"'At least honor the flag!' they cry in desperation. 'Honor the flag which stands for freedom, equality and fraternity!' "What flag? The American flag? The Stars and Stripes? The flag which floats over every hellhole of mine and mill and prison? The flag which floats over station house and barracks whence issue police and soldiers to batter down and murder workers exercising their constitutional rights of free speech and free assemblage? Honor the flag which you, our masters, have changed from a flag of liberty into a symbol of the cruelest exploitation and vilest oppression of the new civilization? "If I had been Samuel Gompers when he was reproached by the capitalists for placing his foot on the American flag, I should have answered: 'Yes, I trampled on it, and, more than that, I spit upon your flag, not mine; I loathe the Stars and Stripes, once the symbol of liberty for all, but now the stripes represent the bloody stripes left by your lash on the back of the worker, and the stars, the bullet and bayonet wounds in his breast. To hell with your flag!... "Down with the Stars and Stripes! Run up the red flag of humanity."
Not alone do the members of the rank and file of the Socialist Party attack the Star Spangled Banner, but even its foremost leaders are guilty of the same offense. "The Comrade," July, 1904, furnishes us with an attack made upon our country's flag by no less a personage than Eugene V. Debs:
"Have you a drop of blood in your veins? Has your manhood rotted into cowardice? Wake up and take your place in the class struggle. For the desecration of the flag your leader is in jail. What flag? The flag of the capitalist class--the flag that floats over the bull pens of Colorado. The wholesome truths he stamped upon its stripes are your shame and your