was so bad that the peasants were tearing the straw thatch from their huts to feed their horses. And with the coming of Winter they had need of fuel to keep themselves alive, and they had stolen wood from the landlord's forest. This was their crime. And the Cossacks had come to "pacify" them. In each village the men, hungry and smitten with cold, were lined up and the officer in command of the troops demanded the names of those who had stolen the wood. If the peasants refused to deliver the guilty ones, every tenth man was flogged. The next day the process was repeated, only every fifth man was flogged and so till the stealers of the wood were given up. It seemed like the Wrath of God, the peasants unarmed, unorganized, were as helpless against this brutality as against an earthquake. And Marie Spiridonova a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Partyshot the Vice-Governor-the author of it all. She was brutally treated by the Cossacks, stripped naked in the public street and afterwards ravished in prison and is now dying up by the polar circle in faraway Siberia. But she became a saint among the people, a name to conjure with. And now in their distress the peasants pray God to send them another Spiridonova.

Although much can be said in favor of Terrorism, much can be said against it. It is the tactic of despair. It is fighting the Devil with fire. And therein lies its weakness. To win in this fight you must be as bad or worse than the Devil. And in this respect the Russian Revolutionists fail.

The following incident is one of many which show the Revolutionist's ability to use fire as effectively as the Government. During the spring of 1906, there was a congress of one of the smaller terorrist organizations-the Maximilists. They met-the better to avoid the police-in a secluded forest near Moscow. There were about forty deputies, and coming from distant cities most of them were unknown to each other, their introductions were by pass words and signs. During the course of the meeting, while matters of great secrecy were under discussion, one of the deputies became suspicious of two of those who were pesent. He went from one to another of his comrades and found that no one knew these two. They were told to produce their credentials and these not being satisfactory, they were searched. Papers were found on them which proved beyond all doubt that they were membrs of the secret police. Their death was demanded, not only because of their past careers, but because of their present knowledge. Their continued life was a menace to the forty odd revolutionists who were present. They were tied to trees and two men were chosen to kill them. The Committee disbanded and left these two men to their work. One did his duty thoroughly. The other after having fired several shots into his prisoner was so affected by the horror of the

situation that he turned away without making sure of his work. The spy was seriously wounded but not killed. The next day his cries attracted a passing peasant. He was carried to a hospital and on his recovery was able to cause the arrest of almost all those who had attended the meeting.

No one likes to shoot a man tied to a tree. But the agents of the Government would not have faltered under such circumstances. And unless the Revolutionists can bring the same degree of brutality and callousness to the work of Terrorism, they can not hope to beat the Devil at his own game. The net results of Terrorism are hard to estimate. On one side many of the best and noblest Russians have lost their lives in this struggle. Numerically they have lost more than the Government. No one can doubt that the arrest and execution of those who caused the death of Alexander II, was a greater blow to the Revolutionary movement than the loss of the Tsar was to Autocracy. On the other hand the dread of assasination holds many an official in check. And time and again an act of individual heroism has given fresh life and enthusiasm to the whole move

ment.

And this last-the psychological effect on the nation at large is to my mind the most important. And the question of its value is one impossible for a foreigner to estimate. To judge it rightly one must be native to the country and familiar with all the circumstances of the combat, familiar with all the subtle changes -of increase and decrease, in the intensity of the evolutionary sentiment in the mass of the people. And the Russian Comrades, almost without exception, believe that Terrorism, by its benecial results, is amply justified.

EDITORIAL

Some General Tendencies.

From the reports of the various nations and the proceedings of the Congress three significant currents can be seen in the great international socialist movement as especially characteristic of the last few years.

Nearly every country had something to say of the progress of organization among the young, and generally with especial reference. to militarism. Dr. Karl Liebknecht, son of "Der Alte," is throwing nearly all of his energies into this movement. His work on "Miltarism and Anti-Militarism," for the writing of which he is already under indictment, with almost a certainty of at least a year's imprisonment hanging over his head, is a brilliant and scholarly presentation of the deadly advance of militarism and the subtle ways in which it has pervaded every portion of modern society. It is a work which should be translated into English, for the increase in naval appropriations, the effort to enlarge the standing army, the nationalization of the state milita, the introducion of the features of the Deck Bill, and the whole Rooseveltian programme of increasing militarism foretells the coming of the same problem in the United States at an early date.

The method by which he proposes to meet this is by an organization of the young workers and their education in anti-military ideals. It is the young man and to almost an equal degree the young woman to whom the military ideal appeals. If these can be made to realize that militarism is but another name for organized butchery of human beings then militarism is doomed.

Within the last three years organizations of the young have sprung up in almost every country, and the list which he gives of these organizations and their membership and work is one of the most encouraging things presented to the International Socialist move ment. If the men and women in the days of youth can be drafted into a self-governing thinking class-conscious army to fight the battles of their own class the proletariat will have wrested from capitalism

one of its most powerful weapons in the class struggle. If in the stirring times that are before us the same enthusiasm and devotion, that through the years have been given to the battles of capitalism can be turned into intelligent fighting for the working class a long step towards victory will have been taken. There is going to be need of daring and heroism and class patrotism (if such a phrase is not a contradiction) in the class struggle, and it is these batallions of the young who must furnish these elements.

A second and to a certain degree a somewhat analogous movement is the wide spread organization and the renewed activity of the women of the working class. For years the declaration for universal suffrage unrestricted by sex has stood as a sort of Platonic phrase in all Socialist platforms. But the party as such has taken little active interest in pushing this demand. It is significant that in all the wealth of socialist propaganda literature that has appeared in the United States during the past three years there is not a single pamphlet or leaflet bearing principally upon this point.

Moreover many Socialist women who were ardent woman suffragists have been inclined to give their energies to the support of bourgious "Women's Rights" organization rather than to the campaign within the Socialist Party. This was true not only in the United States but in many other countries.

But the last few years has shown a striking change in this respect. As the army of working women grew larger and began to organize economically into unions and show a growing solidarity with the working-class movement it became apparant that the women who were going to make the first and most effective use of the ballot were working women, and that they were going to use that ballot in the interest of their own class.

At once there was a striking change of front on the part of the bourgeois woman's movement. In every country they began to ask that a partial suffrage be granted, generally with some sort of a property qualification. For a very short time some of the workingwomen, and even a few socialists were mislead This new move was held out as a "first step," as "something right now" which would make easier the attainment of universal suffrage for women. But quickly the whole scheme became apparant. Whenever such a suffrage was granted it at once became another bulwart of reaction, not a stepping stone to better things, but an almost insuperable obstacle to further progress. The class struggle entered the woman's movement,

At once new life arose in the genuine working woman's movement. The rise of working-class organizations of women demanding complete and unrestricted suffrage regardless of sex has been a striking feature of almost every country since the Congress at Amsterdam three years ago. The remarkable result of the Finish elections, which enabled that country to send the first woman delegate to an international Socialist Congress, who was also a member of a national

parliament had an electric effect on this phase of the Socialist movement throughout Europe, and indeed throughout the world.

As a result there are few reports to the Congress that do not tell of multiplied activity in this field. Sweden has succeeded in obtaining suffrage for women in municipal elections and has sent some women into municipal offices upon the Socialist ticket. England is convulsed with the struggle for the right to vote for women and although with the well known English characteristic to compromise there is still some alliance with the former woman's movement yet on the whole it is a distinctly working-class and Socialist agitation, and must necessarily be still more so since the Congress rejected all the compromise proposals of the English delegation.

In all countries it is the women themselves who are carrying on the battle and who no longer ask for favors, even from a socialist party but are demanding and taking what is theirs and who are forcing the socialist organizations to recognize and work for this long neglected plank in their platform.

The third, and perhaps most striking general phenomena which appears in almost every country is one which is more difficult to define, but which is none the less equally certain and perhaps even more significant than the other two. This is what might be designated as a general revolt against pure parliamentarism and a demand for more immediate definite and direct revolutionary action. Almost every delegation came to the Congress with one or more delegates who were looked upon more or less as enfants terrible, or if they were not represented in the Congress there was some complaint of, or at least a reference to, their existence in the written reports submitted.

In France it was Herve and the syndicalists who gave repeated electric shocks to the proceedings and who were generally promptly rebuked, but were ever unabashed and sometimes found an amount of support that was unexpected. These same forces displayed considerable strength, in Italy and indeed in all the Latin countries and undoubtedly influenced the wording of the military resolution at least, to a far greater extent than had been anticipated.

But this movement is not confined to the Latin countries. Even Germany, where the revolution itself has been made almost conventional, with all its metes and bounds most carefully staked out with clearly drawn Marxian premises, is feeling the new movement. There are many of the older ones who look with something of disapproval upon "young Liebkneckt's" daring attack on militarism and there is still much talk of general strike and other things that would scarcely have been mentioned in polite Socialist circles five years ago.

In Holland, where the socialist deputies have been largely elected from country districts and where all has been decidedly reformist, a new revolutionary movement within the Party has gained such strength that it is only a question of a year or so when they will