TOSSES WRENCH INTO RED RUSSIAN MACHINE
Invited Speaker Gives the Bolshevik Adherents Talk on Patriotism.
Upton Sinclair threw a monkey-wrench of facts of American manufacture into a mass meeting of Socialists and near-Socialists at the Labor Temple yesterday, that after cheers and tears for the Bolsheviki, their red riot of revolution, pledges of support of Lenine and his associates, and a notable evasion of facts for the sake of indulgence in rhetorical idealism, wound up by adopting a resolution for home rule in Ireland.
“So long as the United States government is behind the small nations and for justice in the world, every Socialist and every revolutionist should be behind the American government,” Sinclair told more than five hundred men and women, ranging in their sympathies from pale pacifism and yellow disloyalty up, amid hisses and cheers.
Mr. Sinclair’s speech, while not unexpected by the committee in charge of the arrangements, was not in keeping with the spirit of the meeting and threw a damp blanket on the more radical element that had gathered to pass resolutions and cheer the social revolution and the economic disintegration of the Russian Empire.
The Sinclair speech, which bristled with loyal and patriotic utterances, was sandwiched between an address by Michael Bey, secretary to Prof. Lomonosoff of the Russian Mission, and the address of Paul Jordan Smith.
Such was my stand during the war, as set forth in the news columns of the “Times.” But when the Kaiser was overthrown, and I saw America’s war for democracy being turned into a war to put down the first proletarian government in history, I went back into the radical camp—and what happened then? What happened was that instantly the news channels became a concrete wall! If you know anything about my going back into the radical camp, and the reasons therefor, you know it from the radical press, and not from the capitalist press. Since the day when I announced the change, the Associated Press has sent out not one word about my point of view or my utterances; while the “Los Angeles Times” goes farther yet—the “Times” deliberately blinks the fact that I once “tossed a wrench into the red Russian machine,” and embarks on a campaign to make the public believe that I was disloyal during the war! You may find this beyond believing; but I shall prove it to you. And so far successful has it been that recently a high school principal in Los Angeles, addressing the pupils of her school, referred to me as a “notorious disloyalist and traitor”!
There are, of course, libel laws in California, so the “Times” dares not come out fairly and squarely with the statement that I was disloyal during the war. What it does is to scan my every word and action, and report them with subtly chosen phrases which expose me to suspicion, without making definite charges. Surely you must admit that such calculated and systematic treachery on the part of an enormously rich and powerful newspaper is of public importance. You will expect me to prove my charge. Very well, here are two cases. Case one:
While I stood by the war, I didn’t stand by the Espionage act, and when some of my friends were arrested as pacifists, and stood in danger of ten or twenty years in jail, I went to the authorities and interceded, and succeeded in having the cases settled on the basis of a plea of guilty and the payment of fines. The “Times” knew what I was doing, and was foaming at the mouth about it, so I was told by several of its staff; but it dared not say anything, because I had won both the Federal judge and the prosecuting authorities to my way of thinking.
The deputy United States attorney, Mr. Palmer, happened to be a Southerner, a type of man I understand, and I got to know him during these negotiations. Later on I went to see him and said: “Mr. Palmer, I am writing a story, ‘Jimmie Higgins,’ which I want to publish serially in my magazine. It is a story of a Socialist in war-time, and its purpose is to win the Socialists to the idea of supporting the war. But I am in this dilemma. If I am going to show a man converted from opposition to the war, I first have to show how he felt when he was opposing it; I have to make him a real character, I have to make his arguments real arguments—which is a difficult thing to do in war-time. I would not want anybody to misunderstand my purpose and point of view; so I wonder if you would read the manuscript, and tell me if there is anything in it that might be open to misunderstanding.”