The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1924-10-03
LA GUARDIA IS
TRYING ON new
PAClFIsT COAT
Puts Aside Uniform for
Campaign Purposes
BY BEATRICE CARLIN
Especial to The Daily Worker)

Especial to The Daily worker)
NEW YORK CITY, Oct. e.
Captain FioreIIo II. LaGuardia,
spruce young officer in the
American Flying Corps, 1000
booster of the war aims and
programs Of our Iate-Iamented
democracy-faker, will have a
hard time living down his re-
cord of war patrioteering and
convincing his constituency Of
the sincerity of his right-about-
face pacifism.
1t is permissible, of course,
according to capitalist political
ethics, for an aspirant to public
office to have a complete or
partial change of heart in &C
cordance with the direction in
which the political wind hap
pens to be blowing.
Has Ear to the Ground.
LaGuardia has evidently been keep
ing his ear to the ground, and has
not been slow to capitalize popular
rumblings of anti-war and anti-De-
Tense day sentiment.
The workers of America who were
trained so nicely to eat democratic"
pap out of the hands of the war-mak-
ers, seem to be developing a little
revolutionary pep, and so they must
be soft-soaped for a while until they
get over it.
But they may not get over it. They
may have learned few things since
those early war days in 1917, when the
representative from New York
marched in full war regalia in the
monster parade of drafted men in the
District Of Columbia. That parade of
fourteen thousand drafted workers
was led by the pious peace president
himself, who sent them off to the Eu-
ropean shambles to make the world
safe for the profiteering imperialists
at home.
He Didn't Fight Much.
Not that LaGuardia did much ac-
tual fighting according to all accounts
He seems to have spent good deal Of
time flying his gallant Caproni from
one Italian city to another boosting
the Italian war loan, dining with
King Victor Emmanuel and his bediz-
ened generals and assuring the Italian
imperialists that President Wilson's
bunk about democracy and self-detr-
mination need not be taken too SER
iously. 1t was good stuff for keeping
up the fighting morale of the workers,
but the Italian brethren who had a
covetous eye on Trent, Trieste and
lstria, need not worry; the great de-
mocracy-faker had their aims and
aspirations" well in mind.
At a demonstration staged in Rome
in January, 1918, LaGuardia eulogized
"our unselfish motives" for entering
the war and grandiloquently pro-
claimed that "our determination to
bring about justice to all concerned
while asking nothing for ourselves
was established forever" If the mayor
Of Rome, the princes Of the blood, the
lingo senators, and the goose-step en-
bassies listened to this patriotic drib-
bic with tongue in cheek, still they
knew it was good stuff with which to
feed the workers they were deluding
with hopes Of peace and democracy.
For Trentl TriesteI Istrial
At any rate this glib compatriot from
America knew how to speed up the
"nationalismus," OF the Italian dupes
in the factories and the trenches. At
mass meeting in Milan under the aus
Ices of the Italian Parliamentary I'm
ion, speaking OF the tagging war loan,
ne said, "The slogan of your minister
Of the treasury will be Give! Give
Give! Then your General Diaz can
cry Forward Forward Forward
And foreign minister Sonnio's cry will
be: Trent Trieste! Istria!'"
The pacifist LaGuardia must look
back somewhat ,ruefully on those days
of vociferous patrioteering, but he
need not despair-the day may not be
lar distant when his record will stand
him in good stead. and If he does not
commit himself too rashly in his pres
INT bid for workers support, he may
yet be called to serve his real mas.
.ers. the capitalists and imperiaiists
II America, and once more be gath.
'red to the bosom OF the National Sc.
;urity League, who endorsed him in
July. 1918 when he ran on fusion
ticket against Scott Nearing, at that
line socialist candidate in his (i4th)
district.