Webster City freeman. [volume] (Webster City, Hamilton County, Iowa) 1884-1946, 1916-02-08
A FURTHER DISCUS
SION OF SOCIALISM
Mrs. Bossenberger Gives Some At
tention to Statments of
P. W. Collins.

jticle by Peter Collins in recent Is
sue of your paper prompts me to
once more ask for the privilege OF
coming before your readers. In all OF
Mr.. Collins articles he expresses in
dignation at any ones replying to
him in his absence.
| Does Mr.. Collins want to be tax
en- seriously in this instance? Does
he think that any question under
the sun can be settled for all time in
an hour? @
til hours after an address that one
can formulate important points that
would have been overlooked in the
heat of an argument. The value OF
this has been appreciated SO keenly
by one of our leading eastern col
lleges that they have made ruling
that no lecturer is to leave the VI
entity of the college for several days
after he has delivered an address, IN
order that the students may have &C
cess to him as questions bearing up
on his lecture begin to formulate
themselves. Mr.. Collins permits
questions at his lectures, it is true,
but according to his own statement
in Williams, question may be an
swered in such a manner as to get
the questioner both coming and go
| ing. He told the story of socialist
who tried to pin him down to an
answer one evening by saying,
"Look here, now Collins, don't
dodge, but answer my question, yes
or no." Collins said, "My man, VIII
you answer question for me by
saying either yes or no." Upon sig
nifying his willingness to do so, Mr..
Collins said to the man, Have you
stopped beating your ,wife?" well.
he could not answer me-" said Mr..
Collins, because if he had said yes,
lit would have signified that at one
time he had been a wife beater, and
|if he had said no, it would have
meant that he was still beating
her!' That story to my mind typ
|ifies the man! Is it to the sidestep-
per and the trick debatef that we
are to commit our cause? Is he to
decide what particular political par
lty Christian is to belong to? Nay
more, is he to decide whether or not
a respectable citizen of Webster City
lis to be allowed to continue as
member of a church? The favorite
pastime of the dark ages was trying
men for heresy; is it ITO be resurrect-
ed in Webster City?@
Mr.. Collins coolly states in his
communication that when he spoke
lat Webster City he Proved that
socialism is denial of Cod" per-
haps as one paper put it laconically,
Gle proved ito his own satisfac-
ton at least" I know Mr.. Collins
would like to have men: swallow his
charges of atheism, free love, etc., at
a gulp, but fortunately they have
way of turning things over in their
own mind and doing a little quiet
thinking before they commit them
selves in these days What Mr.. Col
|lins did prove was that Marx, Bebel,
|LaFarge and number of other men
were socialist, also that they were
atheists. He has still to prove that
because one man shares another
mans views upon politics he must OF
necessity share that mans views
upon religion, or his fondness for
pie, etc. The fact that two things
occur together is no reason for con-
Guiding that the same thing caused
them both. The fact of the matter
is, that Mr. Collins wants the gem
|eral public to regard socialism as
atheistic, immoral and anarchistic.
He wants you, moreover, to let him
Isettle this for you in an hour and
objects to any one thinking about
lit, much less discussing it, in his alb
sence. 'Is it Christian" he asks,
''for Mr.. Donaldson to reply to me,
when l am 5000 miles away" So
long as his replies reach Mr.. Collins
and Webster City newspa-
per is big enough and fair
enough to allow him the OPP
portunity to answer back, can see
no unfairness even in the situation,
let alone any call to question a
mans Christianity for SO doing.
Free speech and free press often
fall under the ban of certain inter-
ests. To get back to socialism, many
people have asked me why the Cath
Ollie church was opposed to it enough
to fight it through it's organizations,
and had Mr.. Collins seen fit to in
form you on that subject he could
have done so. In his lecture and ar
fticles he quoted from Pope Leo XIII
the famous encyclical on labor, in
which the pope says: THE work