A YEAR OF BLACK REACTION ENDS
A Year of Black Reaction Ends 1929 Brings a Challenge to Young America ^HE bells that toll a requiem for a dying old year also announce the arrival of a new one. The old we know, the new we...
...Now Go to Work Suppose that by jailing two or three hundred people at a time when it it was practically impossible for them to get bail or consult counsel, you did succeed in capturing a possible stick-up man or so...
...27, Vopicka reported a detailed plan he had made earlier for the Allies to get Bulgaria's support by pledging to Serbia enougii of Austria's territory to lure Bulgaria Into a similar deal for Macedonia...
...We hope that reading this wont Interfere with your going to Area or reviewing Western Union messenger boys or seeing the City Hall reporters or getting into the talkies...
...The old we know, the new we cannot fathom...
...If Bryan knew it he certainly did not keep the knowledge from Wilson...
...On the whole, we are not amused...
...Of course, anyone who has ever been connects . with the advertising department of a large New York deiutr'ment store might be expected to go in strong for publicity...
...its politicians-juggling with more cruisers and its chemists experimenting with poisons intended for human beings, not rats...
...For the sake of making a Whalen holiday it looks to us as though these same civil liberties were about to be abrogated...
...Like a strumpet maudlin with lowgrade gin American j>olitics ambled thorugh a shameful orgy of booze and bunk...
...He added that "There is a scheme on foot to sen to Germany at fancy prices the whole of Rumania's crop through an economic society which was formed here a few days ago— of course, for the consideration that the members ot the society, which would mean more or less all Rumanian landowners, would favor Germany...
...And how does making goats out of coppers like OXoughlln and Valentine stop that...
...Honest, you don't have to put ont all the flres around town...
...No, Grover, you are getting to be a public nuisance...
...We want peace...
...in this America another generation is coining of age since the end of the World War...
...And that's why we can't pass you up merely as a rather chec publicity seeker...
...The old year greets the new year with this doddering statesmanship which promises to land us all again in the ditch...
...Brookwood Labor College, an institution tliat would have been a shrine for the fighters of the old generation, is condemned without a hearing or a trial...
...All members of the association should attend...
...On Oct...
...Oooh...
...He failed...
...The indiscriminate and sensational Jailing of a car-load of "suspects" may serve to keep some of the people fooled...
...The old banners mingle with the colors of the great masters of American life and the trade unions arc dragged in the dust in behalf of a Tammany politician...
...The chemist declares that "War will never again be fought with shot and shell...
...It is well that the dead cannot awaken...
...I asked him, "Why, then, does not your government relieve themselves of the odium of pursuing an inhuman policy by agreeing to allow food to go to the civil population of Germany'.' You have nothing to lose, because you admit you cannot starve the satfan into submission, and you have much to gain, because you Will put Germany In the position of having to stop her submarine attacks or else bear alone the stigma of being cruel and inhuman...
...It Would be the very best course my government would take, and Would put Germany in a serious dilemma, I shall suggest it to Mr Edward Grey and urge its adoption...
...I will not mention vour name or vour trovcrnment in connection with the •object...
...He replied with marked emphasis, "You are entirely right...
...You arc undoing all the work that a lot of Intelligent, industrious, sober scientists have been doing to make a real study of crime in this town...
...It is a hideous prospect for this gas is known to the leading powers of the world...
...He suggested that his plan would put Germany into a hole...
...Never have...
...I have heard unofficial confirmation of this agreement here...
...But this peace pact does not bar any power from going to war for any of the reasons which they cite as justifying war...
...Men have gone to prison to make the tinion legal...
...Minister Charles Vopicka, at Bucharest, Oct...
...KHental to the purchase of Italy and Rumania by the Allies •M the buying of Bulgarian support by the Central Powers is a delation of the strictly business attitude taken by the Wilson ¦Jnhustration toward the conflict at that period...
...The Living and The Dead No less sad was the collapse and plunge of many trade unions into this political swill...
...He left me with the impression that he was heartily in favor •t the suggestion and would do all that he could to have his fovernment adopt it...
...Begin the New Year with determination to win a world of social equity and industrial democracy before the guns begin tn rnnx and clouds of poison vapor destroy mankind More Light On Wilson's Holy War Lansing Called Britain "Inhuman" and "Repugnant" ntgE curtain Is lifted a bit higher on the diplomatic machinaloons which eventually led the United States into the World War and the sacrifice of 120,000 American lives in a "war to war » Several years behind the foreign offices of Germany, gaaria, England and Austria the United States government at w* Is publishing "diplomatic papers" dealing with the World Ifer...
...Then the last week of the old year brings with it some war disclosures from the Federal archives at Washington...
...And you found two naughty policemen talking to each other...
...Bat he seem* to be too bony to answer...
...On April 20, 1915, nearly one year after the outbreak of the World War...
...that he knew that the purpose of starving the German people had undo a bad impression In this country, although we had done the ¦sme thing in our Civil War, and that the Germans asserted that their submarine warfare was only retaliatory...
...In all quarters of the world Atncrican capital is engaged in factoryizing and dollarising otlver peoples, transforming them into robots...
...We are alarmed at this sort of monkey-business and rightly so...
...Each swore fealty to our ruling Babbitts, each revived ancient hates, and each ignored the burning questions of the hour...
...These are your causes...
...All the administrative, police, executive and judicial powers of the nation could not jail those who stole pofential billions of wealth from the nation...
...In other words you have restored the vicious, old third-degree stuff with a vengeance...
...Never in all history has an owning class been more prosperous...
...Many thousands have been caged, some for many years and for trifling thefts...
...Secretary of Stale Bryan two weeks later received a cable from Ambassador Page in London announcing this agreement...
...GROVER WHALEN...
...Is that worth the price of admission to your thriller...
...Yet in this America with its mass production, its billionaires and its unfortunates...
...So, Mr...
...We mean the working-class people of New York City...
...You're Police Commissioner, not Fire Commissioner...
...They faced bull pens in the west, deportations in Michigan, Colorado and West Virginia...
...France and Russia secretly agreed that if Italy would join the Allied side the latter would be l>ermitted to annex the Trentino, the Southern Tyrol, Trieste, Isfria, Dalmatia, numerous islands off the Dalmatian coast, and with the prospect of other loot...
...that THE ATTEMPT OFFERED a MORE or less plausible EXCUSE FOR germany's SINKING OF unarmed MERCHANTMEN, AND that germany WAS, as he KNEW, USING THIS EXCUSE WITH considerable effect...
...The tall hats, the large paunches, and the empty heads know...
...i I asked him if, knowing the facts and the futility of their "ttervatlon policy," it would not be a wise course for his governnent to accede to the proposal, which was made some time ago, that Great Britain would permit foodstuffs to go to the civil popshtloq provided Germany would cease her submarine warfare as merchant ships, I POINTED OUT TO HIM THAT THE IDEA OF STARVING MEN, WOMEN AND children SEEMED TO many peoPLE AS INHUMAN AS drowning THEM...
...IV charge made by so eminent a historian as Charles A. Beard the Wilson administration did not exerclso as firm a hand against British "atrocities" and violations of American rights on the seas sa it did, finally, against German activities, is substantiated by none other than Robert Lansing, Wilson's Secretary of gtste during the war period...
...The third degree, solemn judges, and justice blind.and gagged sent the petty offenders to prisons just to show that there are some who must not break the law...
...The wounds made on our social life will leave scars for years to come...
...Whatever their elders may think, the children obtained shoes from the proceeds of a cliarity ball while Calvin Coolidge was preparing for a vacation on the estate of one of his wealthy keepers...
...What becomes of the Fourteen Points, "Open covenants of peace, 0|x?nly arrived at,'' and what of the young men who died and those who are crippled if Wilson knew that one of the secret bargains for loot had been ratified before he called us to the colors ' An Appeal To Youth Finally, a few days before Christmas a research chemist declared that a new gas for use in war had been invented, a gas so terrible that even military experts hesitate to recommend its use...
...Sensational and sordid is the story of war-time intrigue by the tWat military powers to secure the support of Italy, Bulgaria •M Rumania In the year 1915, as related by official dispatches *¦* correspondence just made public by the State Department...
...It is youth in the unions that must emancipate them from sterility and the poison embrace of the National Civic Federation...
...Within the span of a single generation the United States has evolved from a debtor to the leading creditor nation...
...But some of these were honest, hard-working cops, as cops go and we are not yelling for the heads of any individual cops...
...We know that you've been mighty busy front-paging ever since you got the job, but we thought perhaps you might Bke to learn how your show went over with a considerable body of citizens whose opinion is not consulted by the old-line critic...
...That*s all right with us too...
...We.don't think so...
...Report of the Business Manager...
...Emptied of honor and stuffed with the dollars of capitalists and liankers the two parties swined their way into the same dirty pen...
...The top Itat gentlemen who head the foreign offices haze been careful to state that it does not erect any barriers to waging war...
...He srged the British government to discontinue its food blockade...
...The several hundreds of children in Oklahoma City who were shoeless have not been asked...
...from their labor has gushed vast riehes thai flow into the money vats of our great masters...
...Bankers, corporation attorneys, super-power magnates, masters of great industrial plants—these are the gentry chosen as cronies by labor men...
...Like the series of papers issued by England and France, aad Uke those dishonest books issued by Germany and Russia and ¦tence in the earlier of the post-war years, the American "Papers gelating to the Foreign Relations of the United States," World War supplements, carry with them no assurance that the docusate presented were not "selected" or "edited" to please the aar-makers' sensibilities...
...Sweep them aside...
...and enforce the law...
...They persevered for years through eight-hour strikes...
...England preferred to give her small ¦tty of propagandists in the United States and the interests of American holders of British bonds more time to whip up a war ¦JWt here...
...This era is marked by mergers and billion dollar corporations that are gathering in the productive and distributive powers of the nation...
...We still have vivid memories of the bloody storm that swept over the world and we are not unreasonable...
...What they did to these wretches in the Various stationhouses before they arraigned them in court we don't know, I lit we have our suspicion...
...New York City Dear Grover: We have written quite a lot of letters to your boas, the Mayor...
...Vast dividends have been declared and the clink of dollars has drowned the cry of the farmer whose land was sold at a sheriff's sale...
...They struck at class education and won the public school...
...I said, "You admit that you cannot starve Germany by interrupting food sal imports, and yet you continue your efforts to stop the trade sal lay yourself open to the charge of inhumanity by attempthg to reduce Germany by starvation...
...Despite Lansing's strong characterization of England's wartime tactics, he like Wilson,Who is reported to have expressed •hular views before he decided to enter the "war for demnc••ey," within a year had conciliated themselves to the Idea of •thong side-by-side with this nation which used "inhuman" and "••pngnanf means...
...Ambassador Walter Hines Page, in a cable to Secretary Bryan, r~*S' 8, I915, reports a confidential disclosure made to him by '•¦political editor of the London Times, that "England, France and Russia made a bargain with Italy April SO, agreeing to cede to Italy very large parts of Austria, some of which has a Slavic population, if Italy comes into the war within a month...
...The dollar sign has followed the flag all over the world...
...19, 1915, reported to Secretary Lansing that the Roman)tin king was trying to prevent Rumania from going into the war for the Allies "against Bulgaria...
...Me added, "The suggestion will *» niy own, and so will the arguments in its favor...
...at least he had, the last time we read a theater program...
...That is, human beings will be poisoned wholesale, both civilians and soldiers...
...1 he old mother garbed in rags who fainted of hunger while peering in a Brooklyn window Christmas eve did not dispute it when a patrolman picked her up...
...While Coolidge Celebrates Yes, it has been a "prosperous"' year, but somehow it did not interest that electrician who, a week ago, hung himself in Highbridge Tark after nine months of unemployment...
...With grave problems facing the organized toilers men rise to condemn John Dewey after he has given a generation of wonderful service to the ideal of democratic education...
...He had visited Russia, wrote a few articles, and is called a "Communist...
...ding-dong...
...So does the New Vear...
...It was "expediency" he was interested in...
...But could the dead have awakened this year and observed the officials who inherited the old glorious banners what would have been their emotions...
...It make* red-hot reading...
...its declining trade unions and spiritless leaders...
...It is merely a "moral gesture" and this is the net result eleven years after the armistice was signed...
...JULIUS GERBER, Secretary...
...Commissioner, now that you've had your fun and all the clippings are in your scrap-book, please settle down and go to work and be a police commissioner and remember that we are paying you to preserve order and detect crime and that you're not one of the Four Marx Brothers...
...Sprlng-Rlcc had given the impression that hs would do all he could to have his government adopt Lansing's *Kesrloiis...
...He spoke again of the tactical benefit to his government if the coarse proposed should be adopted, and of the favorable effect Which he knew it would have on public opinion In this country...
...They helped to wring the suffrage from unwilling property owners...
...The electoral struggle revealed heno low the politics of capitalism can sink when its leaders become fat in the sen-ice of our ruling classes...
...It was nearly two years later that the United States entered the war...
...Organized and drilled for political service to the party housed in the General Motors Building...
...By order of the Board of Directors, MORRIS BERMAN, President...
...Then the old year brought with it the dirtiest political campaign in our history...
...it seems to me the Politic thing for your government to do...
...This memorandum reads: Washington, May 27, 19J5...
...The 1915 supplement to the foreign relations papers, issued tan work by the State Department in Washington, offer sufficient material, however, to uphold the position of the Socialists and (then who opposed entrance into the war by the United States...
...I asked him why, in view of this fact, his government should h) so determined to keep foodstuffs out of Germany...
...Maybe we're crotchety and hard to please, but we are not throwing up our hats about anything you've done so far...
...But it isn't real stuff...
...Members of the Socialist Party desiring to join the association ai#Hnvited to attend...
...THAT THE LEGALITY OF THE ATTEMPT WAS NEITHER HERE NOR THERE...
...Of course it's loads of fun to see the pretty engines go toot, toot down the Mock and get in on all the flash-lights...
...Robert Lansing, while counsel to the State Department, made s memorandum on a conversation he had with Sir Cecil SpringjOce, then British ambassador to the United States...
...But the majesty of the law was not idle...
...But aren't you a bit mixed up...
...This Mas done without consulting Serbia and against her wishes...
...The old year poses the question...
...ROBERT LANSING...
...A man named Dorman has that Job...
...Commissioner Whaler Plays With Fires Some Polite Advice To A New Police Chief TTON...
...The old passes into history with the United States the greatest imperial power since the Caesers ruled from the banks of the Tiber...
...And then, ding-dong...
...Oblivion is kind to the old fighters who did not live into the old year that is passing...
...Coupled with it is the fifteen-cruiser bill—a "moral gesture" accompanied with more engines of destruction...
...Out of the industrial hopper the nation's toilers grind vast fortunes for a few to enjoy...
...Our labor history has had its great days of courage, of noble striving, of inspiring battles and willingness to do and dare...
...You gave out word that cops are not to chat on posts...
...This was making heap big clean-up according to your friendly press...
...Ho thus* revealed a partiality to Britain long ketone his country had entered the war against Germany...
...The order of business will include: 1—Election of a Board of Directors for the ensuing year...
...The Lusitania •jkujg and the stopping of American cargoes by the British **ot cau&ed endless protest from Washington, which was not at ** concerned with the rights of small nationalities or the right m self-determination...
...So we are wrltiag to you, for a change...
...The Ambassador replied that what I said was convincing...
...They smashed compulsory militia drill ordered by uniformed popinjays...
...Peace and More Cruisers And as twilight gathered at the end of the old year the party nobles in the U. S. Senate delil>erated over the peace pact negotiated by Secretary of State Kellugg...
...There they were fed by their keepers while hired couriers advertised the wares of the two parties...
...We are not for* constabulary kaffee-klatches...
...The muscles, tissues and brains of millions of workmen have l>een drained as no race of slaves was ever drained before...
...Whichever way the German Government decides, Great Britain would seem to be the gainer...
...Lansing, as he admits, did not make these suggestions to hrBain because of his "humanltarlanism...
...But it »a» ^rmanv and Austria who Md highest for the Bulgarian armtea...
...The New Leader Publishing Association The annual meeting of The New Leader Publishing Association will be held Monday evening, January 7, at 8:30 p. m., at the People's House, 7 East 15th Street, in the Studio...
...its parties of booze and bunk, piety and profits...
...with its free oil thieves and injuncrioned strikers...
...But it was a "prosperous" year...
...England...
...Here are droves of trade union leaders gathered around John J; Raskob, multimillionaire and proprietor of an open shop industry...
...And this is not a "moral gesture...
...In a conversation which I had this afternoon at the department with Sir Cecil Spring-Rice I said to him that information received from many sources indicated that Germany was not suffering from lack of food, but on the contrary had sufficent to last until the harvest, and that after that there would be a great abundance, as all arable land had been planted with grain and other food •MBS...
...You have given carte blanche to a lot of ignorant, hysterical men in uniform, who think their Jobs are in danger, to do what they will with practically defenceless citizens, merely on the ground that e some time or other these citizens might hare offended againsociety...
...The Ambassador replied that he understood my position and Would promise that our conversation would be treated as secret not mentioned in any way...
...It is you who will face the tragedy being prepared for you by the masters who have our industries and whose political agents make the law, interpret the law...
...The old year was also a year of "prosperity...
...She was too weak to answer questions...
...A military man extols a policy of conscripting labor in the next war and he is not challenged, although the bill he approved has been condemned by the A. F. of L. news service...
...In this memorandum, Lansing expressed himself firmly against the British policy of trying to starve the civilian population of Germany...
...2—Report of the Editor...
...Ponce Headquarters...
...And why...
...And then you have done the old, old game of walking around Bagdad in disguise...
...We didn't expect much else...
...It is youth that must mobilize the political forces tliat may be used to wrest power from those who now have it...
...This policy Lansing termed "inhuman" and "repugnant...
...They destroyed the debtors prisons...
...Bnt what the hell...
...Not one oil thief or one accomplice of the oil thieves spent a night in jail...
...You had your cops go out and drag In about three hundred "susl>ects...
...The future belongs to youth...
...In the nght of this partiality, it is easy to understand why he was so •xious to conceal his part of the conversation with Spring-Rice...
...Myths, prejudices, wealth, power and cunning stand in the way...
...He replied that what I said was true, but that knowledge of Germany's food supply had been only recently obtained by his government...
...We do not want another bloody shambles...
...Lives of women and children were also given in the fearful holocaust at Ludlow...
...It's the damnable hypocrisy and down-right cruelty that's underneath your so-called "clean-up" of criminals...
...What's the answer...
...I said to him that if he proposed to his government to take that •ction, I earnestly hoped that he would not mention having had •sy conversation with me on the subject, that he must understand I had spoken confidentially and personally, and that to hwe any one in the department making, even unofficially, such a WSfestion, and especially advancing argument In its favor from the British standpoint, would be most embarrassing...
...Woodrow Wilson declared that he had no knowledge of any secret treaties yet our Ambassador to England cabled Wilson's Secretary of State the news of the secret treaty with Italy two weeks after the treaty was negotiated...
...Oh, for the life of a flyerman.'* You've been running to more flyers, you old smoke-eater...
...There are certain things called civil liberties which apply even to poor people...
...What we are after Is breaking the rotten alliance between the police department and Tammany Ball that has been in force In this city since Walker knows when...
...We have seen just that sort of tiring happen in the case of suspected "reds" and we don't care for a repetition...
...The New Year will probably answer it...
...I do not suggest this course on humanitarian grounds, but solely on the ground of expediency...
...It's a swell red-herring to draw across the trail or the corruption of a city department by a bunch of hard-boiled Tammany politicians...
...It was a great year for another reason...
...Some died at Latimer, in the Coeur d' Alene and in the Hocking Valley...
...feared abroad as Rome was feared, our ruling classes gorged with wealth and their appetite still unsated...
...In short, as the old year passes it passes on to th* New Year the possibility of civilization committing suicide...
...From banking houses, great corporations and financial journals have come a chorus of praises fur "prosperity...
...Like Willie Steven*—He Like* Fire* Let's sec now, after you had your pics taken umpteen times, you turned around and canned three or four high police officials...
...SINCE THE VERY IDEA WAS repugnant TO THE HUMANE SENTIMENTS OF MODERN society...
...Then New Orleans and the annual congress of labor gathers to—deliberate...
...Very sincerely yours, THE EDITORS OF THE NEW LEADER P. S.—Wc have just learned that one of the dangerous criminals plcked-up by your "dragnet" was a member of the Young Peoples Socialist League engaged in the horrible crime of soliciting funds to feed the men, women and children of the Paterson strikers...
...Italy will soon come in if she keeps her agreement, to be followed by Rumania...
...But after all Verging on a Public Nuuanee But what really irritates us is not this baby stuff...
Vol. 7 • December 1928 • No. 54
