The Red Conspiracy Part 35

The accompanying I. W. W. comment was, "We are sure that our organization will be there." Thus, if it be under ground, the mole still works. Moscow still inflames, unifies and directs the great world-conspiracy against the "Entente Powers" and all the nations that have been looking toward peace. The "Appeal," accompanying the "call,"

says in part:

"Can it be true, that you, the workers of England, France, Italy and the United States, will much longer support your governments and permit your blood to quench the spreading conflagration of the social revolution? Can it be that the international bandits of the League of Nations and the thrice-branded Versailles shall be allowed unhampered to weave their nets for the strangling of the world proletarian revolution?...

"Down with the bandits of imperialism!

"Long live the World Proletarian Revolution!

"Long live the International Soviet Republic!"

Near the end of his article Trotzky says, according to "The One Big Union Monthly," for February, 1920, page 21, "By thrusting the bourgeoisie away from the helm of state, by taking power into its own hands, the working cla.s.s is preparing for the creation of Federation of Soviet Republics of Europe and the whole world.... War was and will remain a form of armed exploitation or armed struggle against exploitation."

An editorial note on the same page, immediately below the article of Trotzky, says: "The above article and the APPEAL OF THE RUSSIAN INDUSTRIAL UNIONS TO THE WORKERS OF THE ALLIED COUNTRIES are taken from doc.u.ments on Russia of the working cla.s.s, written by members of the Soviet Government.... These materials were sent to Fellow Worker Wm. D.

Haywood by Comrade Leon Trotzky, the valiant Commissary for War of the victorious Workers' Commonwealth. We are happy to announce that the I.

W. W. will be the first to publish these latest doc.u.ments on peasant and industrial life in Bolshevikland."

Did Martens and Hillquit advise Lenine and Trotzky to disguise their American propaganda by using the Industrial Unions of Russia as their cat's-paw? We ask this because Hillquit has long been "Councillor" in America to the Russian Soviet Republic,[L] while the above method of inflaming American labor unions has been the secret method of the Socialist Party's Rand School of Science for some years--since 1916, at least. These are facts established by doc.u.ments obtained in the summer of 1919 by raids of the Rand School, put in evidence before the New York State Legislative Committee, Senator Clayton R. Lusk, Chairman, and referred to in the July 30, 1919, issue of "The National Civic Federation Review," from which we quote the following:

"One David P. Berenberg is director of the correspondence department of the Rand School. From the letter-files seized there, evidence was produced showing the kind of propaganda conducted through Berenberg's department. In a carbon copy of a letter to Harry L. Perkins, of San Diego, Cal., dated June 7, 1916, the statement was made:

"'When we read of 'preparedness' that is in full force in the camps of the capitalists, we realize that unless we organize and fit ourselves to resist, and to take over the government, we will one day find ourselves where our French and German brothers are today, dead or maimed in the fray.'

"'In other words,' commented Chairman Lusk, 'for over two years this Rand School has been advocating armed preparedness to take over the government.'

"A letter--obviously after a form letter sent to correspondents generally--dated October 3, 1916, addressed to M. E. Rabb, Xenia, Ohio, offered as evidence, contained the following:

"'What are you doing when the State robs you and your union and so makes you helpless to strike? There is only one thing to do: take over the State.

"'Are the members of your local prepared to take over and conduct wisely and well the affairs of your town and county? Are you prepared to meet the militia when the powers of the State and courts are against you? Are you arming yourself with the knowledge of the foundations of our society so that when these crises come to you, you will have an organization strong enough to have foreseen and forestalled them? Are you training your members in scientific Socialism?'

"This same adroitly phrased incitement was found in other correspondence."

This pest-house of treason and lawlessness, the Rand School, Hillquit's pet university of Socialism, ought to be dug up by the roots. And what shall we say of such evidence? Why should the Socialist Party of America hesitate to affiliate with the Third (Moscow) International and approve its "programs and methods" when Hillquit's illegitimate offspring, the Rand School, was teaching such "methods" a year before the Bolsheviki seized Petrograd and the dictators.h.i.+p? Is Hillquit Lenine's pupil or Lenine's teacher? Is Hillquit, backer of the Rand School propaganda, the same gentle Morris Hillquit who as an "expert on Socialism" testified before the a.s.sembly Judiciary Committee on February 17, 1920:

"The word 'revolution' does not have for us the romantic significance of barricade fights or other acts of violence that it has for most of our newspaper writers and school boys." ("Sun and New York Herald," February 18, 1920.)

Can this be the same Hillquit who earlier in the trial broke out in the angry threat: "What we say to you, gentlemen: the contemplated act of this a.s.sembly, if consummated, _will ... loosen the violent revolution_." ("New York Evening Sun," January 21, 1920.) Did he allude to some pink tea party?

And perhaps the "school boys" Hillquit referred to are those by his pet inst.i.tution poisoned and turned into degenerates in the bud of manhood, like poor Oscar Edelman, whose valedictory speech on graduating from a course in the Rand School of Social Science ran thus:

"For us as students, Socialists and Labor Unionists, our work is laid out. We must help educate the workers of America so that their slogan, 'a fair day's wage for a fair day's work' be replaced by the revolutionary slogan, 'abolition of the wage system.' ... In the great world-struggle which is taking place today, we must take active part.... The ideals which today inspire Debs and Lenine are the ideals which inspire us." (Lusk Committee evidence, quoted from "The National Civic Federation Review," July 30, 1919.)

But of all the sublime performances of Hillquit, that which lays the brightest crown on his veracity was the answer he gave at Albany on February 17, 1920, to the long hypothetical question concerning the att.i.tude of the Socialists should their friends of the Third International, the Bolsheviki, invade the United States.

At this question the redoubtable Mr. Hillquit, according to the "New York Times" of February 18, 1920, "settled back in his chair and smiled"

and said: "I should say that the Socialists of the United States would have no hesitancy whatsoever in joining forces with the rest of their countrymen to repel the Bolsheviki who would try to invade our country _and force a form of government upon our people which our people were not ready for and did not desire_." (Italics mine.)

Had Hillquit stopped where the italics began he would have stretched our credulity to the utmost. But if "our people" meant to him American Socialists, we readily believe that invading Bolsheviki, coming to wrest the American dictators.h.i.+p from our native talent, would find themselves and their undesirable "form of government" pitched into the sea by Hillquit and his crowd. Majority Socialist against Spartacide and Bolshevik against Mens.h.i.+vik--we have seen how one Socialist group repels the "form of government" forced by another.

When we think of the heroic exploits of Hillquit in repelling foreign invaders from America about 1917-18, can we not imagine him hurling one of his deadly manifestoes at his Bolsheviki friends? No doubt when Comrade Martens, the vanguard of the invading Bolsheviki, stormed Hillquit's castle on Riverside Drive with a fee and a commission as "Councillor," the outraged patriot crashed a receipt in full against the invader's outstretched paw.

As we think of Hillquit's love for peaceful "political action"--on the witness stand--those words from his foundling, the "New York Call" of May 1, 1919, return to our minds:

"The world revolution, dreamed of as a thing of the distant future, has become a live reality, rising from the graves of the murdered millions and the misery and suffering of the surviving millions. It has taken form, it strikes forward, borne on by the despair of the ma.s.ses and the s.h.i.+ning example of the martyrs: its spread is irrepressible....

"The war of the nations has been followed by the war of the cla.s.ses. The cla.s.s struggle is no longer fought by resolutions and demonstrations. Threateningly it marches through the streets of the great cities for life or death."

Mr. William English Walling, in an article published in the "New York Times," January 20, 1920, asks a pertinent question about the revolutionary activities of the American Socialist Party:

"The 'American Socialist Party,' finds itself compelled, precisely like Lenine, to pretend to be a peace-loving organization, loyally accepting const.i.tutional democracy and opposed to violence. Are we to take it at its own word? Is it possible that a few pious phrases offered on occasion can deceive the American people as to the nature of a propaganda organization that is shouting from the housetops in every corner of the country and every day of the year?

"The only imaginable reason why the public has paid any attention is that there are two or three organizations more wholly given over to violence, whereas the Socialist organization gives a share of its attention to party politics. It was said until recently, 'Oh, the anarchists are for violence, but the Socialists are for law and order.' Last August it was found that a large part of the Socialists were for immediate revolution. Then it was said that the Communists are revolutionary, but the Socialists are for law and order. The reasoning was that if the Left Wing was for immediate revolution, then the Right Wing must be for law and order!"

Mr. Walling expresses an expert opinion, having been a prominent member of Hillquit's party until this organization, at St. Louis in 1917, began the openly lawless course which led to the conviction of a large number of its leaders under the Espionage Law. Moreover, since January, 1920, when Mr. Walling recorded the above opinion, evidence has come to light which shows he was exactly right in saying that the American Socialist Party acted "precisely like Lenine" in pretending "to be a peace-loving organization" because it found "itself compelled" to do so.

The tactics of Lenine, Trotzky and Zinovieff, the Bolshevist "triumvirate" of Russia, and of Ludwig C. A. K. Martens and Morris Hillquit in America, are so similar that the evidence brought by Lincoln Eyre out of Russia perfectly interprets the "weasel words" of Martens and Hillquit on the witness stand at Was.h.i.+ngton and Albany, respectively. Hillquit, the connecting link, according to his testimony at Albany, February 19, 1920, was born at Riga, Russia; came to America a boy, like so many Russian immigrants; attended New York's public schools; and under the protection of the Stars and Stripes, which he would drag down, has made himself so emphatically one of the "capitalists," whom he hates, that he resides on New York's famous "Riverside Drive," and was able to testify with a smirk, "I flatter myself that I am not a failure." (See printed "Testimony" of the trial of the five a.s.semblymen for the details.)

A moral failure, without extenuation, most Americans will regard Morris Hillquit. For out of thirty-five years, spent by him on our hospitable sh.o.r.es in getting rich under the protection of our Government, inst.i.tutions and people, he has used at least twenty in trying to destroy the benefactor that nursed him. See the "New York Evening Telegram" of February 17, 1920, as follows: "Mr. Hillquit was called to the stand as the first witness for the five a.s.semblymen. He gave his residence as No. 214 Riverside Drive, New York City. Mr. Hillquit said he had lived in this country thirty-five years, and had been a Socialist since the party was organized, in 1900."

This is the man who in 1917 and 1918 backed his organization, so far as he dared, to cripple the people of the United States while they were engaged in a desperate war; and who since has been Lenine's brain in America in trying to set fire to the house of government in which the American people live. Notice his intelligence in the hypocritical Bolshevist refinement of separating the Moscow Soviet Government from the Moscow International, so that one of these may offer our people peace while the other continues to plot our destruction. This distinction was made, with its significance concealed, in Hillquit's testimony at Albany on February 18, 1920, which the Albany "Knickerbocker Press" of the next day, February 19, thus summarized:

"Mr. Hillquit testified at length concerning Soviet Russia.... Mr.

Hillquit also testified that there were differences between Soviet Government, Bolshevists and the Moscow International. _The latter_, he said, _did not represent Soviet Russia_, and the Bolshevists, he said, were merely a national party of Russia." (Italics mine.)

In a cabled account of an interview with Zinovieff, sent by Lincoln Eyre from Russia to the "World," headed, "Riga (by courier via Berlin), Feb.

24," and printed in the "New York World" of February 26, 1920, we have a flood of light showing that the central plot of the Socialist international conspiracy hinges precisely on the distinction which Hillquit had made at Albany a few days before, namely, that the Moscow International does "not represent Soviet Russia." Through the courtesy of the "New York World" we quote from its issue of February 26, 1920, the essential parts of Eyre's statement as follows:

"Bolshevik propaganda abroad, though still as active and insidious as it has ever been has undergone a radical change of late. That conclusion was arrived at by a close study of the subject, which I pursued in Moscow and Petrograd, reinforced by an interview with C.

S. Zinovieff, ruler of the latter city, also President of the Executive Committee of the Third Internationale and firebrand of the revolution.

"The Russian Communist Party, which is the Bolsheviki's official political t.i.tle, no longer exports agitators chosen from among members to kindle the flames of revolt in foreign lands. They are too wise for that antiquated process nowadays. What they do in these scientific times is to import from the country of his birth the crudely fas.h.i.+oned product of his own domestic Bolshevism, subject him to certain finis.h.i.+ng processes (including perhaps a gold lining) and s.h.i.+p him back home again complete in every detail, smooth running and highly inflammable. That is one of the reasons why the Soviet Government is prepared to promise and to keep its promise to refrain from sending forth agents charged with spreading the gospel of capitalistic annihilation....

"Another reason for the Soviet's willingness to quit propagandizing abroad is that it has already turned over to the Third Internationale all business of that kind.... Now, the Third Internationale has no official connection with the Soviet Government. It is supposed to be a separate inst.i.tution. Yet all its leaders hold office under the Soviets and its funds, which are considerable, must be derived from Soviet sources. Nevertheless it is technically, indeed legally, non-governmental, wherefore the Moscow Cabinet is justified in pledging itself to leave propaganda to 'friendly' foreign states alone.

"The moving spirit of the Third Internationale is Zinovieff, who, with Lenine and Trotzky, forms the triumvirate on which Bolshevism today rests, although he is by no means as big a man as the other two. Zinovieff is not a member of the Council of Peoples'

Commissaries (the Cabinet), but merely of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, from which the former body derives its powers, and which itself is subordinate to the supreme executive legislative judicial organ, the All-Russian Convention of Soviets.

Thus, while the role allotted to him on the administrative stage is really as prominent as that of any of his fellows, short of Lenine and Trotzky, Zinovieff can legitimately claim to be without voice in the actual administration of the Soviet Republic....

"The first point that Zinovieff made clear to me in our talk was that the Third Internationale is not comparable to the League of Nations.... The Overlord of Petrograd affirmed, ... 'The Third Internationale ... is a purely political group. It is a confederation of the world's Communists, an international coalition of the Communist Parties already existing in their respective countries.... The Third Internationale is a going concern, with some 8,000,000 members.' ...

"'But,' I asked, 'how is your aim of a European world republic of Soviets to be realized unless there is some international governmental machine?'

"'There will be some such machine,' Zinovieff replied, 'but probably it will take the form of a new organization along Soviet lines. In my view, the revolution will follow the same general channels it has taken in Russia, with alterations of detail, of course. Should France overthrow capitalism, for instance, she will at first establish Sovietism, and subsequently combine with us. To foresee the mechanical angles of such combination, however, is too early.'

"'And your propaganda programme,' I ventured, 'is as strong and far-reaching as ever?'

"The prompt reply was: 'The Third Internationale is primarily an instrument of revolution. It reunites at Moscow the intelligence and energy of all the Communist groups the world over. Delegates from the various national organizations come to us and give and take knowledge about the cause and return to their respective home countries refreshed and invigorated. This work will be continued, no matter what happens, legally or illegally. The Soviet Government may pledge itself to refrain from propaganda abroad, but the Third Internationale--never!'"