8 THE REVOLUTIONARY AGE Saturday, August 9, 1919 The Versailles Peace IT was to be expected that those who have By F, Loriot the German proletariat must now organize to signed their peace should rejoice and Of the Left (Communist) Wing of the struggle for its own existence. This situation congratulate themselves; that they should try French Socialist Party.
will bear heavily upon the shoulders of the to give to the occasion a solemnity which the international proletariat and more particularly situation renders false; that, in order to again italist Imperialism, both equally greedy, both upon the French proletariat, ruined and bled fool the masses and perhaps to convince equally contemptuous of humanitarian phrawhite by the war, driven by its government themselves they should loudly affirm that seology and accepting no other limit to their against the Russian and Hungarian revoluJune 28, 1919 is a date forever memorable.
the It was also to be expected that bourgeois is no more a surprise than Brest Litovsk was.
appetites except the fortune of arms. Versailles and military burdens piled up to annihilate democrats and social reformers, who, during The world market, which would have belonged the German proletariat struggle for liberty.
the war, believed that the leaders of the Entente No, it is not peace; for the merciless war to the financial oligarchy of Berlin if official would end it by an honest and durable peacebetween the old world crashing down and the Germany had conquered, now belongs to the the Peace of Justice, crowning the Last War financial oligarchy of London and Washington. is not only, as in 1815, the liberal protests new world arising continues everywhere. It shoul now burst out in useless lamentations If the proletarian revolution does not put which arise, or the protests of nations in slavand superfluous reproaches.
things in order, these financiers will direct, For us, who have always declared that the for their own profit, all the productive forces ery against their foreign oppressors. The war war, imperialistic in its origin would be also of the universe.
has cost too much, and victorious Capitalism imperialistic in its results; for us, who have Such is, in spite of all the superficial demonhas paid for its victory too collossal a price, ceaselessly warned the labor organizationsstrations, all the gilt and bunting, all the triin treasure, in tears, in blood. On the shattered against the dangers of Wilsonian politics the umphant brass band music, the true and only ploited workers of all countries are expressing ruins of what was once their bastile, the exso called peace treaty is just what it ought significance of the treaty.
to be, the logical and foreseen conclusion of more and more loudly, more and more impeIt is sometimes compared to the treaty of riously their will to destroy Capitalism the a butchery undertaken by two rival capitalist Vienna. The League of Nations, in fact, is exploiter.
coalitions for a new partition of the world.
nothing but a Holy Alliance infinitely more By a clever exploitation of secular hatreds. hypocritical and oppressive, which puts at the In spite of the powers of which it disposes, the result of an entire history of violence and in spite of censorship and repression, in spite service of Capitalism all modern technique.
of a press filled with calumny, hatred, and plunder by a shrewd stimulation of nationalist But at Vienna Tallyrand was not received lies the bourgeois autocracy cannot prevent passions, by concealing their real aims, the with a shower of stones (like the German delethe truth from spreading and penetrating the governments of all the belligerent countries gates at Versailles) and what is more the most profound strata of the people. Some made the war acceptable to the masses of the Congress of Vienna really settled the peace of politicians may be able to set up a new equilibpeople.
the world for the first half of the nineteenth rum founded on a coalition of anti German By the suppression of civil liberties, by century, appetites; but they cannot much longer avoid dictatorship, by the formidable oppressive or But the Treaty of Versailles does not finish facing the facts that the war has consecrated ganization of the capitalist state, they have the war, even with Germany. The signatures the downfall of the capitalist, nationalist state held these masses in the flaming inferno; of the figureheads Muller and Bell, representa which has become in the strong words of blinding and bewildering the majority of them tives of the most tottering government of the Trotzky, an intolerable obstacle to economic by means of the ferocious propaganda of a world, give only illusory guarantees of peace. development.
servile press, and breaking the resistance of In reality hostilities will continue between Whatever they do, the hour is approaching, the rest by a pitiless repression always ready France in arms acting as sentinel while Amewhen, realizing the powerlessness of the bourto pay their own price to those who will re rica and England go peacably about their pro geoisie to escape from the chaos it has created main silent at the right time, who will talk fitable business and Germany for the moment and from the abysm of misery which the prowhen it is profitable, and who will resign when disarmed, but trembling and impatient to free longation of bourgeois domination means, the at is demoralizing.
herself from insupportable slavery.
proletarians of Europe will finally shake off the Thanks to this eclipse of the human cons No working class could accept the condi yoke; and, sole masters of the state power and cience, to these abscurities carefully main tions imposed by the treaty upon the German of their own destinies, they will establish, by tained, they have conducted their war to its proletariat, crushed under an enternity of the union of all the proletariats in the only logical end world wide economic autocracy. obligations and servitude and at the same time League of Nations possible the Communist On one side Anglo American Capitalist forbidden the means to fulfill these terrible International peace, real peace, happy and Imperialism, on the other side German Cap demands. After having fought for its masters enduring Class War Prisoners Greet the Left Wing The National Left Wing Conference received the following letter at its first session, June 21, 1919: We, members of the Socialist Party now confined as political prisoners in the Disciplinary Barracks, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, send our cordial greetings and heartiest encouragement to the Left Wing of the American Socialist Party.
We place our hope for the future of American Socialism in Left Wing control of the Party.
Carl Haessler, Milwaukee; Alexander, Passaic, Wangerin, St. Paul; Jacob Schneider, Boston, Leopold Weinstein, Newark, Richard Carlson, St.
Paul; Leopold Balner, Philadelphia; Carl Johnson, St.
Paul; Lasarus Marcowits, Kings County, Gunnard Johnson, St. Paul; John Flage, Virginia, Minn. Jacob Miller, New York City; Emil Nygard, Duluth, Minn. Frank Rayer, Cleveland; Stanley Marshall, Cincinnati; John Grass, Hudson County, Axel Carlson, St. Paul.
We, political prisoners here but not party members, endorse the above.
Clark Getts, Austin Simons, Plonsker, Cohen, Herman Blass, Ross Michael Holwach, Jacob Lalek, Stephen Reckhoff, Chas. Larsen, Alex Norbe, Hollingsloods, Stanley Megender, Leroy Hoclarcher, Smith, Tony Pruschuk, John Schmidt, John Kos, Alexy Kiriluk, Egnats Kruvonsko, Xeny Pollack, Morris Falk, Gabriel Petnonar, David Jof, Dan Voloshin, Nick Prokopenko, Michael Prush, Sedor Okilko, Kusma Tkachuk, Sam Mazur, Alex Cherly, Jacob Vogel, Theodore Falatovich, Alex Sologub, Joseph Volsky, Alex Urosky, Avkxenty Solkovitz, Frank Zamatowitz, Xaveluk Ludwig In addition there are many, both party members and sympathizers, who would sign this statement but who cannot be reached because they are in isolation from the other prisoners.