating the decision of the supreme evurt and reaffirming the articles of the oil and land laws and enforcing them. with all its might. Such a course will be ac- claimed by all class-conscious workers in the United States, who look to the peoples of Latin Ameria as our allies in a joint mami the University of Wisconsin? How you purchased it and you are in- through two hundred pages about the sexual entanglements of Isolt of Ire- land and Isolt of the White Hands, away back in the days of Malory and the Knights of the Round Table. I pick up the volume and trace a long, involved paragraph, Robinson says the same obvious thing three times over, and each time in a in which Mr. | formed that for one reason or an- other the store cannot make good on the guarantee but you are given the address of the company’s repair shop. * * * i hee you will find a crowd lined up against a counter, with Inger- solls in their hands and several girls romantic the first sounds, and how commonplace the second—a scandal item in tomorrow morning,s newspa- per! If you read the book of sonnets in which the professor has exposed his tortured soul, you may be fur- ther disconcerted, because you won’t find mixed metaphors, nor obscure | addresses of all the Smiths in the| sician who wrecks his art by dissipa- | ees against the greed of the American imperial- | more complicated and fantastic fash-| references to be looked up, nor in- ion—until in the end he gets lost in his labyrinth of words, and forgets to finish his sentence! So I forget to finish this “greatest pcem that has yet been written in America.” you will find is a story so tragic and terrible, told with a drive sc com- pelling, and with beauty so tender, and wisdom so deep, and pity so all- embracing—I won’t say that “Two Lives” is the greatest poem that has yet been written in America, because I remember Emerson’s “Threnody,” and Poe’s “Israfel,” and Whitman’s “Drum Taps,” and Sterling’s “Duan- don,” and a number of others that I shall name; but I will say that it is what I mean by great poetry, dealing with everyday realities of the Amer- ica we live in, and dealing with them popular with his dean, and also with | from a point of view which embraces his wife’s relatives. This friend of|the future as well as the past, and mine was trying to be a poet, and)is free and creative in the highest he married a young girl, and present= | sense of those words. ly made the discovery that the seeds | : of hereditary insanity were develop- (To Be Continued.) ing in her mind. So with enemies at | sen ‘BUILD THE DAILY WORKER! home and abroad, he had a’ painful ; time, and when his wife drank poison| BUY THE DAILY WORKER I saw them. a million people marching with slow measured tread on the cement streets of Time. Instead, I tell you about an Amer- an university teacher, a friend of | mine and teacher of my son. He} dreamed the dream that there might be justice in America, that men might no longer commit mass murder, and rob others of the fruits of toil. A wild and dangerous dream, and a young professor of English who thus steps out of his specialty will be un- I saw them——-straggling and wobbling with great gaps in their ranks, wending their way through the streets of the Present. I saw the projectiles of blue steel hurtling, catapulted into the non-resisting ranks of the procession, / = tearing, ripping, cutting, killing, destroying the life-beat, making the street a scarlet river of blood, flowing hot, cutting its crimson way through the Present into the aeons of the Future. Then——blackness. . . . And now... .. I see fhe Bares looming like a great bright star, shining pallid on the river of blood. I see men rising from the blood, reincarnated from the corpses of the dead, ies life-blood formed the stream that, surging, cut its way through the ages. ‘ I see the men form in lines, and march en-masse, in one great procession, no gaps in their ranks, marching with terrible forte, surging onward, like black smoke surging from a factory chimney into the clear heights of dawn, marching onward to the heights of the Future, where abgreat bright star, looming, casts a clear hard light on the mass, ever moving, moving.... } i | i ‘he travelled with. ‘gathered from his companions that busily engaged receiving damaged tricacies to be disentangled. What| watches and making out slips which are handed to the watch owner. In a few minutes the number on your slip is called out and you are advised that you can get a new watch from the cashier for eighty cents, twenty- five cents, or one dollar and a half, My watch was only four weeks old and I was expected to pay eighty cents for a new one. Which I did not do, but chose to wait ten days while the tin ticker is getting re- paired. [J2SRArS boast of their regard for ; accuracy and make a virtue of fairness. The Nation is one of those publications that boasts of its brand of even-handed justice in dealing with all groups in society. Yet, when * * * lit comes to treating of anything con- cerning the Communist movement The Nation manages to be as poison- ous as the Herald-Tribune. In an un- signed article on William J, Burns, ins The Nation of November 28, the writer says that Burns’ agents per- suaded the Communists “in 1923 to stage their silly secret meeting in the sand-dunes of Northern Michigan” to arrest them. * * * pA only bit of truth in this state- ment is that a Burns’ agent man- aged to get to the convention but neither the \stoolpigeon nor the gov- the convention until a rat by the name of Morrow, a Burns’ agent, who was a member of the Communist | Party in Philadelphia district, got as far as Grand Rapids, with the group It was/there he the convention would be held where another Communist convention was held a few years previously. This location was known to the govern- ment. So when Morrow telephoned Washington from Grand Rapids the federal detectives knew where to ‘go. * * * 'HE Burns’ agents had no more to ~* do with persuading the Communists to hold their convention in Bridge- man in 1922—not 1928 as The Nation had it—than Mr. Lewis Gannett or Oswald Garrison Villard. Had the edi- tors of The Nation taken the trouble to read the testimony given in the Foster and Ruthenberg trials at St. Joseph, Michigan in. the spring of 1923, they would not have an excuse to publish the slander against the Communist movement cloak of an attack on Bums. : Hedley, his courts and his thugs, if | and carry on a daily agitation among © and then tipped off the ‘state police ernment knew about the location of |