EDITORIALS 231 230 THE CLASS STRUGGLE With these splendid words Debs has set us a standard that we must uphold and carry out. To accept less, to ask for less, were an insult to the man whose courage and whose cheerful readiness to endure the fullest measure of sacrifice with his comrades has struck an answering chord in the heart of every thinking man and woman in the United States. All over the country, in sunshine and in storm, socialist meetings are being attended as they were never attended before. The socialist movement stands face to face with an opportunity that holds out the greatest promise for the future of our movement if we are big enough to grasp it. Shall we be smaller, less brave than our Eugene Debs? Shall we be afraid to demand where he has spoken. Will we, too, be ready to give all, that we may win all?
The Representative of a Free Working Class large though it was because of his great capacities. But whereever he stood, and in whatever capacity he served the movement, it was always as a revolutionist, as one who knows that to be a socialist means to be a rebel and a fighter, that achievement for the working class means sacrifice. And because this is so, Debs was and is one of the men most feared, and withal most respected by the American ruling class.
Already our bourgeoisie is beginning to feel no small degree of discomfort over the victory it won over the revolutionary working class movement when it passed a ten year sentence upon Debs. Hitherto, because of the comparative obscurity of its victims, they were able to lend color to the fiction that the men and women of the radical and socialist movements who had been sentenced to prison, had indeed endangered the interests of the nation with their propaganda. But Debs has been too long before the American public. No power on earth can make the American workingman believe that he was prepared to act dishonorably, that he would act against the interests of the American proletariat. The conviction of Debs has shown the organized campaign of frightfulness was directed, not against the enemies of the nation, but against the enemies of its exploiters.
Once more the Spargos and the Russells, the Slobodins and the gentlemen from the Appeal to Reason, nee New Appeal, stand ready to serve the ruling class, the more willingly since by so doing they hope to rehabilitate their badly damaged standing in the socialist movement. They have sent out appeal after appeal to Washington and to Paris, pleading for clemency for this splendid upright man, they whose denunciations and slanders about the socialist movement and its aims are to no small degree responsible for the hatred and intolerance that prompted this campaign against the socialist movement. Nor have their appeals failed to accomplish their purpose: there have been suggestions, transparently obvious, that a sufficiently repentant Debs might reasonably hope for a pardon.
But Debs is made of sterner stuff. And neither the pleas of those who will accept government missions today and make overtures to the socialist movement tomorrow, nor the fear of ten years behind prison bars will swerve him from the path he has chosen. As Debs goes to Moundsville jail he gives his comrades a message that sends a quiver of pride through their veins. shall refuse to accept a pardon unless that same pardon is extended to every man and every woman in prison under the espionage law. They must let them all out and allor won come out. want no special dispensation in my case.
We have often wondered how much of the newspaper no toriety that has fallen to the lot of Leon Trotzky in this country is attributable to his colorful and vivid personality, to the fact that he, in appearance and in character, was such a grateful object for the efforts of unscrupulous caricaturists. If such is the case, then we fear that the ambassador for New Russia, Engineer Martens, will be of little interest to the gentlemen who are paid for the fabrication of public opinion according to the needs of the American capitalist class. For one can hardly imagine a person who less resembles the popular conception of what a Bolshevik should look like than this scholarly, unassuming Russian who has just been introduced to the American public as the official representative of the Soviet Republic.
Comrade Martens is a well known figure among Russian Socialists. He was born, in 1874, in Bachmut, Southern Russia, received his elementary education in Kursk, and his degree as Machine Engineer in the University of Petrograd. While a student he became interested in the revolutionary Socialist movement, and became allied with a group of revolutionists, among whom Lenin was one of the most active members. Shortly after his matriculation he was imprisoned for revolutionary propaganda, and spent three years in the prisons of the Czar. Later he was banished, and carried on his activity in the various countries of Europe. About three years ago he came to this country. Here