fOur llights "Then he showed four lights when he wished them to set full sail and follow in his wake/'

25, 1917. AN ADVENTURE IN INTERNATIONALISM VoL. I No.._ 16

And we are here as on a darkling plain Swep_t with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

"In its peace views as in its general policy, the German Independent Social Democratic Party proceeds from the common •interests of the international pro­letariat and the development of society. These in­terests demand immediate peace."

"In the peace .to be concluded we demand an inter­national arrangement for general disarmament as being the chief means for strengthening the debilitated states. General disarmament is the only way to break any militaristic supremacy and to obtain a lasting and peaceful understanding between the nations."

"Political rights for women we regard as a social necessity. Equal rights should be granted to all the inhabitants of every country without regard to tongue, race or religion. This would also mean securing to national minorities the right to declare their national

life."

(Extracts from Memorandum of Ger­many's Minority Socialist Delegation to Dutch-Scandinavian Committee at Stockholm, July g.)

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

"Is this civilized world to be nothing more than a field of death? Is Europe, once so glorious and so flourishing, now stricken by a universal madness, to lend its hand to its own suicide?"

"Through the voice of humanity and of reason we once more give the cry of peace, and renew our appeal to those who hold in their hands the destinies of na­tions."

"The fundamental poipts for the basis of a just and durable peace must be that, for the material- force of arms, be substituted the moral force of right; and that arbitration be substituted for armies."

"As to the damages to be repaired and the war ex­pense, we see no other means of settling the question than by substituting as a general principle complete ~nd reciprocal forgiveness. This would be justified by the immense benefit to be derived from disarmament so that no one would again engage in similar carnage for economic reasons."

"The whole world recognizes that the honor of the armies of both sides is secure. Incline your ears there­fore to our prayers."

(Extracts from .the Appeal of Pope Benedict XV. to the Heads of the belligerent governments. Aug. 15.)

The Conscientious Objector: Tod~y -Yesterday.

One of the grounds for questioning the copstitu­tionality of the draft act is its discrimination in favor of the religious body of Friends, or Quakers. It would be well, however, for our conscientious objectors of to-day to realize how hardly won this exemption was if they would gain like favors for themselves. The persecutions of the Quakers in England in the seven­teenth century have scarcely a parallel in history. They were thrown into loathsome prisons where many died ; grievous fines were inflicted upon them ; they were in­sulted with impunity; their women and children were dragged by the hair through the streets ; their goods and tools were continually seized in consequence of their non-payment of tithes; and their refusal to bear arms excited the hatred and coo.tempt of their fellow subjects. In this country, Boston and Virginia ex­pelled them, while Maryland punished them "as vaga­bonds who pe~uade the people from complying with military discipline." During all this persecution the Quakers never practiced retaliation. Stubborn courage coupled with pure living won them the exemption they receive to-day in England and the United States.

Judging from a letter in the September Masses from the wife of a conscientious objector, England to-day is almost rivalling the England of George Fox's time. "In many cases conscientious objectol's were grossly ill-treated, even to scrubbing naked, beating naked, mock trial with fire-arms, bejng dragged behind carts, kicked down steps, kept in cells on bread and water, strung up as per 'field punishment No. r,' called 'cruci­fixion.' One of my cousins went! through this with thirty-four others. He was taken to F rance, and after continuous threats of death was court-martialed and sentenced to die. This was commuted by Sir D. Haig to ten years' penal servitude. He is serving it now. Not one of the thirty-four flinched." It would seem that these men are making their impression on even the military officers.

We have no apparent enemy, no zeppelins drop bombs upon our coast, and there is not enough excite­ment for the exercise of great severity. Nevertheless the following list, noting a few of the many cases that have been tried during June and July, shows that our youths are bearing their share of judicial condemnation.

For failing to register:

In New York-Charles F. Phillips, six days in custody of marshall. Herman Woscow, one month in prison. John Ducastos, one month in prison. Philip Levine, four months in prison. Herman P . Levine, one year in prison. (An un­

usually able public school teacher.) In Rockford, TIL-

One hundred and eighteen men to one year's im­prisonment each.

In Detroit, Mich.-Ten Socialists, one year's imprisonment each.

There is something stirring in the sight of these youths who are enduring imprisonment rather than surrender their right to liberty of conscience. They belong to the great line of young revolutionists who have declared for a new order and have given of them­selves to bring it to pass. And we must realize that revolution in · religion, in science, in art,. in political institutions, has come from rebel youth. For only youth has even a measure of freedom, and no one should venture forth with a revolutionary idea unless be is ready to sacrifice his all. The young Jesus called to two ~sher lads to come and follow Him. I t would never have occurred to Him to call to their father who must continue mending his nets and feeding and caring for those in his home.

On July 2, I9I7, at East St. Louis, southern Illinois, a mob of white men, women and children destroyed $4oo,ooo worth of property, drove six thousand Negroes from their homes, and murdered by shooting, burning and hanging, between one and two hundred black peo­ple. The mob set fire to a section of the city ani:l when the residents rushed from their houses it shot and stoned those who tried to escape. A colored baby was seized from its mother and thrown into the fire. White women beat colored women on their faces with sticks and stones and with their bare fists. The mob spared no form of torture, dragging a man by an open wound up to the rope from which he was to bang.

According to the testimony of a large number of witnesses, the militia, drawn from neighboring towns, for a time made only a pretence of stopping the rioting, and in some cases joined the mob.

The colored people of East St . Louis were innocent of any crime. They were murdered because they were competent laborers and were competing with white men for work. They were as innocent of wrong-doing as the old woman, Narcis Gurley, whose burns we show, and who stayed in her blazing home until the walls fell rather than face the howling white beasts outside.

On April 3, 1917, the President of the United States called upon Congress to declare war. He gave as his reason the resumption by Germany of submarine war­fare. In his message he told the people of the United States that he was not thinking of loss of property, however serious that might be, but of the loss of the lives of American non-combatants. We were to de­clare war against a government that was without prin­ciple or compassion. Our object was the vindication of the principles of peace and justice as against selfish and autocratic power.

Six weeks have passed since the East StLouis riots and no public word of rebuke, no demand for the punish­ment of the offenders, has come from our Chief Execu­tive. These American Negroes have died under more horrible conditions than any non-combattants who were sunk by German submarines. But to our President their death does not merit consideration.

Our young men who don their khaki are thus taught that: as they go out to battle under the flag of the United States, they may outdo Belgium atrocities with­out rebuke if their enemy be of a darker race. And those w ho guard our land at home have learned that black men and women and little children may safely be mutilated and shot and burned while they stand idly by.

I

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Terms of Peace. "Our primary purpose is not to secure an early

peace, but to lay the foundations of a permanent one. To this end the democratization of Germany is neces­sary, as all admit. But the democratization of Ger­many will not take place so long as its government can make the people think they are fighting in self-defense. And the German people will continue to think so until the Allies issue a liberal definition of their peace terms.''

New Republic. "hl Germany to-day a war is being waged by the

German liberals and radicals against our declared ene­my-the German Junker. Their fight is our fight, as officially announced by President Wilson in his war message. Their aims are precisely our aims-to force the German government to renounce its unscrupulous program of conquest, and to wrest from the governing class the irresponsible power that makes it a menace to the peace of the world. These liberals are our allies.

"But what is President Wilson doing to help these allies of ours? He is taking their very weapon from them. He is supporting the allied program of conquest, and thus making the war Seem to the German mind a war of self-defense. This is the only thing that can unite the German democrat and the German Junker.

" If President Wilson had the courage to say to our German allies: 'The United States, like Russia, will not shed a single drop of blood to dismember your country,' then he would take away the last weapon of the Prussian Junker. -As it is, he is supporting the Prussian autocracy by putting in its hands the one weapon that makes it supreme-panic."

H. K. MODERWELL in Tk Call.

Democratic Government. "Members of the Foreign Relations Committee of

the Senate are taking a keen interest in the Pope's peace message. It is not regarded as at all likely, how­ever, that President Wilson will consult the committee before deciding on the nature of this Government's re­ply. It is still headed by Sen_ator Stone, which pre­cludes, it is thought, the possibility of the President taking such a course." N. Y . Stm, A ug. 1917.

Violation. They take you, beautiful young trees of the forest­The tallest, the strongest, the fairest of you-And stripping off all loveliness and grace, They stand you by the hundred in stiff rows Along the highway---To serve a need. . . . not yours.

They take you, stalwart young men of the land­The tallest, the strongest, the fairest of you­And stripping off all traces of your freedom, They march you by the hundred in stiff rows, Thro city and field---To serve a need . . . . not yours.

But they shall learn to send their swift messages Without your shame,-0 Trees! And win their victories,-0 Men I Without your servitude-or death! NINA BULL.

As Others See Us. "We see the white race destroying its prestige in

the eyes of the black, brown and yellow races. It has called upon their aid and has rewarded them for mur­dering the whites. How can that but avenge itself? Europe is committ ing hari-kari for the benefit of Japan, and the adaptable and clever Asiatic people, with an eye on the future undoubtedly look on Europe's sui­cidal mania with considerable astonishment and not little satisfaction." GEORGE BRANDES.

Mrs. O'Toole •t the Wash-tub. It's late I am this morning but my boy went off to

the wars the day and I'm not rightly in my own mind. When I ·saw him dressed in his new khaki, with his woolen shirt (and he never with anything but cotton on him in his life), and his thick leggings and his coat buttoned up tight, I says to him, "It's a slow . death you're going to, dearie, with the thermometer at ninety in the shade." "It's serving my country I am, mother,"

. says he; and off he goes with his broad-brimmed hat and left me wanting there ·was a bit of shamrock in it and he fighting for Ireland.

It's been the devil to pay this year with the war in our tenement. There's not a day that we haven't one black eye and often a dozen. First was the liberty

. bo,nds. Did you buy one or didn't yer? If you did, your kid wore the button and licked everybody with­out one. One day Amos Pattiky come to me wid his lip cut, and ne says, "De boss fired my fader because he wouldn't to buy a bond. He wouldn't to have his wages docked." "He's a socialist," I says scowling and washing his mouth, "and who you been fighting?" "I ain't to fight no one," says Amos, his long, pretty lashes shadin' his cheek. But the next day the police come and take him to the children's court for stealing the new bond that Mrs. Damon had framed and hang­ing in her parlor, "Next," she says, "to my marriage certificate." And little Amos sent to the reformatory -his mother dead, God rest her soul.

There's every way of thinking in our house about the war. On the top floor is Mrs. Damon and her husband, old Americans without any children. It's a flag she has out of her front window a,nd her liberty bond back on her wall. "That pays for a thousand .and seven cartridges," she 'says, squinting at it, "a thousand and' seven bullets that'll bring down a thou­. sand and seven of my country's enemies." "Ain't you expecting a little too much," I says, "have you niver heard that a bullet could miss?" At that she looked a bit provoked, "I'll make .it a thousand," she said, bright­ening up. "There be s.even missing maybe, but it's a thousand dirty Germans my money will kill." In the back is Hedda Pavlich from Poland. She calls the place like Chamie, but it begins in the papers with a Ps. She don't care abod't the war, only about her mother. "I no hear from her two years," she says. "It makes no difference who win, Russia, Austria, I don't care. It mean all the time work, work, anyway. My mother, she dig the land, feed the chickens. I send her money but she always working. Make the war stop that I go to ~y mother."

It's a grand time the children do be having smash-

.....

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ing the glass of our alien enemy. It's the back room where old man Bicklein used to have his flowers in the window. But the boys spoiled those last winter, and now it's the glass they do be breaking until the land­lord is saying he'll put the old man out for a spy. He's no friend now but Pattiky and they meet of an evening t

and talk about the workers of the world and peace -un-- til I'm feared the police will be after them. · For Jim .

Cassidy lives below with his wife and kids, and he on the police force, and it's niver a word of peace that we can say and him around .

There's a many kids on the first floor and they do be playing war until you're not ·safe to walk down the stairs. There's Peter Mongelluzz<r firing his torpedo boat into Jack Cassidy's steamer, and the two are in a fight in no time to see which blew up which. Last ni&"ht they ~as pouring kerosine on a post in the yard and tying a nigger doll to it. They had a fine blaze when I went out. The cats is feeling it this summer and the dogs. Little Benny Cassidy has lost an eye but he thinks it's grand for he's always the wounded soldier. It's thousands of cigarettes the dear lad has smoked. And when I'm in bed at night I can hear the boys fighting for their country out .in the streets.

There, I've finished that tubful, and if you don't mind me stopping a minute I'll show you something. It's in the pocket of my skirt. Isn't it the sweet pic­ture, and the boy carried it about till the day they took him off to prison. "Take care of· it for me, won't you, Mrs. O'Toole," he says, "I've heard the keeper de­stroy.ed a man's picture of his mother, and I want to have mine waiting for me when I come out." A sweet face and he looks like her. He wouldn't put his name do~ to fight and so ~e has to take his punishment. "I saw my father die in Russia," he tells me one night when we was sitting alone looking out of my window at the boys stoning a cat. "It was so horrible, the sight of the men who killed him. They didn't look human . I could never take life after that."

"But how can we put Germany down?" I asks. "If Germany's put down," he says, "someone else

will be put up. Perhaps it will be this land that we came to as a refuge-you and me, Mrs. O'Toole, and all the people in this house. It was the gate of love that stood open to me when I sailed up the bay. I won't help ~o make it a land of hate."

There he is in jail and Father Higgins blessing my hoy Sunday and telling him to be glad he could go out to fight for God and his country. But the Jews are heathen anyhow.

I'll go back to my tubs. The boys is making the world bloody and the women must be around to make it clean. M. w. o.

Ed. f h' · { FLORA DUNLAP ltors 0 t lS Issue MARY WHITE OVINGTON

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