The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1924-02-06
ETROIT HOLDS
luce MEETING IN
nHONOR OF LENIN
1000 Workers in Big
Demonstration
By STANLEY BOONE
Special to The Daily workerJ

fA%cAlhS O,UUU men, WOIlAbn anu SHitut Su
assembling in Arena Gardens behind
the combined Russian and Ukranian
choruses in memorial service with
out precedent here. Hundreds were
turned away.
c. e. Ruthenberg, secretary Of the
Workers Party Of America, and Dem
mis- E. Bait, editor Of the Detroit
Labor News, organ of the Detroit
Federation of Labor, were the speak
ers. ION one side of the platform
light played on portrait Of the dead
lead draped in red and black. Out
waIt from the platform stretched
the deep rectangle Of unquiet faces,
rising at last where the gallery cut
upward to the roof.
Ruthenberg followed Bait on the
program and was greeted with three
successive choruses Of applause that
he had difficulty in quieting. Out
bursts of emotion came again and
again when the speakers were telling
of Lenin and his place in history.
Former Revolts Were Blind.
Ruthenberg traced the efforts of
the worlds exploited millions, since
the ancient Greek slave state, to cast
off oppression and achieve freedom,
first pointing cut that a knowledge
of this background was essential to
an understanding Of Lenin's life.
Previous revolts had been emotional
and blind, he said. Slave and serf
revolted when their suffering grew
unbearable. 1t was Lenin's work to
adjust revolutionary effort not only
to desire and principle but scientific
4 plan.
The point was stressed by Bait
that, whereas Lenin saw effects take
place in his own lifetime at least
equal to those seen by Napoleon,
Washington, Caesar and Alexander,
the effects with which he had to do
were not dependent on the presence
Of his own personality. Lenin, the
MARKHAM, could not give his life to a
plan which he did not believe would
4 rvive him.
Need Of Communist Vanguard.
Tho his immediate revolutiona-
ry tactic was limited in the slogan
that swept Russia, "All Power to the
Soviets", Lenin saw that there must
also be developed a revolutionary
vanguard in a Communist Party, a
body of the most enlightened men
and women of the movement, to ad-
wise and to guide and to lead and to
carry their discipline to the point Of
racing imprisonment or death if so
ordered, Ruthenberg said. And now
we could turn to any country Of
- c.
whether in England or Bulgaria, the
party Of Lenin leading the struggle
Of the workers toward the ideal Of
freedom. 1t was so in japan and
China.
"And we must not forget that here
in America we have a Communist
Party, the Workers Party, the party
Of Lenin =. :"
~ Join Workers Party!
Those present who felt deeply the
Ykgnifcance of the gathering, the pur-
Jose and the admiration and the hope
which had brought them together,
could do no better in passing out the
door to their homes than apply fer
membership in the Workers Party, by
filling out an application that they
might obtain there, Ruthenberg
added. He defined also the purpose
Of the Communist International and
its relationship, in Lenin's mind, with
the Russian Revolution and the revo-
uticn of the workers everywhere
against capitalist exploitation by inn
perial states.
AS Comrade Bait explained, Ru-
thenberg concluded, Lenin began
early in his life to plan and work for
the revolution. To this ideal and this
plan he gave his great intelligence,
his great courage. He was always a
soldier on its fighting front, demand
ing, planning and looking toward the
dictatorship Of the proletariat. Let
the thousands who were present fol-
low in his footsteps.
"A Finnish band played intermit-
eAssAtly, sometimes an accompaniment
Ito the voices of the magnificent
choirs. Full throated human voices
'snd sounded brass opened and closed
the services with The international
and the Funeral March of the Rus
sian Revolution.
Long Live The Revolution.
A resolution, read by Edgar Owens,
district organizer Of the Workers
Party, chairman of the meeting, writ
ten by the Detroit Lenin Memorial
Committee and adopted with crash
Of hand clapping, conveyed to the
Central Executive Committees Of the
Communist International and the
Communist Party Of Russia the fol-
lowing coincidence ain the loss Of our
beloved leader:
1--WE, the workers of Detroit, do
on this solemn occasion offer our
heartfelt tribute to the memory Of
the great leader Of the information
al working class, Vladimir Ilyitch
Ulianov,--Lenin. In accord with
the conscious workers Of the world
we express our sorrow for the loss
Of our beloved and incompatible
leader ard pledge ourselves to
struggle increasingly for the VIC
tory of the workers revolution.
Comrade Lcnin is dead. But his
ideas, as expressed in the Commun-
tnt ottnpaI 1t... - -. Lad