An editorial note on the same page, immediately below the article of Trotzky, says: "The above article and the APPEAL OF THE RUSSIAN INDUSTRIAL UNIONS TO THE WORKERS OF THE ALLIED COUNTRIES are taken from documents on Russia of the working class, written by members of the Soviet Government.... These materials were sent to Fellow Worker Wm. D. Haywood by Comrade Leon Trotzky, the valiant Commissary for War of the victorious Workers' Commonwealth. We are happy to announce that the I. W. W. will be the first to publish these latest documents on peasant and industrial life in Bolshevikland."

Did Martens and Hillquit advise Lenine and Trotzky to disguise their American propaganda by using the Industrial Unions of Russia as their cat's-paw? We ask this because Hillquit has long been "Councillor" in America to the Russian Soviet Republic,[L] while the above method of inflaming American labor unions has been the secret method of the Socialist Party's Rand School of Science for some years--since 1916, at least. These are facts established by documents obtained in the summer of 1919 by raids of the Rand School, put in evidence before the New York State Legislative Committee, Senator Clayton R. Lusk, Chairman, and referred to in the July 30, 1919, issue of "The National Civic Federation Review," from which we quote the following:

"One David P. Berenberg is director of the correspondence department of the Rand School. From the letter-files seized there, evidence was produced showing the kind of propaganda conducted through Berenberg's department. In a carbon copy of a letter to Harry L. Perkins, of San Diego, Cal., dated June 7, 1916, the statement was made:

"'When we read of 'preparedness' that is in full force in the camps of the capitalists, we realize that unless we organize and fit ourselves to resist, and to take over the government, we will one day find ourselves where our French and German brothers are today, dead or maimed in the fray.'

"'In other words,' commented Chairman Lusk, 'for over two years this Rand School has been advocating armed preparedness to take over the government.'

"A letter--obviously after a form letter sent to correspondents generally--dated October 3, 1916, addressed to M. E. Rabb, Xenia, Ohio, offered as evidence, contained the following:

"'What are you doing when the State robs you and your union and so makes you helpless to strike? There is only one thing to do: take over the State.

"'Are the members of your local prepared to take over and conduct wisely and well the affairs of your town and county? Are you prepared to meet the militia when the powers of the State and courts are against you? Are you arming yourself with the knowledge of the foundations of our society so that when these crises come to you, you will have an organization strong enough to have foreseen and forestalled them? Are you training your members in scientific Socialism?'

"This same adroitly phrased incitement was found in other correspondence."

This pest-house of treason and lawlessness, the Rand School, Hillquit's pet university of Socialism, ought to be dug up by the roots. And what shall we say of such evidence? Why should the Socialist Party of America hesitate to affiliate with the Third (Moscow) International and approve its "programs and methods" when Hillquit's illegitimate offspring, the Rand School, was teaching such "methods" a year before the Bolsheviki seized Petrograd and the dictatorship? Is Hillquit Lenine's pupil or Lenine's teacher? Is Hillquit, backer of the Rand School propaganda, the same gentle Morris Hillquit who as an "expert on Socialism" testified before the Assembly Judiciary Committee on February 17, 1920:

"The word 'revolution' does not have for us the romantic significance of barricade fights or other acts of violence that it has for most of our newspaper writers and school boys." ("Sun and New York Herald," February 18, 1920.)

Can this be the same Hillquit who earlier in the trial broke out in the angry threat: "What we say to you, gentlemen: the contemplated act of this Assembly, if consummated, will ... loosen the violent revolution." ("New York Evening Sun," January 21, 1920.) Did he allude to some pink tea party?

And perhaps the "school boys" Hillquit referred to are those by his pet institution poisoned and turned into degenerates in the bud of manhood, like poor Oscar Edelman, whose valedictory speech on graduating from a course in the Rand School of Social Science ran thus:

"For us as students, Socialists and Labor Unionists, our work is laid out. We must help educate the workers of America so that their slogan, 'a fair day's wage for a fair day's work' be replaced by the revolutionary slogan, 'abolition of the wage system.' ... In the great world-struggle which is taking place today, we must take active part.... The ideals which today inspire Debs and Lenine are the ideals which inspire us." (Lusk Committee evidence, quoted from "The National Civic Federation Review," July 30, 1919.)

But of all the sublime performances of Hillquit, that which lays the brightest crown on his veracity was the answer he gave at Albany on February 17, 1920, to the long hypothetical question concerning the attitude of the Socialists should their friends of the Third International, the Bolsheviki, invade the United States.

At this question the redoubtable Mr. Hillquit, according to the "New York Times" of February 18, 1920, "settled back in his chair and smiled" and said: "I should say that the Socialists of the United States would have no hesitancy whatsoever in joining forces with the rest of their countrymen to repel the Bolsheviki who would try to invade our country and force a form of government upon our people which our people were not ready for and did not desire." (Italics mine.)