“And your propaganda, also, is not human. It is Prussian. Do you suppose, you foreign-born, that you can come here among this free people and begin your operations by cursing our laws and institutions and telling us we are not free?
“Because we tolerate you, do you suppose we don’t know that in most of the larger cities there are now 357 organised Soviets, similar to those in Russia, that anarchists are now conducting schools, and that the radical propaganda which has taken on new life since the signing of the armistice is gaining headway in those parts of the country where there are large foreign-born populations?
“Do you suppose we don’t know Prussianism when we see it, after these last four years?
“Do you suppose we have not read the Staats-Zeitung editorial of December 8, which in part was as follows:
“‘Hundreds of thousands of our boys are standing now over there in the old homeland, which for nineteen months was enemy country and is that still, but which, as President Wilson promised, will soon be a land of peace again, rich in diligent work, rich in true and good people.... As the whole happy life of this blessed region presents a picture to the spectator, it is to be wondered whether his (the American soldier’s) memory will awaken on what he read of this country (Germany) at home long ago, whether he will feel a slight blush of shame in his cheeks and anger for those who, not from their own knowledge but from doubtful sources, branded a whole great people, 70,000,000, as barbarians, huns, murderers of children and church robbers. And whether he (the American soldier) will at the same time make a pledge in his heart to combat those lies and rumours when he is back home again, and to tell the truth about those (the Germans) living behind those mountains.’”
Palla’s face flushed and she came close to the edge of the platform:
“I have been warned that if I came here to-night I’d have trouble. The anonymous writers who send me letters talk about bombs.
“Do you imagine because you murdered Vanya Tchernov in Philadelphia the other day that you can frighten anybody dumb?
“I tell you you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re dazed and scared and bewildered by finding yourselves suddenly in the open world after all those lurking years in hiding. As a forest wolf, his eyes dazzled by the sun, runs blindly across a field of new mown hay, dodging where there is nothing to dodge, leaping over shadows, so you, emerging from darkness, start out across the fertile world, the sun of civilisation blinding you so that you run as though stupefied and frightened, shying at straws, dodging zephyrs, leaping a pool of dew as though it were the Volga.