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By Root 2333 0

after his resurrection, I had brought him into my atmosphere, into an environment that could only be galling to him. I had done this in the mistaken belief, usual with mothers, that they know best what is good for their children; fearing the latter will be crushed in the world outside, they desperately try to shield them from the experiences so essential to their growth. I had committed the same mistake in regard to Sasha. Not only had I not urged him to launch out for himself, but I had trembled at every step he made, because I could not see him exposed to new suffering and hardships. Yet I had saved him from nothing; I had only awakened his resentment. Perhaps he was not even aware of it, yet it was always there, breaking out in one form or another. Sasha had always wanted his own work and his own place. I had offered him everything one human being can give to another, but I had not helped him to what he wanted and needed most. There was no blinking the hard fact. But now that Sasha had found a woman who could give him both love and understanding, it was my opportunity to repair the wrong I had done him.

I would enable them to go on a cross-country tour, I decided. Once Sasha reached California, he could carry out his dream of a paper of his own.

Fitzi and Sasha eagerly responded to my suggestion for a tour. I arranged with my young friend Anna Baron, who used to do part-time typing for us, to take care of the business side of the Mother Earth office. Max and Saxe were to look after the editorial work of the magazine. There were also Hippolyte and other friends to help. Sasha felt rejuvenated, and there was no further friction between us. [ ... ]

I was busy preparing the new drama course I had promised to deliver in Chicago and a series of lectures on the war. Three months had passed since its outbreak in Europe. Outside of Mother Earth and our anti-militarist campaign in New York I had not been able to raise my voice in the West against the slaughter, except on one occasion, in Butte, when I had spoken from an automobile to a large crowd and denounced the criminal stupidity of war. I felt that but for the socialist betrayal of their ideals, the great catastrophe would have been impossible. In Germany the party counted twelve million adherents. What a power to prevent the declaration of hostilities! But for a quarter of a century the Marxists had trained the workers in obedience and patriotism, trained them to rely on parliamentary activity and, particularly, to trust their socialist leaders blindly. And now most of those leaders had joined hands with the Kaiser!5 Instead of making common cause with the international proletariat, they had called upon the German workers to rise to the defence of “their” fatherland, the fatherland of the disinherited and degraded. Instead of declaring the general strike and thus paralysing war preparations, they had voted the Government money for slaughter. The socialists of the other countries, with certain notable exceptions, had followed their example. No wonder, for the German social democracy had for decades been the pride and inspiration of the socialists throughout the world.

My drama course under the auspices of my two wealthy patrons proved to be a most disagreeable experience. Mr. L., the advertising genius, had taken it upon himself to “edit” the announcements I had sent. Indeed, he had changed their entire character, handling the subjects of my lectures as if they had been chewing-gum ads.

Then happened something to shock the tender sensibilities of my patrons. My first drama talk fell on November 10, a day of momentous importance to me. It had been the last day on earth of my comrades martyred in Chicago twenty-seven years before. I introduced my lecture by contrasting the changes in the public attitude towards anarchism between 1887 and 1914. The vision of our precious dead was before me, bearing witness to the last prophecy of August Spies: “Our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.” In 1887 Chicago’s sole answer to anarchism was the gallows;