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388 THE CLASS STRUGGLE CONVENTION IMPRESSIONS 389 In the four years of imperialistic mass murder blood has flown in rivers. Now every drop of that precious fluid must be preserved, with veneration, in crystal vessels. Unfettered revolutionary energy and big hearted humanity these alone are the breath and the life of Socialism. world must be overthrown, but every tear that is needlessly shed is a reproach; he who, while hastening to important duties, out of gross heedlessness crushes a poor worm, commits a crime.
Convention Impressions By Wm. Bross LLOYD years ago denounced the shame of the death penalty in all civilized languages, not live for you? You have no time, have a thousand cares, difficulties, problems, that wait upon your attention. Undoubtedly! But take your watches into your hands.
See how much time it will take to part your lips, and to say: Capital punishment is hereby abolished. Or is it possible that there could be a long debate among you upon this question. Would you, in questions of such fundamental importance wrap up the issue the long trailing gown of formalities, of consideration of competencies and authorities and all the fuss and trash of by gone days?
OH! how German is this German revolution! How sober, how pedantic, how without boyancy, without glory, without bigness! The forgotten question of capital punishment is only one small individual phase. But how such small matters betray the inner spirit that animates the whole!
Take the history of the great French Revolution. Take, if you will, the dry Mignet! Can you read it without throbbing pulse and fevered brow? Can you lay it down, once you have begun to read, before you have heard the last mighty chord of that marvellous occurrence die away? It is like a gigantic Beethoven symphony, a wild storm on the ocean of the ages, great, marvellous, in its errors as in its achievements, in its victories as in its failures, in its first naive effervescence as in its last dying sob. And now, with us here in Germany? At every step, in large things and in small, we feel it: they are still the old, faithful comrades of the old, dead and buried Social Democracy, to whom that little membership card is everything, and the human being, the spirit nothing. Let us not forget world history cannot be made without mental greatness, without moral pathos, without largeness of gesture. When we left those hospitable walls where we were recently forced to spend our time, Liebknecht and promised our companions in misery he to his shaven prison mates and to my poor dear prostitutes and thieves among whom had spent three and a half years we promised them, by all that was holy to us, as they looked after us with longing, sorrowful eyes: we will not forget you!
We demand of the executive Council of the Workmen and Soldier Council of Germany immediate amelioration of the conditions of all prisoners in all penal institutions of Germany!
We demand the abolition of capital punishment from the German penal code.
On the morning of August 30th, as came into the building where the Socialist Party Emergency Convention was to be held, met a crowd of delegates coming down from the convention hall. They were the left wing delegates thrown out of the hall by the police acting under order of Adolph Germer and Julius Gerber. They were nearly all contested on one flimsy pretext or another with Adolph Germer as chief detective in charge of frame ups, prosecuting attorney, court bailiff, Judge, Jury, jailor, and hangman. For instance, in the case of Minnesota, Germer made a special trip to Minneapolis to direct the State Executive Committee in arranging a delegation to contest the seats of those elected by membership referendum and Germer, making up the roster of delegates, seated the contesting delegation he created.
No delegate could get into the convention hall on credentials.
signed by his state officials. special card of admission had to be procured from Germer minions in the National office. The card was white, historically symbolic of the work of Finland White Guard and her bloody fields and streets, of Berlin streets red with workers blood spilled by our comrades Scheidemann, Ebert and Noske; symbolically prophetic of the part for which the Socialist Party of America has cast itself. Later, in the convention, in response to a question could not hear, the chairman, Comrade Seymour Stedman Noske, raised his impassioned voice above the tumult: Chief of Police Garrity has his orders and when the time comes, he will obey them.
One cannot help wondering whether the police who shortly before beat up the striking restaurant workers, were also following Comrade Noske orders. Truly, when the police co operate with our comrades and take their orders, the revolution must have come to pass. It behoves all revolutionary