The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-10-15

the Lena massacre in Siberia He related how the
mine workers were thrown out of their homes how
they lived in tents, how these tens were Kerosene
saturated and set fire, how the fleeing workers
were shot down by soldiers ard how twenty women
and children persisted in the flames. Turning upon
Rockefeller, the king of milonaires, he said These
are your mines. These are your hired thugs and
gunner. You the murderer"
So from the battlefieds he returned not with
futile chatter about atrocities of the war on one
side or the other but with curses upon war itself
as the one great atrocity--a blood-bath organized
by the rival imperialisms In 'The Liberator," a
radical revolutionary journal to which without fee
he contributed the best of his writings he published
a ferocious anti-militarist article under the can
ton: sect Tight jacket Ready for Your Soldier
Som" Along with the other editors he was hailed
before the New York courts to be tried for treason
The prosecutor made every effort to obtain SEN
tence Of guilty from the patriotic jury, going SO
far as to have band play national hymns near the
court while the trial proceeding. But Reed ard
his colleagues stood by their convictions When he
boldly declared that he considered it his duty to
fight fer the social revolution under the revolution
airy flag, the prosecutor put the question:
But IN the present war you would fight under
the American flag"
"No!" categorically replied Reed
''Why not?"
In answer Reed delivered passionate speecb in
which he depicted the horrors he had witnessed on
the battefields. So vivid SO heart-movng that even
some OF the prejudcod petty bourgeois jurors were
moved to tears and the editors were acquitted.
Just as America entered the world war it happened
that he underwent operation removing one Of his
kidneys. The surgeons declared him unfit for mill
tary service.
"The loss Of one kidney may exempt me from
service in the war between the nations" he said
but it won't exempt me from service in the war
between the classes"
In Russia he discerned the first skirrnishes in this
great class war and hither he hurried in the summer
of 1917.
Swiftly analysing the situation, he saw that The
conquest OF power by the proletariat was logical
and inevitable. But its delay and postponenent
troubled him. Every morning he rose and looked out
OF the door to see whether the revolution had ar
rived Each time with something like irritation he
found it hadn't. Finally Smolny gave the signal
and the masses moved forward into the revolution
airy struggle And quite naturally John Reed moved
forward with them. He was everywhere At the
dissolution of the Preparlament the erection of the
barrcades, the ovation for Lenn and Zinoviev
emerging from underground the fall of the Winter
Palace.
But all this he relates in his book
His materials he picked up on all sides moving
from place to place. He gathered complete files of
"Pravda," "Izvestia," all procamations brochures.
placards and posters. He had particular passion
for posters Whenever new one appeared and he
couldn't get it any other way he didn't hesitate to
tear it from the walls
In those days posters came from the press 60
thick and fast that it was difficult to find space
for them on the hoardings. Cadet Socialist Revolu
tlonary Menshevik Left S. r. and Bolshevik posters
were plastered one on top of another So deem that
once Reed ripped off sixteen of them at one pull
Bursting into my room waving the big paner slab
he cried: Lock- At sweep I've bagged the
whole Revolution and Counter Revolutioni"
Thus in various ways he gathered together a
magnificent collection of materials So magnificent
was i, that when he to the New York wharf
IN the Spring Of 1913 the agents of the American
attorney general minister of iustice) took it awav
from him. He succeeded however, in laying hands
On it again and hiding himself with it in a little
room in New York, amidst the rattle of the elevated
trains rushing by overhead and the roar of the subj
way trains beneath him, he pounded out on his tvno
writer Ten Days That Shook the World
The American fascist of course didn't want this
book to reach the public Six times they broke into
Che office of the publishing house. trying to steal
(Continaed on Page Taoo)