FREE TRADE

means

1.  International Justice and Freedom

2.  Removal of Economic Incentive for Imperialism

3.  Security for Small Nations

4.  Disposal of Colonial Questions

5.  Only Secure Foundation for League of Nations

6.  End of Militarism

7.  Economic Peace

8.  Increased Production

9.  Cheaper Distribution

10.  Lower Cost of Living

11. Worldwide Prosperity

12. Permanent Peace

To have International Free Trade incorporated in the Peace Treaty as repeat. edly recommended by (1) President Wilson, (2) the British Labor Party, (3) the German Reichstag, (4) the Russian People's Government, and (5) Socialists everywhere   requires publicity and an aroused public opinion.

If you want to help do this, send $1.00 for annual membership (including publications of the League) and as large a contribution as you can afford, to

INTERNATIONAL FREE TRADE LEAGUE 38 St. Botolph Street   BOSTON, MASS.

r

January, 1919   3

Amarillo, Texas.
November 20, 1918.

O THE LIBERATOR-Greeting!

Dear Comrades, can you give ear to

one more tale of woe?

I am a public school teacher who has served for some fifteen years. Have been a Socialist party member since 1911. Came to the Texas Panhandle last fall to correct a tendency toward pulmonary trouble.

On the 3rd of last June I was arrested for " disloyalty " under the Espionage Act, and was 'held four and a half months on $IO,ooo bond. All my friends live out at the Pacific Coast. I am a stranger here and it was impossible to make the bond.

I was tried in Federal Court October 16th,with the usual prejudiced judge, "paytriotic " jury and perjured evidence. Also the usual result, viz: conviction and sentence to five years in the McAlester Prison, at McAlester, Oklahoma. Southern jails are awful. The heat is excessive, food bad, and no friends could reach me. I was held two months non-communicado, and in solitary confinement. I could not even send out to buy a cooling drink. The door of solid wood never opened save at " feeding time," 9.30 A. M. and 3.30 P. M. The sun came in through the west window and made the stone floor so hot that when I poured water on to cool it off it steamed like the top of a hot stove.

I am a physical wreck, and I fear that further confinement will not improve me.

We are appealing to the higher court and hope to reverse the decision already rendered. If this fails we shall try for pardon.

I hope that I may receive many Ietters from comrades and sympathizers every-where, for letters are a great help to any prisoner. They bear great influence in his favor for release on parole or pardon, to say nothing of the encouragement they are to him in his lonely vigil.

Before this letter reaches you I shall be committed to McAlester Prison. I ask you to give notice of my disaster through the LIBERATOR, if you can, and help me tb live through my ordeal if possible.

I am brave enough, but I do need encouragement and reassurance sometimes.

We need money and influence. I hope for friendly letters, and will answer all I can.

Very truly yours, for Liberty and justice under the New Democracy,

FLORA I. FOREMAN.

Box 398, McAlester, Oklahoma.

An Acquisition for Your
Socialist Library!

Karl Marx: The Han and His Work and
the Constructive Elements of Socialism
By Karl Daanenber`

Presents in concise form the evolution of Socialist thought and its conotruotivo elements. Essential to an understanding of Socialism and Its founder.

130 pages   30 cents (33 cents postpaid)
Reduced rates to dealers and
organizations

Radical Review Pabiiohing Association 202 East Seventeenth Street, New York

RED HOT   If You want for elf or

friends, a paper that combats all religious dogma, send $1 for each

subscriber AGNOSTIC the hottest

and get   paper pub.
tisbed. Samples, four different, dOe. Send today.

THE CRUCIBLE.• V.,   PAPER

1330 let Ave.. Seettlo. Wash.

Funerals

or Trials ?

in War and

Reconstruction-

The other day a judge in a New York Appellate Court came out in favor of "more funerals and less trials " as a short-cut to justice.

How Does This Strike YOU!

IF you don't believe in lynch law, but hold that every man and woman is entitled to an unprejudiced trial and to defense by a competent lawyer;

IF you want to help provide the defense of undefended workers ;

IF you believe that there are a good many things wrong with our courts today that will stay wrong until public opinion is so informed it won't stand for them any longer; or

IF such things interest you as a protest against the solitary confinement in military prisons of Conscientious Objectors ; work for the early amnesty of all war-time prisoners; and the immediate repeal of the Espionage

Act

Send a Contribution, Large or Small, to

THE N. Y. BUREAU OF LEGAL ADVICE

118 East 28th St.   N. Y. City And send us a monthly pledge, if you can.

OFFICERS OF THE BUREAU) Da. Joax L. ELLIOTr, Chairman

F ANNIE M. WITHERSPOON, Secretary CHARLES RECHT, Counsel

ARTHUR S. LEF_ns, Treasurer

Conventions, Hearings,
Mass Meetings, Etc.

REPRODUCED VERBATIM

Complete Stenographic Re-ports furnished in record time and in any quantity

Translations in All Languages,
Multigraphiung, Addressing ,
Mimeographing, Public Stenog-
raphy, Etc.

CONVENTION REPORTING
COMPANY

82 UNION SQUARE, NEW YORK, N. Y.
Stuyvesant 1988-5299
(Room 810)

4   THE LIBERATOR

Home !

THE LIBERATOR

Vol. 1, No. 11   January, 1919

EDITORIALS

PEOPLE of tender heart are disposed to support " moderate " governments in the revolutionary countries in order to " prevent unnecessary bloodshed." Nothing could be more cruel than their short-sightedness. The idea of a republic of free labor, without a capitalistic class, is firmly and permanently established in the world. The experiment begun, nothing but perpetual forcible repression can stop it until it is carried through to the end. The " moderate " governments will either deny freedom of speech and action to thorough revolutionists, or the revolutionists, teaching the truth, will sweep them from power. In the first case tyranny, riot and class wars will take the place of the old peace of political freedom; bloodshed will be spread out over the century. In the second case a period of enormous disorder and apparent chaos will be passed through, but the new peace of industrial freedom will emerge steadily and surely, and the twentieth century will see the beginning of the kingdom of man.

These are the alternatives between which idealists must choose. And for us, we choose the path of tenderness and far-sighted understanding, even though it must lead through a long period of economic disorder, and relaxation of the boast of efficiency. We would rather live in a poor and seriously troubled world, men earnestly striving shoulder to shoulder to build up toward prosperity a republic of free labor, than to live in a world in which the rich are still rich, the poor are poor, and efficiency is maintained by starving and shooting down strikers and military rebels, and throwing into prison men and women who will insist upon voicing the true ideal. We choose the path of revolutionary reconstruction.

As first steps of importance, we make five immediate demands of our government.

The Right to Speak

W E demand that the right of free speech, free press, and assemblage, as they existed in the days of Thomas Jefferson, be restored to the American people without further delay. The President has formally announced to us that the war is over, " all that we fought for has been accomplished." No excuse then remains for patriotic societies to continue exercising the powers of policemen, for the Post Office to deny the mailing privilege to socialist magazines, for cities to pass ordinances penalizing the display of the red flag, for indiscriminate arrests, jailings and prosecutions

against men who wish to bring the United States forward into her true place in the march of the nations toward liberty.

The Right to Know

S ECOND, we demand that the American people have direct access to the sources of information. We do not want our knowledge of current events strained through the brain of George Creel any longer. And we say this, not merely because George Creel has proved himself an erratic and unreliable fictionary journalist, but because even if he were the wisest man on earth it would endanger the rights of the people to have any official of the Government placed in a position of control or paramount influence over the sources of information and the avenues of publicity. George Creel announces that he has gone to Paris in order to " advertise American ideals " to the world. We deny George Creel the right to determine what American ideals are, and in the name of American ideals we demand that George Creel's bureau be abolished.

Liberation of Prisoners

T BIRD, we demand that with the termination of the war all the political and industrial prisoners, who are held in this country under sentences that remind us of the beginnings of the terror of Nero and the Spanish Inquisition, be set free.

We demand that Torn Mooney be set free.

We demand that Eugene Debs be set free.

We demand that all the boys in the I. W. W. be set free. We demand that the Conscientious Objectors be set free. We demand that Emma Goldman and Alexander Berk-

man be set free.

We demand that when this war ends no man or woman shall be left lying in prison in the United States for publicly expressing and remaining true to his sincere convictions.

There is information that the President has already privately promised a general amnesty for war prisoners. We urge the Civil Liberties Bureau to prepare immediately a complete list and classification of all such prisoners, not only those named above but those symbolized by these names, with an adequate account of their offense against law if it existed, and distribute this list to every liberal, radical and revolutionist in the country. By the time the President returns, this list and classification should be so familiar to all those who care, that any discriminations he may choose to

6   THE LIBERATOR

make will be definite discriminations, so understood, and not acquiesced in as the accidental oversights of one preoccupied with graver problems. There are no graver problems.

Hands off Russia

F OURTH, we demand that our soldiers and sailors be withdrawn immediately from the sovereign territories of the Russian Republic. We demand that the United States forces shall not in any emergency be used for the policing of foreign countries. And we make this demand under the constitution. Since an armistice for the purpose of peace was concluded with the Central Empires, there is no doubt left that every foot of advance that our soldiers make into the territory of Russia is a violation of the United States Constitution. We want no wars conducted without a declaration of war by the representatives of the people. And we want no counter-revolutionary wars conducted.

An End of Organized Libel

FIFTH, we demand that the official suppression of truth, and the semi-official manufacture of lies about the Soviet Government and its elected leaders, by which it is at-tempted to justify counter-revolutionary war, shall cease.

In the United States a capitalistic government is making the working-class behave and we call that " Maintaining Law and Order." In Russia a working-class government is making the capitalists behave and we call that a " Reign of Terror." That is the truth for those who have the will to know it. In America Tom Mooney has been sent to jail for life after a commission of impartial investigators appointed by the President declared that he was unjustly condemned. And on almost the same day the murderers and kidnappers of the copper trust, who shot up and deported 1500 workingmen from Bisbee, Arizona, and dumped them into the desert, have been set free for life, after an impartial commission appointed by the President practically declared that they were guilty.

In Russia the agents of the Copper Trust who are guilty but capitalists would be punished, and Tom Mooney who is innocent but a working man would go free.

St. Bartholomew's Eve

W E are informed by a representative of the Associated Press recently returned from Moscow that 58 per cent of the despatches he sent out from that city were sup-pressed by the British Government. We know how much of the important truth from a working-class point of view it is customary for the Associated Press to send out, and if 58 per cent even of what they send out is suppressed before it reaches these shores, and then the rest is blue-penciled and distorted by our own censors and headline writers, we can infer that the amount which reaches us of what we would like to know about Russia, is practically not one single word.

The great movement for the modern and free education of all the Russian people under one of the most cultivated

and idealistic scholars in the world, A. V. Lunarcharskyand cooperating with him a man whose tender human love and intellectual force and integrity have been almost the highest glory of European letters-Maxim Gorky-we hear, little of that,

We hear little of the great works of proletarian art, the working-people's theaters, and the provisions for popular recreation and hygiene, and the care of the health and training of young children that were one of the first undertakings of the Soviet Government.

We are told that the Bolsheviki do not represent a majority of the Russian people, but we never see printed the true story of the elections that were held under the eyes of the Allied generals at Vladivostok, when the Bolsheviki were re-turned to power with more votes than all of the sixteen other parties put together-and this although their leaders were slain or imprisoned, the Soviets destroyed, and their press abolished. We are not told that the war for democracy in Siberia began by declaring that election void, and establishing a military government of Vladivostok in its place.

We are told that the Bolsheviki are dishonorable robbers because they repudiated the Russian national debt-a debt which represented very largely the moneys that were loaned to the Czar by England and France for the purpose of putting down the revolution of 1905. But we are not told that subsequently the Bolsheviki promised to guarantee against loss the poor people and peasants of France who had invested their savings in that Russian debt. And we are not told that after that they even offered to make some compromise with the great powers, which would stabilize the finances of the world and prevent a serious break-down of international credit.

We were told last month that the Soviet Government was planning a new massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve, and that on November loth all of the Bourgeoisie and the children of the Bourgeoisie were going to be slaughtered to feed blood and bones to these monsters of the new religion of Bolshevism. This amazing news despatch was flared all over the front pages of our papers in New York. And then St. Bartholomew's Eve came, and a despatch arrived stating that the Bolsheviki had taken that occasion to release all political prisoners except those whose continued imprisonment is absolutely indispensable to guarantee the safety of Bolsheviki who have fallen into the hands of the enemy. And was that despatch flared on the front pages where the lie had been? It was not published at all, except on the in-side of one newspaper with a small headline in a paragraph one inch high.*

And in the very issue of the New York World that con-

" Since this editorial was written, I have learned the exact truth of the matter as follows: Zinovieff, the president of the Petrograd Soviet, in a heated speech, made the threat of a general execution on St. Bartholomew's Eve. He did not seriously consider such a thing either advisable or possible. In view of the indiscretion of his speech, however, he was requested by Lenin to resign. He did resign, and A. V. Lunarcharsky, celebrated as a humanitarian, was elected in his place. Lunarcharski's post in the Cabinet as People's Commissar of Education was given to Maxim Gorki. This is the truth. Were we not entitled to know?

January, 1919   7

tained that despatch, there was another despatch from our own sovereign state of Alabama, which I quote:

" Sheffield, Ala., Nov. lo.-William Bird, a negro was taken from the jail here tonight by a mob of about too men and hanged. Bird was captured and placed in jail this afternoon after a running fight with officers following a disturbance he was said to have created in the lower section of Sheffield."

In Russia on St. Bartholomew's Day they restorer'. to liberty men who had been convicted of plotting the over-throw of the government. In America we took out of jail and murdered without trial a man who " was said to have created a disturbance."

It would not be honest to cite this contrast merely because of the accidental coincidence of the dates, if it were not a statistical fact that we so hang, burn or torture to death one American citizen in every four days. And though I have not the figures, there is little doubt that we execute three or four times that number after due process of law, and we shoot down in strikes probably almost as many more. So that if any correspondent chose to see nothing of what is good in this country and all of what is bad, he could easily portray it as a hell on earth, as indeed I fear some of its more unlucky emigrants do.

We now know from the official report of Boris Litvinoff that the number of political prisoners executed by the Soviet Government in Moscow is 240. The number is said to have been greater in Petrograd because of a conflict of authority there which divided the sense of responsibility. We do not know the number in Petrograd, but upon the basis of the important figures we have we are able to assert that no revolution, involving a fundamental change of sovereignty, ever before in the history of the world, has been so merciful of counter-revolutionists as that. And if 240 is the number that have been officially executed since our armies invaded Russia with the purpose of stirring up conspiracies to overthrow the Soviet Government, we are able to assert further that in all probability if our armies had stayed out of Russia and left the Soviet Government alone, the number executed for conspiracy would have been hardly one. For if there is any single thing historically sure in this matter it is that whatever reign of terror exists in Russia today, and whatever extreme measures may have been taken by the Russian Government to protect itself against crimes of sedition, are the direct inevitable result of the Allied invasion of Russia, the military and moral support given to those crimes of sedition by the Allied governments.

It is our chief duty as socialists of the United States, at every meeting we hold and in every paper we publish, to stand up and say that the whole story of Russian affairs as it has been fed into the minds of the American people is a conspiracy and a lie. With all the sincerity of our hearts, and our most sober and deliberate judgment concurring, we believe, and we continue to believe, that there is growing into maturity in that country the most just and wise and humane and democratic government that ever existed in the

world. And he head of that government, Nicolai Lenin, is one of the supreme statesmen of history.

Significant

WE were worrying a little for fear the German republic, with Scheidemann and Solf and Erzberger in it, would not be radical enough to recognize the Bolsheviki. We were waiting for dispatches that would reassure us. And the first dispatch that came informed us that the German republic had sent to Moscow an sager and imperious demand that the Bolsheviki should recognize them!

That tells us who is in power with the people.

And Germany.

WITH a precision that should drive conviction into the

WITH most sceptical minds, and even into those debauched with erudition, we see the prophecies of Karl Marx fulfilling themselves in Germany as they did in Russia. The power is in the workmen's councils. The political government becomes more and more but a figure and a puppet. The Constituent Assembly is demanded and postponed, demanded and postponed. And when it assembles, if it does, it will be but a figure and a puppet too, the expression in politics of an economic system whose day is past. The power is in the workmen's councils. The sovereignty belongs to the working-class, the future to them. Only the direst conspiracy of men and events can alter that, or ever send Germany back into the blind misery of the rule of capital.

All hail to Karl Liebknecht who clearly and courageously understands !

MAX EASTMAN.

THE LIBERATOR

A Journal of Revolutionary Progress

Editors, Max Eastman Crystal Eastman

Associate Editor, Floyd Dell Business Manager, Margaret Lane

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS :

Cornelia Barns, Howard Brubaker, K. R. Chamberlain, Hugo. Gellert, Arturo Giovaunitti, Charles T. Hallinan, Helen Keller, Robert Minor, Boardman .Robinson, Maurice Sterne, Alexander Trachtenberg, Louis Untermeyer, Clive Weed, Art Young.

Published monthly and copyright 1918, by the

LIBERATOR PUBLISHING CO., Inc.

34 Union Square, East   New York

Yearly subscription $1.50 (outside the U. S. $2.00). Single copies 15e. After Jan. 1, 1919, the price will be-yearly subscription $2.00 (outside the U. S. $2.50). Single copies 20c. Rates on bundle orders and to newsdealer$ on application.

Application for entry as second-class matter at the post-ofdee
at New York City pending.

8

A Letter to AmerieanWorkingmen

By Nikolai Lenin

[T his is the first direct word that has come to the American people from Nikolai Lenin since he became the recognised leader of the proletarian world. Early efforts to get it past the censor-ship lines evidently failed. It arrived in New York just as this issue was going to press. Certain passliges have been omitted in deference to the extremely literal interpretation of the Espionage law, but the heart of Lenin's message is here.]

Moscow, August 20, 1918.

(mOMRADES : A Russian Bolshevik who par-

ticipated in the revolution of 1905 and for many years afterward lived in your country has offered to transmit this letter to you. I have grasped this opportunity joyfully, for the revolutionary proletariat of America-in so far as it is the enemy of American imperialism-is destined to perform an important task at this time. . . .

Had the Anglo-French and American bourgeoisie accepted the Soviet invitation to participate in peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk, instead of leaving Russia to the mercy of brutal Germany, a just peace without annexations and indemnities, a peace based upon complete equality could have been forded upon Germany, and millions of lives might have been saved. Because they hoped to re-establish the East-ern Front by once more drawing us into the whirl-pool of warfare, they refused to attend peace negotiations and gave Germany a free hand to cram its shameful terms down the throat of the Russian people. It lay in the power of the Allied countries to make the Brest-Litovsk negotiations the forerunner of a general peace. It ill becomes them to throw the blame for the Russo-German peace upon our shoulders! . . .

The workers of the whole world, in whatever country they may live, rejoice with us and sympathize with us, applaud us for having burst the iron ring of imperialistic agreements and treaties, for having dreaded no sacrifice, however great, to free ourselves, for having established ourselves as a socialist republic, even so rent asunder and plundered by German imperialists, for having raised the banner of peace, the banner of Socialism over the world. What wonder that we are hated by the capitalist class the world over! But this hatred of imperialism and the sympathy of the class-conscious workers of all countries give us assurance of the righteousness of our cause.

He is no Socialist who cannot understand that one cannot and must not hesitate to bring even that greatest of sacrifices, the sacrifice of territory,' that one must be ready to accept even military defeat at the hands of imperialism, in the interests of victory over the bourgeoisie, in the interests of a transfer of power to the working-class. For the sake of " their " cause, that is for the conquest of world-power, the imperialists of England and Germany have not hesitated to ruin a whole row of nations, from Belgium to Servia to Palestine to Mesopotamia. Shall we then hesitate to act in the name of the liberation of the workers of the world from the yoke of capitalism, in the name of a general honor-able peace; shall we wait until we c