In a little while the incident had flashed like an arrow through Communist circles in Moscow. The young Chinese was a member of an old Chinese clan and had been educated in America. At that time Bolshevik eyes were fixed on China. Chinese soldiers made up some of the crack units of the Red army when Great Britain was supporting the White war against the Reds and tightening the blockade against Russia. I remember Radek's saying to me: "We are pinning our hopes on China more than any other country. If we can make China Red, we will conquer the world."
I don't know if that incident of the young Chinese and the first Communist member of the British Parliament ever reached the ears of the big Bolsheviks. I do know, however—I got it from a good source—that the big Bolsheviks gave Newbold a hell of a skating over the Communist ice of Moscow. Newbold returned to the Parliament of British gentlemen and finally drifted over to the capitalist side.
I was asked to write a series of articles on the Negro group for Izvestia, the Moscow organ of the Soviets. Thus I came to meet Steklov, the editor-in-chief. Steklov was a huge man with a leonine head, more picturesque than intelligent. He told me that he was interested in Negroes being won over to the cause of Communism because they were a young and fresh people and ought to make splendid soldiers. I didn't relish that remark out of the mouth of a Communist. So many other whites had said the same thing—that Negroes make good cannon fodder when they were properly led—led by whites to the black slaughter. That filled me with resentment. The head of the French General Staff had proclaimed to the world the same thing, that France with its African empire had an army of a hundred millions. When Trotsky, the chief of all the Bolshevik fighting forces talked to me about Negroes he spoke wisely. Trotsky was human and universal in his outlook. He thought of Negroes as people like any other people who were unfortunately behind in the march of civilization.
Karl Radek was one of the Big Five of the Politbureau, which decided Bolshevik policy in those days. He invited me to dinner at his apartment in the Kremlin along with the Negro delegate of the American C.P. Radek wanted to know if I had a practical policy for the organization of American Negroes. I said that I had no policy other than the suggestion of a Negro Bund, that I was not an organizer or an agitator and could not undertake or guarantee any practical work of organization.
The Negro delegate said that I was a poet and a romantic. I said I was not as romantic as he and his illegal party with their secret names and their convention in the wilds of Michigan. Radek laughed, and as I looked at his face set in a thick circle of hair I thought how much he resembled a red spider. Radek said that the Communists should adopt a friendly attitude to all writers who were in sympathy with the soviets. For example, Upton Sinclair, he thought, would be a valuable asset to the revolution if the Communists knew how to handle and use him. The mulatto said that Upton Sinclair was a bourgeois Socialist.
"Oh, no, no," said Radek, "I insist that is not the attitude to take. Upton Sinclair is a powerful writer with an enormous influence, and the American Communists should make use of his influence, even though Sinclair is not a Communist. Now with our Gorky—" At this point an infant wailed and Radek said, "My baby comes first." He left the room, to return a few minutes later with the maid, who brought in the baby. Radek and Mrs. Radek kissed and fondled the child. The maid then brought the child to the mulatto, who touched its hand and patted its hair. From the mulatto she brought the child to me, but it shrank away, hid its face, and began to cry. Radek was interested and told the maid to take the child to the mulatto again. The mulatto took the child in his arms and it stopped crying, but when the maid tried me again, the child hid its face and cried. The maid retired with the child, and Radek said: "Now I understand the heart of the difference between white and black in America. It is fear. The Americans are like children, afraid of black complexion, and that is why they lynch and burn the Negro." I told Radek that his deduction was wrong; that in the South, where Negroes were lynched and burned, the black complexion was not a strange thing to the whites, and that the majority of the children of the better classes of the South were nursed from their birth by black women, and that those children were extremely fond of their black foster mothers. Radek said that that was a strange thing.