New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-08-08
Call" Editor
Tells Why He
Quit Socialists
Anti-War Attitude Of Party a
Menace. Chester M. Wright
Declares
tStar Correspondence

that his resignation from the Socialist
party was brought aobut by the atti-
tude of the party toward the war and
/ toward the trade union movement.
"Since America entered the war
have not considered myself a party
I Socialist, and it now Is some time since
my actual resignation was rendered,
/ ne said "But long before the war !
was in conflict with the party majority
on the question of the party's attitude
toward the organized labor movement,
I and il was after failure to secure mod
! ifcaton of the position on that ques-
( tion that resigned as managing editor
/ Of The New York Call
! To-day. of course, the war is the
paramount issue. cannot remain with
/ any movement that is not loyal to the
! cause of America in this crisis. Be-
cause Of that tire Socialist party means
/ TO me to-day an organization whose
| purpose and effort arc exactly in oppo-
! sition to everything in which believe.
81 believe the Socialist party now is
the greatest block in the path of
4 progress toward democracy and social
ism that We have in America. In every
essential influence ii is anti-social.
Party Has Failed
Socialists have prided themselves on
their ability TO analyze world move
ments and to understand social forces.
But, in the supreme test, they have
/ failed, abjectly and completely. so far
as the party is concerned.
81 believe Socialists will agree il has
been the Socialist contention that
about the best We could do was to as
sist evolution. We could not compel
evolution. we could open peoples eyes
to il. We could make the way easier
by lessening the opposition.
"To day all the social forces in the
world are unclaimed in the greatest
evolutionary drive the world has ever
known and the American Socialist
party makes bold TO hurl its weight
against evolution, as an unsophisticated
young bull might hurl himself at a
locomotive.
"As see it, this war is compressing
into massive but monentary convul-
sion that which might be the natural
evolution CT 100 years. IL Is driving
the world in a cylonic rush toward the
very things for which Socialists have
clamored. | cannot understand why
tiny true Socialist wishes to even make
the effort to stop progress toward that
which he has professed most to desire.
The only reason presenting itself to
me is that like that old victim of op-
tlcal illusion, the party Socialists to-
day are in position where they can
not see the woods for trees The
wreckage of reaction is crashing down
about us so rapidly that, to my mind,
none who really wishes progress can
fail to be gratifed IL is only by
clearing away of old institutions. old
/ forms, old impediments, that we make
way for new. The old is going fast
/ just now.
Friend of German Cause
"By its attitude the Socialist party
| has placed itself in the position Of be-
/ ing a friend of the German cause. II
| doesn't matter what the motives may
have been; 1t is the fact that counts.
And the fact is that the Socialist party
| Of America is opposing the cause of
/ America and befriending the cause of
/ Germany. To remain with en- organ
! ization that fosters and further, how
/ ever unwittingly, the most autocratic
resctionary, bloodthirsty and criminal
cause on earth, is impossible. And for
Socialist to proclaim his friendship
for progress while helping such a cause
OF reaction as that of Kaiserism passes
understanding.
Let me make this clear: | am heart
and soul with America; am heart and
soul with the cause of labor and de-
mocracy, a cause so bound up in the
/ fortune of this war that TO desert the
cause of America would be 70 desert
everything that the normal heart holds
dear and that the normal mind
clings TO.
"The world to-day is psychological
for democracy. Democracy is the house
hold word Of the world. And every shot
fired on the Allied front, as it tears
away the defences of autocracy, helps
erect the foundations for more de-
mocracy than earth has ever known.
The Socialist party ought 10 know
enough about psychology to perceive
something of what this world cry for
democracy portends; it ought to know
enough about evolution to see in which
direction we are moving. II il does
not know it only proves what some
have suspected the movement
never has been a real Socialist move
ment; that it never has fitted Amer
lean conditions and the American peo-
Pile. and that sooner or later IL would
have to give way before some more
native effort.
"In New York some OF us tried TO
bring the party TO the position in which
we believed it belonged, but il was Of
no avail. was convinced then that
further relation With the party was to
be impossible but. hoping against hope,
awaited the St. Louis convention. That
convention blasted the future of the
Socialist party in America finally and
for good. 1t is feeding now in its last
days upon the rotten Teutonic Tester
on our body polite, as grewsome a sight
as American political history has ever
afforded, believe.
81 am out of the Socialist party be-
cause am an enemy OF the cause that
party has espoused, and because that
party has become an enemy OF human
freedom in the hour of freedoms great
est need. II doesn't matter what mo-
tives the party may have had in taking
its anti-American, anti-democratic po-
sition, il is the hideous fact tina,