ROMAIN ROLLAND ACCUSES
Roman Rolland Accuses "I accuse of high treason again* America those men u>ho ham soiled her Mdth this judicial crime, the Saceo-Vanaetti murder* before the eyes of the world,.....they have...
...My Dear Friend: I am writing to you under the crushing burden of the impression produced by the judicial murder of Sacco and Vanzetti...
...Davis points out...
...The United States considers such raids "political questions" which have no place in such conventions...
...The American invasions are prompted by economic purposes and to classify them as "political questions" is^to rub salt into old wounds...
...Beck, heroic defender of the Constitution, managed to slip into the House over protests...
...And the great judges, after passing judgment, would have let the whole world crumble rather than admit that they had made a mistake...
...As to the book itself, I fully believe Sinclair has done a much needed work ably, and with his usual clear courage...
...I have no doubt that you and M— share my sentiments but 1 wish to express them to you because it may be of some use if yon can manage to make them known in your country, sty testimony will perhaps have a certain value, (because it is that of a man sho has long held himself aloof from political parties...
...Coolidge will be no more successful than Root...
...gOME small town Republican Babbitts in Mas- sachtisctts have adopted resolutions urging an increase in the salary of President Coolidge and that he l»e urged to continue in office the rest of his life...
...It does not involve their nation and community...
...N<5w a sentence from Coolidge's sermon to Congress: "Those who are peaceful and law-abiding realize that not only have they nothing to fear from us, but that they can rely on our moral support...
...A few months ago I called on this guardian for money to pay a doctor's :ili...
...Prayer in Massachusetts-"" 1TPON this soil may no tree ever grow...
...If such enterprise rises in the islands the owners will not hesitate to restrict production of their large estates if the scarcity will increase their profits...
...that »I were where I would be...
...The Dope Peddlers IMIE drug habit is not confined to cocaine and other narcotics...
...a blow received in history is always sooner or later given back...
...We struggled against this current...
...Smith of Illinois and Vare of Pennsylvania, products of cattle pripiaries, are challenged in the Senate...
...Development" j?f the islands renis profitable investments for American capitaly and it means nothing else...
...A poem is after all a sanctuary whereto our intimate feelings go for solace or rest...
...Continued hearty cooperation should make the r 'v{0>m>JP^-s an increasing po*wer for the Labor =a wlt>ocialist movement in this country...
...They lave been the moderates...
...Not one of you in America can have an idea of that corrosive thought which has now been given vitality abroad by this act...
...America's Statesmen Silent And the most overwhelming and heartbreaking event of all this drama, this disaster in the eyes of the world, is this: not one of the notable official personages who represent the Government of the United States intervened to give audible expression to the voice of humanity...
...And the majority of the protests which have come to you came frosn sincere friends of the United States, who, like myself, were heartbroken when they saw such a crime, soil the honor of the great nation they love, and destroy the ideal image which they had made it...
...It's a book to be read and re-read for its stimulating value alone...
...I vow however, the next time Upton plays tennis with me, I will try his fasting formula for at least two days before the match takes place...
...To go any further into the content of the book would smack of intentional exposure of somebody's own private business...
...A swindler living as he can...
...I for one have experienced through Jean Starr's "Steep Ascent" the cruel anguish of sensing another's pain...
...It took me the best part'of a few years to become calloused to the universal shortening of skirts...
...There, for centuries, one will still speak of Sacco and Vansettl as one speaks still of Jean Calas...
...Years ago Elihu Root was sent on a tour of the nations to the south of us...
...A SONG OF CONFUSION Here is a popular Jingle which •*» recommend to Republican and Dessecratic voters after each election: Oh...
...GOLDINE HILLSON...
...Coolidge is a great man, he has brought "prosperity" and knows how to continue it...
...as in the case of Cabell, whom be denounces as a perverter of our youth with "Jurgen...
...and a deep hostility has been stirring in the hearts of all other peoples...
...I am not an American...
...The pitiless hardness of heart of all the leading public officials in America, their absolute insensibility toward the question, have produced a most sinister impression throughout the entire world...
...The better France, after years of struggle and suffering, snatched the victim from the torturers...
...He refused my request, saying \c was "holding" my husband's money [or "emergencies...
...Miners and textile workers have been thrust back into miserable poverty...
...We know wen that it is not pleasant for a nation to receive the objurgations of foreigners...
...He mentions there on page 202 bow he trimmed me at tennis and carried my poems back to California in triumph...
...For in any ease they had atoned up to the final limits of human endurance...
...It was a pretty ripe mind among our young 'uns that grabbed at Freud fifteen years ago, learned all about phallic symbols and their dream uses...
...but I love America...
...I belong, says Upton, and I would be a lying dubb not to admit how it just tickles me all over...
...The enormous sum >f sixty-five dollars per month for toal disability...
...THE CHATTER BOX A ND just because Upton Sinclair has included me in his latest book, "Money Writes", published by Albert and Charles Boni, you would imagine I would just get up on my big toes and yelp "Hooray, Whoopee...
...Read the Book of the Century...
...And, alas...
...Oklahoma Democrats propose impeachment of their governor...
...The Physical senses are never touched to grossncss...
...This is camouflage...
...LEONA HAIGHT Route 2. Cleveland, Ofehh Are there not some Ohio Socialists whs can help these victims of government neglect?—Editor...
...I read through the book wth galloping speed...
...The body will be beating Through the black brush Calling, shrieking, weeping For the dream...
...Tammany makes a bid for political honors with a $16,000,000 sewer graft and a school salary grab...
...Progress for tagst...
...The names of two of these latter—Judge Thayer and Governor Pullet—will be inscribed tmperishably among the reprobates of history...
...Last year the United States Veteran's Bureau decided be was Insane...
...The cost to us is tremendous...
...It is not their fate...
...Next to Leonard's "Two Lives" no recent book of poetry has so stirred up such emotional reaction in me after having read through it sympathetically...
...Thus at least It would have fortified itself in advance against the rigors of a mistake which would be nothing less than a national calamity...
...Editors market it...
...For years there has been complaint that the Filipinos are content to take life easy with the result that the islands are not "developed.'' Those who urge "development'' do so on the ground that it is necessary to make Philippine resources available for other peoples...
...It is a vividly revealing personal document, in which grief, over a lost son and devastating anguish over a lost lover gape out in raw wounds from every page...
...You cannot have any idea either of its depth or of its causes...
...It takes a well prepared mind to follow the delicate intricacies of "Jurgen", and when followed with understanding the reader is left only with a sense of having passed through a delectably intellectual feast...
...It is still atune With music of the ritual...
...Fall and Sinclair compete with Doheny and Burns for honors...
...For therein, after walloping the jaws, and larruping the hides of every best selling scribbler in English of the day, he picks me up out of my three little volumes of verse, and places me among his regulars...
...He even says I am a preacher like himself, and quotes my March Wind poem as evidence that I would propagandize even the elements to the Cause...
...Of Itself It should have taken the initative in some exceptional measure which would have given the unfortunate men mercy or, at least, reduced their sentences to life Imprisonment...
...Economic penetration and mastery give rise to political domination of the weaker nations which domination is reinforced by military and naval raids...
...Supplying human wants is not the motive of capitalist enterprise...
...One is quickened into faith in God with her opening lines, but hastily droops to doubt and question whether he is not a "mumbling ghoul" for having battered her dreams into a shambles, and given her a shell of courage with which to face inevitable disaster...
...In this land may no lips ever again Speak the word justice, now that all men know Those lips have too long boasted and in vain...
...while they were assassinating Sacco and Vansettl...
...If a few own them for their private enrichment it is a blessing...
...S. A. de Witt...
...But the crime of such men involves only themselves...
...genuine joy in his work...
...So, naturally, communists and anarchists have tried to fish in troubled waters...
...For which much thanks...
...Vgaln he refused...
...Upton proved that in the "Jungle" twenty years or so ago...
...It is reported that Mexico and San Domingo expect to make a protest against bur landing armed forces in I^atin-American countries...
...Well, the guardian took charge of every cent my husband owned and also bis little "dab" of compensation, which the .Teat and rich United States finally deeded to pay him...
...this scandalous derision of ah res ustlce which allies Justice with hypoc isyl What Is To Be Done...
...It is just this dozen year's handicap that gives me tolerance for the sex extravaganza of James Branch Cabell...
...Thus the most vulgar sentiment of amour propre, of national pride*, tramples humanity under foot...
...With whole boots and net pantaloons...
...This pride, monstrously more cruel than cruslty itself, implacable and stupid, remained obstinate hi its error, with jaws clenched...
...Their abominable >arody on justice has destroyed the most sacred rights of all humanity...
...A Victorian cannot help but still notice with halfshocked and inwardly amorous eyes the exposed limbs of modern ftapperdom...
...Shortly after that, I isked for a few dollars to buy shoes for me of our babies and also some clothes...
...Now Upton is bitting on all eight when he takes the high road to social and economic determinism on any of our high-hattera in bookdom...
...The few with a handful of rest while the many with mmkm*jf I rates are ruled...
...The result was, my -aby lay near death from pneumonia, auscd from little bare feet and scanty iothes...
...Sincere good wishes to you and Long live Socialism...
...Catchy phrases are responsible for more stupor than all the dope consumed by its victims...
...The result is that we have the dope and a jolly band of corporation masters have the industrial powers of the nation...
...He is hot always indisputably correct in judgment against individuals...
...Latin-American peoples from using the Pan-American Union as a stage for •broadcasting the offenses of American imperialism is a problem for Coolidge and those who have preceded him in office since the days when Roosevelt declared that the United States was to serve as a policeman in this part of the world...
...But, to-night, to-night...
...Instead of investing the money on a little home or even a business of soms kind it has been thrown to the four winds and we are supposed to be pleased over it...
...The average college dumbbell would have to go through the arabesque jungleland of Cabelliaaa with a "pony" and a full set of diagrams to even get the first bint of the wit and wisdom of the book...
...ie Philippines are essentially agricultural and 1 land holdings are the rule...
...Alibi or no alibi, Sinclair licked me fairly, that is as fairly as he could considering he had a herring as his accomplice before the fact...
...Then would I be where I am net, But here am I where I must be...
...The abyss yawns I know too well the peoples of Europe, and the travail that is going on within them, not to perceive that from thil day on a state of moral warfare exists between them and the United States, and, should it be six years, or twenty, jt fifty, or a century, this state of moral warfare will be realised one day indeed...
...I can forgive his gloating over the method whereby he won my verses from me...
...Remain BeOand To Our Readers ' \ WORD to our readers...
...It was a question not of justice, but a question rather of simple, humble, divine humanity...
...i A National Calamity A strong nation possesses* imagination It takes thought...
...Repeated injections of this dope make it impossible for the bankrupt farmer to think rationally...
...who has acquired the habit of looking and thinking "au dessus lea siecles" and beyond the passions of the day...
...His mission was to eat dinners and tell the peoples of these nations that our imperialism is really the affection which a big brother feels for his little ones...
...And I accuse of high treason against America the men who have sodid her with this judicial crime before the ;yes of the world...
...Davis declares that "greater progress might have been attained in agriculture had the land been held by fewer owners and in larger area...
...it cannot...
...That cannot be questioned...
...The Devil The Devil, I can safely aver, Has neither hoof, nor tail, nor sting...
...The great judges, lay or military, are both of the same species...
...Imagine, if you can, a family owning Liberty Bonds, and the children buddied over a small stove in bare feet and scanty clothes and the Liberty Bonds "Investment" arranged so we can't draw or realize a cent out of them...
...Nor is he, aa some sages swear, A spirit neither here nor there— In nothing, yet in everything...
...The masters have shekels to give to those who write nothing to disturb or threaten their mastery...
...Collective ownership will not pay them but it will us...
...During almost a decade there has been spreading throughout the world the idea that such was, Indeed, the new mentality emergent in the United States...
...The reason...
...A lone figure and a stalwart one, he ventures forth against his own Knighthood of the,Pen, convinced that most of them have fallen from the high estate of creative errantry...
...And it was this that I called to Governor Poller on the 30th off August: "A Mend of America entreats you to spare Saceo and VansettL Even if guilty, humanity would demand it...
...It is our national dope...
...Developing,, the Philippines THE Filipinos will get a little comfort from the annual report of Secretary of War Davis...
...Taft didn't find it worth the trouble to return from Canada for two men—more or less—who were merely being killed...
...They refused me, the lawful wife, my right to be my husband's guardian...
...Morning falls upon the flesh...
...Thus did the better Prance in the Dreyfus affair...
...Why not abandon the dope for a Socialist democracy in industry that will serve all ? News of One Week ^S Lord Calviif opens the Imperial Diet of steel, oil and finance the press criers announce the news of the week...
...For your nation owes to itself and to the world to scorn the threats made against it...
...May never young men hither come to learn What cruel elders have no power to teach...
...Jean Starr Untermyer's "Steep Ascent", published by MacMillan Is much more than a second, or third, or fourth book of verse by a contemporary American poet...
...Isn't it Just a uVm ¦ lueu...
...They want their valuables restored...
...From A Veteran's Wife Editor, The New Leader: I ha\e a story to tell you In plain English and I promise to make it short as possible...
...They removed another frflro office in 1923- Those noble Democrats...
...The brilliant result of the Satanic tenacity of Judge Thayer and Governor Culler in crushing out these two victims is...
...They had a guardian appointed over him...
...But when he steps into the pulpit and starts in to give us a mid-Victorian lecture on immodesty, sex excitement, and general all around immorality, then I am happy to have been born twelve years after Upton's advent into Wcltschmerz...
...That problem is again l>efore the administration as the sixth convention of the Pan-American Union will soon meet in Havana...
...pen...
...Need for money and greed, determine the creative efforts of our beet writers...
...Yours should havt done so...
...Indiana graft involving Republican officials from the Governor down to constables remains in the headlines...
...Then what stupidity to assume that Coolidge can prevent the next general depression...
...Hundreds of thousands of farmers have been stripped of everything but their shirts...
...Real hearty laughter, albeit erudite, is the lowest plane to which I fell when reading the bock...
...He is—what we are: for sometimes The Devil is a gentleman: At others a bard bartering rhymes For sack...
...hare Is this world traged (no man American than the Dreyfus at hdr was French alone), this eatandhj which has shewn the crushing luprswins —from afar one might almost gay th unanimity—of this frightful Amerto whose heart k stone, dt this Amerto tar whom humanity does not flist, to whom there exists only Wigaltsm, of tht America which insists on having eon banned men re-judged by the sen* lodges who have already oondnnnw hem...
...May no lights burn here save witch-fires that burn Along some desolate and abandoned beach...
...but not the supplications of his friends, not enlightened counsel...
...Doheny and Burns, continue in the oil muck up to their ears...
...They hare been the liberals, the Christians—all the saner and better balanced elements of Europe...
...American investors want to break up the system of small holdings and "develop" large estates...
...The Puritanical aversion is etched inlo Sinclair's being, and so he thunders against Sodorn and Gomorrah's abominations...
...My husband and I are now both Socialists...
...It was this that the Defense Committee for Sacco and Vanzetti tried to do—without success—for the United States...
...The heads of Hergesheimer, Huxley, Van Vechten, Patterson, Mencken and Cabell among other lights and stars are either slashed off at one mighty sweep, or battered and bruised sorely...
...He is however aligned against the prevailing market pandering indulged in by most of the litterateurs of the day, in this world of Success Sniffers...
...You don't have to look back either...
...The Republican record is just as inspiring...
...The New Leader has taken over the Amr-riran Appeal in the interest of economy as well as to place at ita disposal the larger staff of contributors serving The New Leader...
...Most Barbarous Cruelty" The question of the guilt of Sacco and Vansettl had become secondary—although, if now their innocence should ever be demonstrated, the revelation would mean the moral crumbling of all official prestige of the representatives of the United States, and of their country with them, for centuries...
...In Cabell, in "Jurgen" he finds a seductive viciousness that has turned the limpid current of undergraduate thought into the whirlpool of loose living wherein our youth has flung itself, these sinful days...
...In the meantime we are compelled to ask the indulgence of our readers...
...He takes every hill with the ease of flying...
...If there exists a Hell, the place of honor in it is reserved for such pride as that...
...and, I may add, of a man who is by certain traits of race as well as of temperament more akin to the Anglo-Saxon than to the Mediterranean...
...He declares that "If the United States were to announce the definite determination to remain permanently, or for an extended period, in control ^the islands, there would be more rapid devel- ^ lent...
...Coolidge is one of its most active Salesmen...
...May there descend on it the cleansing- flame Of some remote supreme catastrophe Divorcing it forever with its shame Prom men Who would be generous, wise, and free...
...Yes, more than mere tolerance...
...Borah—and this is the bitterest of all—said (if the words are correctly reported here) that it was mei*j.y a question of facing down the insolent clamor from abroad, rather than a question of doing justice as far as these two men were concerned...
...We also have known (and we deplore it) that in too many case* the indignation and grief of the multitude are translated abroad into acts of riolence, threats, and insult...
...It carried me at that clip because Sinclair's style is propulsive...
...What is to be done...
...They want to preserve small hoMings and the* fesr the ferre estates which, they know, will become the property of Americans...
...They continued to attack the "Prussians of the North" as they "called us and still call us...
...Yet I must stop to disagree with him on Cabell in particular...
...But I am not at all astonished that these bloodthirsty souls exist...
...That which seems to me the most ierrible side of the tragedy of last svening is not the frightful fate of the iwo unhappy men, whom death has delivered, finally, from the long torture which drained them of their blood, drop by drop, at the hands of their Judicial murderers...
...He does not hint at all how after I had licked him in the first set, an ancient herring that I had devoured an hour before our match swam or crept or crawled up from the dungeon wherein I had doomed him, and wreaked a fearful vengeance for my gluttony...
...The guardian says the judge of Probate Court ordered him to spend our money on Liberty Bonds...
...No professional politician can be without it...
...Coolidge to Soothe Victims ^JOW to keep the...
...Now, here Is he climax of the story: My lawyer discovered the guardian had taken our small sum and without our consent, or even our knowledge had spent it on Liberty Bonds and arranged t so we can't touch it .for years to come...
...Coolidge For Life...
...A thief who cometh in the night...
...It is already setting in...
...And if he beats me then, it will only be because I broke down an hour before the battle and swallowed a sturgeon...
...Coolidge found that hour propitious for his annual vacation (perish the thought of disturbing him...
...We knew similar ones in our Dreyfus affair...
...Take this phrase of "initiative and private enterprise" It's a potent drug that dulls thinking...
...that, henceforth, these poor Italian .mmigrants take their places in the pantheon of the martyrs of the civilised world...
...To get these Jims it is essential to maintain United States Jtrol...
...We knew that there were, with you as with us all, two natures, two Americas, like the two Prances of "Jean Christophe": the France of "La Poire sur La Place," And now...
...Excepting the tennis episode he is more than decent with my humble verses...
...Roman Rolland Accuses "I accuse of high treason again* America those men u>ho ham soiled her Mdth this judicial crime, the Saceo-Vanaetti murder* before the eyes of the world,.....they have destroyed the most sacred rights of all humanity.'9 (Following is a translation of a letter written by the author of "Jean Christopher to Lurien Price of Boston upon receipt in Smtterlaud of the news that Sacco and Vanzetti had been executed...
...May this dour land go back now whence it came— To early granite, to implacable sea...
...If we owned them and managed them for the welfare of all it would be a calamity...
...A few days ago, I asked my lawyer ,o call on the guardian and find out why my babies have to go hungry or cold while their father owns the money to nake them comfortable...
...There are thousands of^workers unemployed in the large cities today...
...Even this control is not sufficiently thorjjh to satisfy those who want to "develop" the Jds as Mr...
...One simple solution was demanded: mercy...
...The same is true of workers in other industries...
...He received an honorable discharge and was Uso decorated for bravery In action...
...He served in the war...
...a statesman spinning crimes...
...That should make us all happy...
...And we who are lowly and aspiring in the world of books and thinking, having read how puny the great are in the light of valid criticism, will walk the- ways of our ideals with new strength and perhaps needful self-esteem...
...It is intended for workers on the farms, in the factories, stores, shops and mines...
...And it is the duty of these latter to dissociate themselves from it...
...The Latin-Americans are still more aroused at our coercion of Mexico and especially the presence of armed forces in Nicaragua to enforce the will of American imperialism...
...Money dictates what is written by even the most unimpeachable of our literary giants...
...For the conscience of the world has received a blow...
...We asked two Judges n Cincinnati to investigate the case and they said they were not interested I called on a prominent attorney and asked to file suit against the guardian and he says it can't be done...
...As well expect a barn to stop the onward sweep of a cyclone as to expect Coolidge or any other man in officcjoprevent the sweep of an industrial stagnation ^pee~^rte~economic forces of capitalism set it going...
...The heavy increase in mail, renewal of subscriptions, new subscriptions being received, letters of appreciation and readjustment of our mailing lists have nearly overwhelmed the office staff...
...Like someone whom it were not right Toymention: or the luckless wight . ' From whom he steals nine silver spoons...
...What it means is that the nation would go to the bow-bows, the farmer would suffer terribly, and the wage worker would not be the fat prosperous and plug-hat aristocrat of the cartoonist if we do not permit a handful of men to own the railroads, elevators and storage plants, textile and steel industries and so on...
...But 'yen know well, ah of you in Unerase, that those most overwhelmed >y the Judicial crime of America have tot been the violent in Europe...
...Coolidge is expert in peddling "spiritual forces" as Wilson was in marketing "moral forces" to keep browbeaten Latin-Americans contented while we deprive them of their Valuables and reduce their countries to crown colonies...
...It is rather the abyss which this offense has now dug between the United States and the rest of the world...
...Not the Filipinos...
...Those who peddle it know that it is a drug...
...The change also enables the-National Office to give its sole attention to problems of organization in the states...
...Guilty or not, one no longer saw in them anything but two unfortunate men, subjected tor years to a refinement of cruelty such as the most barbarous in our world today, Bolshevik, Balkan, or Fascist, would have thought too cowardly, too Inhuman...
...Eventually the Filipinos themselves will be "developed" to serve our investors and this report is a step in that direction...
...You don't suspect that, perhaps, in your country...
...And where I would be I cannot Isn't it just a little queer that so nUSf 1 In the underlying population want peV % tical power and cannot get it whfls a 1 few in the upper range always hsW it...
...Human beings do not want Christian sermons from those who have robbed them...
...I believe if this story was laid before the readers of our paper, it would make 'very Socialist, a greater, stronger soliier of the cause...
...It will be several weeks before we "get our ¦bride" and meantime The New Leader extends ita thanks to the thousands who have helped and are helping to make it what it is...
...All indications point to a healthy awakening due to encouraging election returns and anticipation of our national campaign next year...
...All this description is as confused and incoherent as I felt during the next two sets of tennis...
...As Ever Last night, the dream died . . . The body danced in pagan rhythm With another body...
...As a matter of fact Harding and Coolidge are about the two dullest men that ever held the office...
...Initiative and grivate enterprise" pays handsome dividends to the upper classes...
...The skill and poise that have marked all her work in the present book add only to the poignancy of: the pain it contains...
...ARTHUR DAVIDSON FICKE...
...Well, it would take two months of Sundays to set up here all the proofs against Sinclair's broadside theory...
...And doughtily does he hew about with might and main...
...Battered and bruised and looted as some of these nations were, they listened to Root respectfully but intelligent journalists and Latin-American publicists were not deceived...
...Edwin Arlington Robinson, the peer of American poetry cornea in for a spearing that should disturb Sir Edwin and his retinue not lightly, I wotJ The manner in which Sinclair builds up his case against the literary masters of our land is fundamentally sound on economic premise and surely well fortified by his own experience with the book market for the last twentyfive years...
...Lots of mighty interesting scenery ahead...
...He returned home a physical wreck and has ieen operated on five times...
...But Sacco and Vanzetti have not found in America their Voltaire...
...This is an ex-soldier's reward from the "Noble Democracy" he fought for and from the capitalists of America...
...One must have a savage soul indeed not to have been satisfied before snatching away the last breath of these wretched, palpitating human fragments...
...Greed for money devoured human beings in the stock yards and turned them into sausage meat for the dining table...
...But then, even Sinclair has a right to his reactions, f hope, and so, for this breach in an otherwise Impregnable offense, my forgiveness...
...Permission to publish the Utter has been obtained by cable...
...The fact is that capitalist enterprise is interested in profits, not m supplying other peoples with goods...
...You see, folks, that herring business is something brand new in athletic excuses, so I am making the most of it...
...And devious indeed are the means whereby our glorified geniuses are corrupted with ugly pieces of silver...
...Now it is expected that Coolidge will go to Havana and entertain the delegates with another message of "good will" and "friendship...
...He thinks and writes in high gear...
Vol. 4 • December 1927 • No. 25
