The Daily Worker Newspaper, January 9, 1935, Page 5

\ | { | DAH.Y WORKER, NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 9, 1993 } Page 5 By MICHAEL GOLD ASHINGTON, Jan. 6.—Today the dele- gates at this Congress have been cheer- ing. Coming from 36 states, their occupa- tions as varied as life itself, these cowboys and college professors, miners, farmers and newspapermen, have been fused in the heat of & common idea. There are two slogans that always arouse them. ‘These words are Unemployment Insurance and the United. Front. Earl Browder, in a remarkable speech to this remarkable Congress for Unemployment and Social Insurance, received an amazing ovation. The great majority at this Congress are not Communists. But | they cheered the secretary of the Communist Party | because he had sensed what was deep in their hearts, and expressed it clearly and boldly. Comrade Browder followed on the platform Dr. Broadus Mitchell, of Johns Hopkins University, who was candidate for Governor of Maryland on the Socialist ticket. Norman Thomas had sent a mes- sage, excusing himself for not appearing, but ap- proving of the Congress. Dr. Mitchell went beyond this, and said that he was for the united front everywhere, and at all times. . And Earl Browder answered him, with wise and fraternal words, saying that the united front was virtually necessary for the American working class, and that the Communist Party would never rest until it had been created. Browder also replied to Wiliam Green, who had attacked the Workers’ Unemployment Bill on the grounds that it was a Communist plan, and that it was unconstitutional. Yes, the Communist. Party had first worked out this bill and popularized it, said Browder, but that was not an argument against the bill, but a recom- mendation for the Communist Party, “for which we thank Mr. Green most Kindly, even though his intentions were not friendly.” * * * United Front in Action on { HERE are 54 Socialist Party members at this Congress. They had held a caucus at which they passed a strong resolution pledging themselves to fight for the Unemployment Insurance Bill against every reactionary leader. Among these delegates are two state secretaries of the Socialist Party, and several others who are members of their state executive committees. A Negro who is a southern member of the United Textile Workers, and who had been threatened with expulsion by the reactionary leaders if he came to this Congress, arose on the floor of the convention, and said: “Nobody, not Bill Green or the devil himself, can stop me from coming to @ convention that will help the Negro masses of the South.” Delegate Weeks, a white textile worker, followed him and said: “We in Tennessee haye our own Dillinger and Public Enemy Number One. It is named Starvation. The officials help this enemy of ours. The Department of Justice also harbors and encourages him. But we workers mean to run him down, him and his friends, and finish him off forever. If this is Communism, make the most of it.” Paul Rasmussen, an active leader in the Un- employed Workers’ Alliance of Chicago, which has 235 locals, is another Socialist who pledged him- self and the groups that had sent him to a united front. Dr. Harry Ward, of Union Theological Seminary, spoke for the League Against War and Fascism, of which he is head. Don Henderson and Lem Harris described the plight of the American farmers, and the way the relief administration and the government loan corporations are being used against them. Twenty-one war veterans, representing almost a dozen organizations, including an American Legion post in Brooklyn, are present at this Congress. Through their spokesman, Harold Hickerson, they proclaimed this Unemployment Insurance Bill the moczt important issue before America today, and pledged to fight for it along with their own bonus, * * School in Working Class Politics ‘HERE were many other speakers, It is impossible to quote them in full. These men and women come out of the ranks of the people, and are therefore better informed on what is going on than the rival Wall Street congress on Capitol Hill. A Congress like this is a great school where an intensive and realistic course in working class poli- tics is seared unforgettably into several thousand rugged minds. How well the workers know this. What sacrifices some of them have made to come here. the president of the textile union at Nashua, N. H., have been expelled from their union for it by the | reactionary leaders. Some, like the young delegate from an unem- ployed council in California, have travelled here by the box-car route, braving the ice, the jails, the danger. A group of Illinois farmers raffled off their pigs and calves to nay their expenses here. An unem- ployed group 20 miles outside of Cleveland got their local relief authorities to endorse the bill, and also to pay the expenses of the delegates here. Learning Fast HE== is an interesting anecdote: Four delegates from New Mexico came here in a car. One is a Negro miner, another is a son of Mexican parents but is completely American; two native born white delegates in the car jim-crowed these two all the way up. At Wheeling, W. Va., the car broke down. The two native-born delegates continued by box-car. The Negro and the Latin-American came by rais- ing their expenses by agitation. They made speeches in poolrooms and on street corners, explaining the Unemployment Insurance Bill, and taking up con- tributions. The two native-born delegates are here, but still fight shy of their darker-skinned brothers, who are Just as broke and as unemployed and as rebellious as themselves. I am waiting till the end of the Congress to question the two backward New Mexi- cans, and to see what they learned at this Congress, where Negro and white mingle in perfect equality. Another unusual figure at this Congress is Nels Christensen of South Carolina. He is a member of the Democratic Party, and served as State Sen- ator for that party for about 20 years. He is at the Congress representing an unemployed league. And this is what the ex-senator says, now that he has learned the bitter lessons of the crisis: “Russia is going ahead to a new life under its Soviets, Germany is sinking down to hell with its Fascism, and here in the United States we can feel hopeful as we see the birth of a real United Front of the works i * * aS Some, like | G6ET| “HOUSt HE ONLY ONE AN AMAZING DISCOVERY, Seeing Daylight! maay! Nouwe SEEN MARRIEO 6 HE WORLD'S BiIacEST SarHero ALLTHESE. errs / ALL WoRKERS BELONG 6 A:RERL” > FIGHTING UNION / and Shop By DAVID RAMSEY NOTE ON BACTERIAL WARFARE } | | With war preparations being pushed by the government, more | precautions are being taken to keep | Potential war secrets from becoming | | generally known. Last fall there| | Was a great hullabaloo when a/ chemist inadvertently let slip that | he had discovered a new and deadly | poison gas, Such mistakes are be- ing avoided, but now and then a scientific paper discloses a discovery | | which has important military uses. | | At the recent meeting of the | American Association for the Ad- vancement of Science Dr. Alden F. | Roe of the George Washington | | School of Medicine reported that he had found a way of keeping | | dried stocks of bacteria alive. He| | described the technique of drying out bacterial types and how it can _be applied to species of bacteria | that thrive only when they are not | | exposed to air. | | The bacteria are grown in suit- | able media until there is a consid- | erable quantity. Then they are con- | | centrated with a centrifuge. The} | concentrated suspension of bacte- | |ria is transferred to strips of filter | paper, and dried under vacuum. | | The strips are transferred into ster- | ile glass tubes, the air exhausted | and the tubes sealed until the bac- | teria are needed for experimental | | purposes. Bacteria of several types | |have been kept alive and ready | |to resume growth after a year in| the vacuum-tube storage. The ap- plication of this method to bacilli | bombs makes the latter a deadly | weapon in the next war. REVOLUTIONIZING POWER PRODUCTION, TRANSMISSION A revolution in the production | | and transmission of electricity has | been in the making for some years. | | Like other revolutions in technique | it is held up by vested interests whose investments it threatens. | In the new method developed by Dr. R. J. Van de Graaf of the Mas- | | | | sachusetts Institute of Technology, electricity is generated by enormous disks spinning in vacuum, and is “piped” for long distances along vacuum-surrounded rods, This would enable high voltages to be transmitted from hydro-electric sta- tions, or stations built in the heart of the oil and coal fields, to in-| dustrial plants and cities without | the losses in current or expense in- | volved with present methods. The latter are limited to a range of 250 | miles, because of high costs. The new method will transmit currents | over practically unlimited distances. What stands in the way of this! revolution in electrical technology | are lack of funds to develop the new | scheme to the stage of industrial application. And even then there) would be no wide-spread applica- tion, since the capital investments | of the power trust are involved. AN ELECTRIC SIEVE Professor L. G. Hector of the Uni- | versity of Buffalo uses an electrical | | “sieve” to strain out crooners’ voices from radio programs, and | then employs the carrier radio waves to determine the electric | strength of the air. He blocks out | all the voices and musical parts of a program with electric filters. What is left is the silent accurate carrier wave. With these waves Pro- | fessor Hector measures the dielec- tric (insulating) strength of air and other substances to ten times the | former accuracy. TUNING IN 00-WEAF—Republican Policies in Con- bike Wijrese- Representative Hamilton Fish of New York ‘WOR—Sports Resume—Stan Lomax WJZ—Amos ’n’ Andy—Sketch WABO—Myrt and Marge—Sketeh :15-WEAF—Pickens Sisters Trio WOR—Lum and Abner—Sketch WJZ—Plantation Echoes WABC—Just Plain Bill—Sketch 7:30-WEAF—Gould and Shefter, Piano WOR—Harry Stockwell, Baritone ‘WJZ—Red Davis—Sketch WABC—The O'Neills—Sketch 7:48-WEAF—Unele Ezra Sketch WOR—Levitow Orch. ‘WJZ—Dangerous Paradise—Sketch WABC—Boake Carter, Commentator 8:00-WEAF—Play, Connie Goes Home, with Mary Pickford, Actress —Sketch Peggy Flynn, Quartet. Coleman Orch.; Donald Novis, ‘Tenor ‘WABC—Diane—Musical Comedy 8:15-WABC—Edwin C. Hill, Commentator 8:30-WEAF—Wayne King Orch. WOR—Variety Musicale ‘W3Z—Lanny Ross, Tenor; Orch.; Frances Maddux, Songs WABC—Everett Marshall, Baritone; Elizabeth Lennox, Contralto; Mixed Chorus; Arden Orch. 9:00-WEAF—Fred Allen, Comedian; James Melton, Tenor; Hayton Orel WOR—Hillbilly Music ‘WJZ—20,000 Years in Sing Sing— Sketch, with Warden Lawes ‘WABC—Kostelanetz Orch.; Mixed Chorus 9:30-WOR—Sandra Swenska, Soprano ‘WJZ—John McCormack, Tenor; Con- cert Orch. ‘WABC—George Burns and Gracie Allen, Comedians Salter WOR—Literary Justice—Sketch WJZ—Mischa Levitski, Piano WABC—Broadcast To and From Byrd Expedition 10:15-WOR—Current Events—H. E. Read WJZ—Beauty—Mme. Sylvia 10:30-WEAF—One Man's Samily—Sketch WOR--Variety Musicale WJZ—Denny Orch.; Harry Richman, Songs WABC—Mary Fastman, Soprano; Evan Evans, Baritone | Laboratory Two Letters From Prisoners In Fascist Austria Provincial Prison ST a short and true descrip- tion of the last few weeks: | Several days after the arrival in|sack-mattress and cover, but gen- After arriving in.... we were taken to the gendarmes. From there to @ cellar which had no ventilation, In utter darkness gasping for air, in a cell hardly measuring six square metres, with damp walls and &@ wet cold earth floor—86 men | were forced to stay. Schutzcorps men frequently came and declared as follows: ‘Josef Lang (the execu- tioner—Ed.) is already waiting for you,’ ‘Whoever moves, will get a hand-grenade thrown at him,’ etc, “After three days, 20 men, myself included, were taken as we were in- formed ‘to the gallows.’ We were forced to run the gauntlet on the stairs. But after ten minutes we were back again in the cellar, which in the meantime had been cleared of the remaining prisoners. Then we were told ‘Only the death candidates remain here.’ Soldiers came, and prepared their rifles to | Shoot—it was apparently now all up with us. Thus they tortured us. This game needed strong nerves. By the last cross-examination I could not walk, much less speak. Death would have been a deliver- ance to me. “Now I am in the district court | prison . . . we are 20 men in one cell, in which formerly six men | were kept . . . Excuse my hand- writing, I can not write any better, as I am feeling very bad... . “R” ee * From the Rossauerlaende Police Prison | “HE ‘boarders of the State Po- lice’ have to get up at 5 o'clock in the morning, otherwise the long The Daily Worker is printing serially the extremely valuable and popular booklet by R. Palme Dutt, “Life and Teachings of V. I. Lenin,” published by Interna- | tional Publishers. January 21 will be the eleventh anniversary of the death of Lenin. During these ten years the teach- ings of Lenin have spread to ever wider sections of the globe, inspir- ing the workers and oppressed to greater assaults on capitalism. The Daily Worker considers it a great service to its readers to be able to present this clear and ex- cellent portrayal of the life and | teachings of the great leader of | the working class, V. I. Lenin. CHAPTER It. The Life of Lenin Vv. ‘HE first Russian Revolution of 1905 brought all the questions of theory and tactics to the test of practice, and laid bare the future lines of 1917. Here was demonstrated the power of the mass struggle of the workers and peasants as the force shaking tsarism and bringing it to its knees; the role of the class- conscious workers and their party organization as the leader in the fight; and the hesitating and finally counter-revolutionary role of the liberal bourgeoisie passing over at the critical moment to compromise with tsarism, : A flood of light was thrown on the role of the strike movement, developing to the political general strike, and to the armed rising; this new experience of the forms and methods of struggle aroused pas- sionate controversy and a new mili- tant awakening throughout interna- tional social-democracy. The foremost theorists of interna- tional social-democracy, such as Kautsky, who then still fought for the principles of revolutionary Marx- ism, recognized at that time the leadership of the international so- cialist revolution was passing to the Russian proletariat. The first So- viets, or Councils of Workers’ Dele- gates, the future organs of the work- ers’ power, grew up in the struggle of 1905.in Petersburg, Moscow and other centers. * . 8 ‘HE opposing tactics of Bolshevism | and Menshevism were further demonstrated in the 1905 Revolution. The Mensheviks saw the task of the workers’ struggle to exert pressure on and drive forward the bourgeoi- sie as the leadership of the reyolu- tion, But the Bolsheviks sought to press forward the independent lead- ing role of the proletariat, developed the political character of the strike movement, worked out a new agra- rian program to draw the peasants’ struggle for land into the general political struggle by the organiza- tion of peasants’ committees to di- vide the land, and carried forward the mass struggle to the highest point in the December armed rising in Moscow, which was initiated under the ausrices of the Moscow Soviet and led by the Bolsheviks, wis From a Schutzbunder in a | day would seem too short. At 7| plank beds are set up again, and o'clock we are given black coffee with saccharine. At 12 o'clock we get @ piece of bread. Not until beter does one get some porridge | made of barley, rice or lentils. At 4 o'clock we again receive a slice of bread and at 5 o'clock in the eve-| |ning—some soup. There are no | Spoons to eat with. Eight days after | arrival in prison one receives an additional piece of bread and some kind of porridge with the evening up. During the first fourteen days |one is completely cut off from the | outside world,—not allowed to write, or buy anything, or see any visitors, | because in the first days one is not @ prisoner but is only ‘detained.’ No complaints are acted upon. | When a prisoner finally comes be- |fore the investigators with the | thought that at last he will learn jof the reason for the ‘detention,’ the answer is generally ‘That is | confidential’ | “If a prisoner has the ‘luck’ to | get out of the solitary confinement cell, he is transferred to the so- called ‘common’ room where there | morning, wash, and clean up in a very great hurry. The inmates of one room after the other hurry to |® washing stand with four water |are 10 to 20 or more prisoners | crowded together, “As already mentioned above, we have to get up at 5 o'clock in the |taps. At the beginning there were |also small pieces of soap there, but later these ;some of the prisoners began to bring their own soap with them. A sort of huge sheet hung over a | roller acts as a towel for 100 per- | Sons. The straw sacks are dragged | |out and piled up in the corridor | and the plank beds are stacked one above the other in the room. | “At 5 o'clock in the evening the | Life and Teachings of Lenin By R. PALME DUTT {and which held the Tsar’s troops | \for ten days. The Mensheviks deplored the armed rising, which was crushed | jin blood, as inopportune and a mis- | take. Lenin criticized the errors in| tactics which were made, but saw | jin the armed rising “the greatest historical achievement of the Rus- | sian Revolution” and the signpost to future victory. “, .. Nothing could be more short - sighted than Piekhanov’s | view, which is adopted by all the | opportunists, that the strike was | inopportune and should not have | been started and that they “should not have taken up arms.” On the | contrary, they should have taken to arms more resolutely, energeti- | cally and aggressively, it should | have been explained to the masses that peaceful strikes by them- selves were useless, and that fear- less and ruthless armed fighting | was required. ...To conceal from | the masses the necessity tor a desperate, sanguinary, extermin- ating war as the immediate task of ruture revolutionary action— means to deceive both ourselves and the pecple.” (V. I. Lenin, “The Lessons of the Moscow Up- rising,” in “The Revolution of 1905” (Little Lenin Library, Vol. 6, pp. 30-36.) Tsarism was for the moment vic- torious. The finance-capital of “democratic” Britain and France | came to the rescue of reactionary | tsarism, and bolstered it up with} enormous loans, without which it) would have undoubtedly fallen. | Bloody reaction set in. Lenin, who had returned to Russia in 1905 to lead the struggle on the spot, from the conditions of illegality, had to return to emigration in 1907. URING the period of reaction different tactics had to be pur- sued, of patient, persistent mass work, utilizing every smallest pos- sibility. Many lost heart and dropped out. The Bolsheviks had lost most heavily in sacrifices, both of those killed and of those im- | prisoned. In the period of reaction | the Mensheviks came to the front; they declared that there was no | these, although in reality only fall-| |no less instructive than the early |correct fight of the 1905 Revolu- | | tion. During these years, Bolshe- | Political | | the straw sacks and covers are brought in. Now, everyone would like to have his own particular erally everybody gets hold of a dif- ferent one every day. The police have not thought how disgusting this is, and that in this manner illness is easily spread. There is only one cup for all the inmates of one room, Every soldier has his own plate in his kitbag but here the plates are given out anew at |every meal (you get the first at |hand) and then collected again afterwards. ere ae “THE plague of bugs is indescrib- | able. The answer to our com- | plaints is: ‘You yourselves brought the bugs!’ Once some kind of sani- tary inspector came and established | with disapproval that there were [races of bugs—but this did not harm the bugs in the least. “The ‘treatment’ of invalids is | conducted in the following manner: |If you are ill from the navel up- wards you are given aspirin, if you jare ill anywhere from the navel | downwards you are given castor-oil. | “All those who come here from the Supreme Court prison declare: |‘I’d ten times rather be in the Su- preme Court prison than in this hole here.’ Here everything is done | according to the mood of the police. | | For weeks on end the prisoners are | disappeared because | deprived of their walk; once in | three weeks one gets a bath; and| |reading, smoking and writing is prohibited. “But still we do not lose courage. We know that the Red Aid is at work! The bourgeoisie and their police cannot intimidate us. We remain what we were:—Fighters | for liberation of the proletariat! longer scope for revolutionary ac- tivity, that it was necessary to) “liquidate” the illegal revolutionary | Party, and concentrate instead on | building legal trade unions and a) | legal workers’ party, with a limited | Program of immediate demands for | concessions. At the same time Lenin had to combat “left” passive sectarian ten- dencies among some of the Bolshe- | viks (Otsovism, as this tendency was called), who proposed to boycott the reactionary Third Duma, thus show- | ing that they did not understand the necessity in a period of reac- tion to utilize every smallest legal Possibility alongside illegal work. Others again became lost in philo- sophical speculation, following the latest fashionable tendencies of | bourgeois thought, and seeking to | “correct” the “antiquated” notions | of Marx and Engels in the light of | ing into the oldest bourgeois falla- cies. Lenin, in the midst of the tasks of political leadership, saw the dan- | ger also of these tendencies, and | dealt fully with the philosophical | questions raised in his book, “Ma- terialism and Empirio - Criticism” (Collected Works, Vol. XIII, Inter- national Publishers, 1908), which remains the indispensable guide for assisting all today who wish to understand the outlook of dialec- | tical materialism. . [= Jeadershtp of Lenin in the years of reaction, 1907-1911, and | the combined fight against “liquid- | ationist” and Otsovist tendencies, is | years of building the party or the vism, in place of being wiped out by the reaction, became deeply | rooted in the working class and | established itself as the leader of | the majority of the industrial work- ers. The leader of Menshevism, T. Dan, had later to write of this period in the official party history of Menshevism: “Whilst the Bolshevik section of the party transformed itself into a battle-phalanx, held together by iron discipline and cohesive guid- ing resolution, the ranks of the Menshevik section were ever more | seriously disorganized by dissen- sion and apathy.” (T. Dan, “Social | Democracy in Russia after 1908"; Appendix to Martov’s “History of | Russian Social-Democracy,” Berlin, 1926.) The fruits of this tenacious fight and mass work were revealed when @ new rising wave of struggle began in 1911 with the Bolsheviks in in- disputable leadership. The split of) the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks was now completed into two parties, with the Bolshevik Congress of January, 1912. The Mensheviks had seven deputies in the Duma, from non- proletarian districts with only 214,- 000 workers, All the industrial dis- | tricts, with a total of 1,008,000 work- | ers, returned Bolshevik deputies. numbering six. (To be continued) |the grand sweep is the thing—the| atistied that the more a worker produces in the inthe World of Music Stokowski and His Trustees By CARL SANDS 'HE long-heralded break between Stokowski and the Trustees of the Philadelphia Orchestra burst | into the news a few weeks ago with the publication of his letter of “resignation.” There can be no doubt that, with the exception of a very small though disproportion- ately influential group of extreme conservatives, the noted conductor has the public on his side. Hence the rumors of his return, under conditions dictated by him, in 1936. It is all most polite and diplomatic; but out. of it has emerged the first serious public discussion of the basic social nature of the func- tions of a symphony orchestra in this country. Stokowski is a typical bourgeois rebel. He has careened from New Thoughtism and Yoga to electrical circuits and the Bell Telephone Laboratories with a catholicity of taste and a broadness of view unique in an orchestral conductor though familiar enough among liberal liter- ary critics and newspaper colum- nists. His pushing of leftist ten- | dencies in bourgeois art music is given as one of the most serious reasons for the antagonism of his administration committee. His playing of The International at concerts in Philadelphia, coupled with his: desire to take his orches- tra to the Soviet Union, is undoubt- edly another. The severity of the depression period underlies it all. | Up to now, boards of trustees and | | billionaire patrons have ruled opera and symphony organizations. Even the “Ladies’ Auxiliaries” have some- times decided the fates of noted composers, conductors and perform- ers, The decision of so popular a favorite as Stokowski to seek the approval of the masses as against that of the few self-appointed | vealthy patrons of his old commit- | tee, should be supported vigorously by all class-conscious workers who are interested in music. He has a far bigger fight on his hands when | he bucks up in earnest with the R.C.A., as he will undoubtedly do | if his plans for radio work progress | according to his outline. He will go far if he has the support of the masses of music-lovers. | Bruno Walter and the | Philharmonic ILINDFOLD the average concert- | goer who prates so discerningly about the strong and weak points of various conductors, and he could not tell apart Toscanini and the | third assistant kapellmeister of a second-rate German opera house, provided they both have a fine in- strument in the form of a trained orchestra to play upon. Even ex- perienced musicians often have to rely upon known tricks of cele- brated leaders in order to distinguish between them. | The job of orchestral conductor is exceedingly complex. The au- dience sees and hears only a small part of it. Some men rehearse best, some are best as personnel-manager, program-maker, trustee-manipula- | tor, publicity-man, etc. But when | all this is tended to there remains the final test—can he conduct the audience? Over half the girations| of conductors are directed to those behind thein—their audience. All orchestral players know tais and most of them pay no attention to} the pantomine. But the audience} is innocent of it and falls regularly | for two things: astute publicity and | prima donna baton-waving. | Bruno Walter is one of the most | admired conductors. Not least on account of his treatment by the} Nazi culture-hounds. If any readers | of the Daily Worker would like to engage in so precise and hair-split- ting a pastime as the improvement of their critique of the conducting | of orchestras, an instructive example | can be found in the case of Walter's work with the Philharmonic. Here is a body of men who can) so perfectly react to the peculiar capacities of their leader that al- most opposite styles of performance | of one and the same work can be| given. For instance, under Tosca- nini such precision of execution can | be obtained that every note in a passage, even at terrifying speeds, | can be distinctly heard, although a | dozen or two men are synchronized | | in it. It is a mechanism that almost | rivals the machine. But with Wal- | ter, who belongs to a school revolt- ing from an excess of precisionism, | individual notes are lost in it. Another detail is the “attack.” When a number of players are to begin a passage one can, under} | Toscanini, hear any dozen or the) whole hundred enter as one man. Soft or loud, it has an edge, it cuts the air, impacts the ear. But un-| der Walter, one can hear the instru- | ments enter separately or, if there are many playing at once, one hears the sound emerge from space—one cannot tell precisely when, The edges are blurred, the music blows like a wind upon the listener. It is impressionism as over against for- | malism. | What we are looking for is a con-| ductor who has as varied potential- | es as the orchestra and who can use each style in its place, mixing or alternating them, 1estions and Answers This feature appears daily on the feature page. All questions should be addressed to “Questions and Answers,” c/o Daily Worker, 50 E. 13th St, N.Y.C. Question: What is the attitude of the Commu- nist Party to liberal newspapers like the New York Post? They seem to print much useful informa- tion which can be used against the capitalist class? A. F. Answer: Papers like the New York Post are capi- talizing on the great dissatisfaction of the masses with the present situation, and with their hatred of fascism and its bloody actions in Italy and Gere many. Consequently they attack the European fas- cists, and often print material that is useful in exposing the terroristic actions of the fascist dice | tatorships The liberal papers are capitalist papers, and their function is to protect the interests of the capitalist class. The Scripps-Howard papers in California joined in the reign of terror that was launched against the San Francisco general strike. They are playing a leading role in whipping up jingoistic feelings against Japan, and in pushing a bigger navy. The New York Post is owned by Mr. J. David Stern, a multi-millionaire friend and advisor of President Roosevelt. He and the paper are staunch supporters of the New Deal. They play up the fic- tion that all the evils produced by the N. R. A. and other New Deal legislation cannot be blamed on Roosevelt, but must be blamed on evil-minded subordinates, wicked bankers, and inefficiencies in carrying on the program. After criticizing some obvious harm done the workers by the New Deal, they then always come out all the more strongly for Roosevelt and his program, which is for the benefit of the monopolies and the rich. Thus the liberal press serves the capitalist class in its own special and subtle way. Communists must especially fight against their ballyhoo, since it is sugar-coated with pleasant phrases, and de- ceives the workers more effectively than the open hatred and stupidity of the reactionary press. Soviet Russia Today For January Devoted To Memory of Lenin SOVIET RUSSIA TODAY, January issue, 80 East llth Street, New York City, 10 cents. Reviewed by Joseph North 'HE January issue of Soviet Russia Today, an- nounced as a special Lenin issue, is outstand- ing for the number and quality of its articles and the general attractiveness of its make-up. Thus, with the requirements of the January is- sue calling for two long articles on Lenin, and of course a thorough explanation of the political sig- nificance of the assassination of Sergei M. Kirov, as well as the full reports of the five F. 8. U. worker- delegates who have just returned after a six weeks tour of the U. S. S. R. as the guests of the Soviet Trade Unions, room was found for an excellent sketch by Alexei Tolstoy, the monthly Moscow letter of Anna Louise Strong on “Bread Rationing Ends in the U. S. S. R.,” an article by an American worker in the Red Proletarian Machine-Building Works in Moscow on the real meaning of the Communist Party Chistka, or Cleansing—especially timely in view of the ridiculous attempts at comparison, in the capitalist press, of Nazi butcheries and work- ing class justice in the Soviet Union. There is a colorful study of Baku, “City of Black Gold,” an- other devicting “Soviet Justice,” a report on science in the U. S. S. R. by J. W. McBain, professor of chemistry at Stanford University and the only American delegate to the recent Mendeleeff Cen- tenary in Leningrad, and an article “Concerning Dictators” by Myra Page. Although Joseph Stalin's famous speech on Lenin, “The Mountain Eagle,” was originally delivered some years ago, it is not widely known in this country, and the editors of Soviet Russia Today were correct to reprint this valuable first-hand testimony on Lenin, the man and the revolutionary leader. Stalin’s article is supplemented by one by Prof. M. ‘Azadovsky on “Lenin in Soviet Folklore,” which helps us understand the background of such a film masterpiece as “Three Songs About Lenin.” ROF. J. W. McBain cites the “enormous book industry” in the U. S. 8. R., as an indication of the scale on which Soviet Russia is studying science. “Editions of text books of half a million are published and sold out within a couple of months,” he writes. “Advanced text books for specialists and graduate students sell in annual edi- tions of 25,000. Most of the valuable scientific books published in other countries are translated into Russian and issued in numbers ten times as great as the requirements of the outside world.” Unquestionably, one of the most interesting fea- tures of the January issue of Soviet Russia Today is the page devoted to the reports of the F. «* U. November delegates. These reports, written by the workers themselves, and without any editorial super- vision, show how quick American workers are to see the advantages of socialism when they have the chance to see it in action. James Sheffield, for in- stance, when he saw the Soviet ship “Kim” in Boston, was a little skeptical. The working and living conditions of Soviet seamen seemed a little too good to be true, and being a seaman himself— Sheffield is a member of the Marine Workers In- dustrial Union — he was afraid that the “Kim” might be just a show-boat. After visiting plenty of other ships in Soviet ports, Sheffield has come to the conclusion that “all Soviet ships are show boats,” for they are all as good as the “Kim” and some are even better. . OBERT WHISNER, Westinghouse Electrical worker from Turtle Creek, Pa., writes: “I am Soviet Union, the more he gets, and I know that the more we produce, the less we get. I am con- vinced that it is the duty of every worker in the U. S. A. to defend the U. S. 5. R. in every way possible, for the Soviet workers have shown us the way out.” Stanislaw Victor Modjeski, Socialist Party mem- ber and candidate for Secretary of State in Rhode Island on the Socialist ticket, writes that he was “more than satisfied.” He is convinced now that “collectivism not only does not hinder individual expression and creativeness, but is the only mode of living under which individualism and the true creative spirit can be fostered and grow to reach its highest development. Throughout my trip in the Soviet Union, I was impressed ‘with the alle inclusive living unity of the whole working class of the world which the Soviet workers so clearly € *