The Daily Worker Newspaper, May 8, 1929, Page 6

Jorker Baily 3453 Central Organ of the Communist Party of the U. S. A. Published by the, Comprodaily . 0, Inc: Sunday, at 26-28 Union Sq: , New Yor! ity, N. Telephone Stuyvesant 1696-7-8, Cable: “DAIWORK. SUBSCRIPTION RATES: By Mail (in New York only): $4.50 six months $2.60 three months By Mail (outside of New York): 0 six months s to the Daily w York, N) Publishing Co., Inc... Daily, except j} $8.00 a year 00 three months Worker, 26-28 Union Square, a year and mail all che The Negro, the Army and the Navy. Representative Oscar de Priest, Negro member of Con- gress from the First Illinois District, has nominated two Negro candidates for admission as midshipmen to the Anna- polis Naval Academy, and one as cadet to the West Point Military Academy. It is taken for granted that they will be admitted. Great interest, however, is attached to the use that these Negro youths will make of the knowledge they re- ceive in these educational centers of Wall Street militarism and navalism. Every Negro youth should know how to fight, whether in the army or navy. But he should also know for whom to fight. The Negro masses, in industry and along the country- side, constitute the most oppressed section of the American population. Life is bitter for the foreign-born in the great in- dustries of steel, coal and oil. The degradation suffered by the white workers in the Southern textile mills has been re- vealed in the strike wave sweeping through the Carolinas and Tennessee. But the ruling class presses a heavy heel even harder upon the neck of Negro labor. President Hoover throws the full weight of the republican reaction against the Negro through the re-organization of his party, the main ob- ject being the elimination of the Negro in the South. It should be inconceivable that Negro youths should enter the naval and military academies at Annapolis and West Point to use the knowledge there gained for the further oppression of their race, for the further subjugation of other races in the colonial and semi-colonial countries, in the grip of Yankee imperialism. That would be the most vicious treason to race and class, since at least some of these candidates spring from working class parents. Representative de Priest, a Chicago lawyer, republican in politics, loyal to the party of Hoover and finance capital, has repeatedly arrayed himself against the class interests of both Negro and white working masses. He is a leader among the Negro petty-bourgeoisie that allies itself with the white bour- geoisie against the aspirations of the workers, white and black. He no doubt expects his candidates for Annapolis and West Point to be loyal to his capitalist ideals. But there is the hope that these Negro youths will be loyal instead to their race and class interests, and these interests clash head-on with those of the exploiters of the workers and farmers in the United States. They must unite with the oppressed peoples against whom Wall Street sends its armies and battleships, especially the Filipinos and the Chinese in the Orient. They must stand with the exploited Negroes oppressed by Fire- stone’s millions invested in Liberia rubber. This is the Tenth Anniversary season of the heroic revolt led by Andre Marty in the Black Sea Fleet of French im- perialism, during the attack on the Soviet Union in 1919. That revolt raised its challenge under the red banner of the work- ers’ revolution. Negro midshipmen and cadets, in the army and navy of American imperialism, should have even greater cause for rebellion as Wall Street turns its guns with those of other imperialist powers, against the Negro masses in Africa; against peoples of other races in Asia, against the aspirations of the masses of Mexico, Central and South America. The upward struggle of labor calls for Negro as well as white rebellious spirits in the Dollar’s army and navy, rebels cast in the mold of Marty, loyal to race and class, against the oppressors of mankind. The Power of the Shop Papers. The arrest of three Communists for attempting to hold a May Day meeting at the Otis Elevator Plant in Yonkers, New York, is not an isolated incident in the celebration of labor’s international holiday. There have been May Day ar- rests before. Not many of them have been at factory gates, however. This May Day was especially featured by the fact that the Communist Party went to the factories, to hundreds of thousands of workers on the job, who had not yet learned to observe May Day as their holiday, bringing to them the mes- sage of International May Day, 1929. The bosses at the Otis Elevator Plant, one of the worst open shops of its kind in the land, were aroused at this Communist audacity, that dared to rouse the workers through the distribution of the shop paper, the Otis Workers’ Lift. They called in the po- lice. So did the Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association of Toledo, Ohio, when local Communists issued a manifesto to the workers at the great Overland automobile plant. Po- lice threatened to interfere with the distribution of 25,000 copies of the Daily Worker at the Detroit auto plants, where the issuance of shop papers on a large scale has long been a prominent feature of Communist activity: This May Day season also saw shop papers appear in growing numbers in the Cleveland, Chicago and other districts. Next May Day will witness a Communist Party rooted deeper than ever in the nation’s workshops. This will inevi- tably rouse growing resistance from the exploiters, who have everything to lose by labor’s solidarity in support of the Com- | munist Party. The answer to the police attacks and the many arrests of workers this May Day must be an increas- ing number of shop papers, greater Communist activity in the factories, more shop nuclei for the Party, a growing Party membership undaunted in the face of increasing capi- talist resistance. DAILY WORKER, NEW YORK, WED: ic THROUGH THE BARRIERS slg: DAY, MAY 8, 1929 Marty on French Naval the government, the warships which returned to France one after the other brought detailed news of the Russian revolution and of the mutinies. A new phase was then entered upon. It was no longer a case of revolts, attempts were made to bring about insurrection, Almost everywhere, sailors’ committees | were formed spontaneously which worked more or less secretly and were connected with revolutionary labor groups. The first prepara- jtions for insurrection were made. | Agitation developed with particu- lar strength in Toulon. In spite of the condition of siege being declared in that town, the sailors tried to meet in the Sailors’ Home and, find- ing it closed, held a meeting on an open place in the town. Lacaze, vice-admiral, was obliged to flee from them. On June 11th, a dread-| nought of the name of “Provence” refused to put to sea and to set out to the Black Sea. The following de- mands were raised: All mutineers’ of the Black Sea should be set free! An end should be put to interven- tion with Russia! Immediate demo- bilization!—A _ sailors’ committee tried to transform itself into a re- volutionary committee by endeavor- ing to expand with the help of sol- diers and dock workers. Mounted gendarmes and cavalry took steps to disperse the demonstrators and, above all, to prevent them storming the naval prison. The sailors, being unarmed, were overpowered. Scenes of similar vehemence also occurred in Brest and, to a lesser | degree, in the other ports. On June 19th, the armed cruiser “Voltaire” refused to leave Bizerta and to sail | \for the Black Sea. On other war- ships also, reports received on! events in Russia occasioned great demonstrations, not only in France but also in very remote places, for| instance in Itea (Greece) where the} cruiser “Guichen” was at anchor and | on board the cruiser “D’Estrees” in Vladivostok. Trials of Rebels. The government only succeeded in | checking this mighty movement by | organizing a mass demobilization | |and the rapid disarming of numer- {ous men-of-war, | In the meantime, the trials of the | mutineers had begun on June 1ith! |in Constantinople and Cattaro| | against the mutineers of the “Pro- tet” and of the “Waldeck-Rousseau.” |The response was such, that the| |first trial had to be postponed to | July 4th and that the government, | in order to proceed with the other | trials, had to wait until demobiliza- | tion was sufficiently advanced (Sep- | tember). Many of the accused show- |ed great firmness of character dur- | ing the trials. | Characteristic Features of Revolt. | Two specially characteristic fea- ‘tuers of the revolt can be clearly | distinguished: , | 1—The overwhelming majority of | | the soldiers and sailors was still under democratic influence. This be- came particularly evident in the first two phases of the revolt. The sailors and soldiers revolted above all be- cause they were indignant at war | being carried on against Russia, al- | though “France was not at war” | with that country, war being there- | fore “against the constitution.” | These were the chief arguments | which the mutineers used in their defense before the court martial. | Some of them also pointed out that the French revolution of 1789 had proclaimed the right to insurrection in cases of infringement of the con- stitution. Only a small number of the lead- | (This is the second and concluding installment of Marty’s article lon the tenth anniversary of.the Black Sea revolt, of which Marty was |the leader, He is now again in prison for his fight against imper- ialist war, and the proletariat is again fighting to wrest him from |the clutches of his jailers.) | ing men possessed real class con-!strations in common with the work- sciousness. In the measure, how-/ers, threats that cannonades ever, as the mutiny movement devel-| would be directed against the au- oped, this class consciousness spread) thorities, attempts to set free po- further and further among the| litical prisoners, ete. This class masses. Many sailors showed so|movement was choked off by de- much intrepedity, energy and clod-| mobilization and long-period bloodedness that they would have | loughs which were followed by num- succeeded in leading the whole fleet | erous arrests. into a revolutionary fight had they| The Black Sea revolt’ thus shows been inspired by Lenin’s lucid the-| ideologically a far-reaching analogy ory. Their ideology however was} to the military mutinies in Russia confused, many of them tried to/ in 1905, especially to the rising of “convince” the officers, they accept-| the Black Sea fleet in Sebastopol ed their demobilization in order later | on November 11th. to be arrested as ringleaders on the| 2.—The revolt of the Black Sea first occasion which offered itself, | fleet was a mass movement. Individ- The fact that the sailors joined | ual refusals to orders occurred very in the fight inspired the whole na-| seldom, as it had become clear that tion with intensified acrimony. The| individual action was absurd. The crews of the “Protet” and of the| agitators, the ringleaders, directed “Waldeck-Rousseau” were at a loss | all their efforts towards achieving a whether to return to France or enter | collective movement. Neither, with the port of Odessa, i.e., join the re-| the exception of a single case, that volution. In the period of 20th to|of the armored cruiser “Diderof,” 22nd of April, the crew on board|did acts of sabotage occur. It is the warship “France” was prepared| therefore a gross forgery of facts to reply to any attempt to bring] to represent the mutinies as acts of colonial troops on board by non | one person or of several individual fire. The crew was in possession of | persons. the guns and ammunition; they turn-| What was lacking, was both a ed the muzzles of their 305 milli-| clear ideology and organization. Al- meter guns on an English armored| most all the revolutionary soldiers cruiser which threatened them.| and sailors were under the influence Nevertheless they did not comply | of the socialist minority, whose ten- with the slogan of the Russian} dency found expression in the pa- workers calling upon them to arm| per “The Wave.” This newspaper themselves and to fire on headquar- | deviated from Leninism in essential ters. On the contrary, a large num-j points, but it nevertheless exercised fur-] By Fred Ellis Mutiny | was no harmonious guidance and no| | connection between the separate} groups. On the “Waldeck-Rousseau” alone an organization existed which included over the half of the crew} and had been formed with a View to economic demands. This was the “Brotherhood of the Mariners” from whose midst a secret committee had| jarisen. This also explains how it| came about that the revolt broke out on the id cruiser only four} days after I had been confined there. | This absence of organization and of connection between the revolu-| | tionary elements of the fleet made it possible for the government to| shatter easily a movement of such} extent. The Consequences. ber of them preached peace, caution- ing against “unnecessary deeds of violence” “as the right was on our side.” The third phase is characterized by an undeniable class movement: mass meetings, attempts to proceed in unison with the workers, demon- a propelling influence; its slogans were exactly followed in the mutiny. On the other hand, no real or- ganization existed; this could of course only have been illegal. Revo- lutionary groups existed, it is true, had no general plan of action, there on the individual warships, but they | May Day--1929 By C. E. Groans are not always groans. They change to shrapnel-thunder. They turn to furious epics of revolt, Telling black stories Of starvation, misery, want. Bullets of revenge are proclamations: “We are bidding good-bye to slavery.” See the closed shutters on white palaces, Barricades in Berlin, ; Labor marching in a thousand cities, Gastonia Elizabethton, New York, Paris, London, Tokio, Moscow Tell stories - Sing epics of revolt. Sing the words Hammer Sickle Do you see a thousand million workers listening ? Groans turn to curses. Shrapnel-thunder is the echo of groans, The cry of revolt—subdued, struggling, Growing, Growing, Finally bursts Into shrapnel-thunder on the barricades of Berlin. * We listen, Red Fighters, we heed. We join in the song. ‘|ranean fleet against the Morocco 1.—French imperialism was forced | to relax the grasp with which it was throttling the October revolution. | It could not set its own troops! lagainst the Russian revolution and had to resort to mercenaries, the | | Wrangels, Denikins and their gang. | Only in this way was it in a posi- | tion to continue its work in favor of | |international capitalism. These | White Guardist troops, however, were by no means a match for the} |Red Army. | This then is a decisive result of the Black Sea revolt. In this way | the work and peasants of France gave very active support to the Oc- ‘tober revolution. They rendered an extremely valuable service to their brothers who were engaged in a mor- tal combat for power, in that they |disabled the powerful military ap- |paratus of France. 2.—The Black Sea revolt made the October revolution known among broad strata of the French popula-| tion, The court martials of the army |and navy passed sentences of many hundreds of years imprisonment for mutiny. As early as at the end of 1919, a group of ex-sailors formed a “Committee for the Defense of the Sailors” in Paris, which engi- neered a powerful campaign of agi- tation. From 1922 onwards, the Communist Party took the lead in this campaign and imparted to it so much impetus that the government was finally compelled to release one mutineer after the other from prison. (Since the summer of 1923). Concrete Success of Anti-War Work. 3.—The Black Sea revolt was a concrete example proving that it is possible to check an imperialist war or at least to delay it. In France, where anti-militarism is extremely popular among broad strata of the workers and peasants, the revolt was a concrete example of how it is possible to conduct the various currents of anti-militarism into one revolutionary. chanvel. The workers and peasants can learn from it how it is possible, by combining mass movements with the activity of mo- bilized soldiers, to prevent an offen- sive war against the Soviet Union and, in certain circumstances, to turn it into civil war against the bour- geoisie of their own country. 4.—The revolt of the Black Sea fleet created a really revolutionary movement in the French navy. The eleven demonstrations which took place in 1925 in the Mediter- war, the revolts on July 15th and 16th, and on August 8th, 1927 in the military prison of Toulon, in which many sailors were imprisoned on account of their political attitude —these and other events bear wit- ness to the fact that the revolution- ary spirit, the spirit of Kronstadt is living and will continue to live in the hearts of the young proletarian sailors. Jeanne Labourbe and the other proletarian heroes who fell in Odessa and Sebastopol, did not sac- rifice their lives in vain, —_j EMENT 2.2070) Cc GLADKOV Translated by A. S. Arthur and C. Ashleigh a All Rights Reserved—International Publishers, N Gleb Chumalov, Communist Red Army commander, and former mechanic in the great cement factory, returns home after 2 yoars at the front, to find his wife, Dasha, an active Communist Party mem- ber, independent and self-reliant, instead of the clinging-vine he had left. His friends, Savchuk, and his wife, Motia, he finds fighting day and night in bitter hopelessness. The cement works is half-wrecked, with every movable stolen. Only the engine-room, in charge of his old friend, engineer Brynza, is in perfect shape, and the two swear to get the factory working again. Around the works, the, men loiter and quarrel. In the factory committee room, a woman is raising hell with the committce for the state of abandon that has overtaken cverything. ILEB got up to the table at last, saluted, and began to laugh. “How are you, lads? It’s a long time since we met. I’ve got back at last, but there’s no factory here now; it’s a regular slaughter-house. What a hell of a mess you’ve made out of the works, my friends! You ought all to be shot, my dear Comrades.” Gromada sprang up, knocking his chair over. “Gleb, dear old Comrade! Don’t you see who it is, you old hump- back? It’s Gleb Chumalov, our Gleb! Once dead and now living! Look at him, Loshak.” Like a black idol, Loshak remained seated, fixing on Gleb the same sad gaze with which he regarded day after day the workmen, the fat Avdotia, all the hurly-burly of the crew, bubbling from morning to night, in thé Factory Committee’s office. “Good, so I see, So you have reported here: you were a mechanic, and then went as a soldier. That’s all in our favor. Now listen, soldier, you must help get things straight. You see how our workers are going to seed. You see what’s become of the works. And as for the repair shop, they’re just turning out pipe-lighters there. A hell of a situation.” ae ae | Suen ey he stretched his abnormally long and heavy hand across the table to Gleb. Somehow it seemed strange to Gleb that this immense hand belonged to Loshak. Workmen from the various shops came up and gazed in amaze-| ment at Gleb, as though he were a risen corpse. They looked in astonish-| ment at each other, murmuring their surprise, and jostled each other in| order to seize him by the hands. Then suddenly it was still, except for the deep sighing breath of the men. The confusion and hubbub had disappeared with Mitka and Avdotia, “Well, Comrade Chumalov! We've got a job for you now, all right! You see how it is.... We've chased the masters away.... And now look how it is: everything’s disappearing. One pinches the fittings, an- other takes copper, and another steals belts. We call ourselves the masters now—it looks like it!” From whom came these plaints? It was hard to tell: it was indeed a chorus of protest; and it seemed to each that he alone complained. ee ae LEB gazed at the crew, and cheerfully nodded his helmeted head. “Ha! coopers, smiths, electricians, mechanics—I see we're all here, brothers!” That little meagre man, Gromada, came through the crowd carry- ing a chair, which he noisily set down. “Let’s have room, Comrades! Give place to our Comrade Chuma- lov. He’s our warrior from the Red Army and, as he’s also a worker! in our factory, we must make the most use of him on every occasion. If Comrade Chumalov hadn’t landed in the Red Army, you must all know, after serving with the Greens,! there would have been a good many now who wouldn’t haye taken the step of joining the C.P.R.? See, comrades, that’s exactly what Comrade Chumalov means to us.” Again yoices from among the workers: “So you're living, brother? . . . That’s good. . . . Enjoy yourself a bit now you’re here.. .. What are you going to do here?... Tobacco—we’ll look after that. ... The factory’s hopeless—dead and finished.” ee ie Bet Gromada was again waving his bony arms and shouting in his piercing, wheezy voice. “Comrades, our class fights to control the means of production, but it’s a shame that we have such a bent for demagogy. We've been} victorious on all fronts and liquidated everything; can’t we do any- thing when it comes to productive work?” Gleb was silent. He looked at the pale, wasted faces of the work- men, at the dying Gromada, that small man whose name signified business, at Loshak, who was bent down as though under the weight of his angular stony head. Sitting there, silent and weary, he felt! that his life was about to take a new path. Everything seemed clear and simple; everything was going on as usual. And yet, deep down in him, moved a dim sadness, His wife, Dasha, who had passed by him, strange and distant wounding him to the heart... the empty house ... the empty factory with its dusty cobwebs ... all was strange to him. The army, whic was so dear to him. « “Yes, friends, your life here is not pleasant. How could you—i the devil’s name—have brought everything to such hideous ruin? W were fighting over there, getting killed, shedding our blood... buf what were you doing here, brothers? What were your fighting for? The factory looks a beauty now, doesn’t it? And what are you doin, now? Have you all lost your senses? What have you been doin here?” * * @ ((esete wished to say something, but could not master the big! words, The workmen also wished to cry out, each louder than the other, but their sHouts were still-born, perishing in sighs. And only] one of them was heard, right at the back, unseen, crying with a hoarse laugh: “And if we had all stuck in the factory, damn you, we’d have died like flies. Is the devil himself in this factory?” Gleb ground his teeth, and struck his knee with his clenched fist. “Well, and what if you had died! You might have gone west, bu’ the factory would still be running!” “Ha, we've heard that old song before. You'd better go and te! them about it who told us the tale. Tell them how they’ve forgotte1 all about us now; be damned to them!” From the depths of his hump rumbled Loshak’s bass voice. “You've come back to the factory—that is good, Gleb, you'll bi starting work now. We'll have to get things put to rights. That’ good!” With eyes burning with enthusiasm, Gromada gazed at Gleb, seek: ing to use big words beyond his power. Gleb took off his helmet and placed it on the table in front Loshak, “I returned home; and my wife passed by me without stopping,’ Nowadays one doesn’t recognize one’s own wife at the first glan There are wood-lice in my house, and no bread. Write me out a fo card, Loshak, like a pal.” FABDLY had Gleb uttered these words than the laughter of the work men crashed through the silence. “Ha, he! he’s a great speaker, but his belly’s empty. Just th same as us. You should have started with this question. Come on! boys! A brother has come to us. He’s living at the same address we are—his stomach’s empty.” “Comrades: Comrade Chumalov is one of us. He is ours, « + He’s been in the battles . . . er, and so on, and so on.” “Well, what about it! The old belly’s still got to be filled. go home, brothers.” y Gleb stood up and put on his helmet, “Brothers! .. .” Let't ‘ (TO BE CONTINUED.) <« , 1Peasant troops which acted independently during the Civil Ware, erally, but not invariably, supported the Red Army.—Ti 2Communist Party of Russia.—rr,