"The 'American Socialist Party,' finds itself compelled, precisely like Lenine, to pretend to be a peace-loving organization, loyally accepting constitutional democracy and opposed to violence. Are we to take it at its own word? Is it possible that a few pious phrases offered on occasion can deceive the American people as to the nature of a propaganda organization that is shouting from the housetops in every corner of the country and every day of the year? "The only imaginable reason why the public has paid any attention is that there are two or three organizations more wholly given over to violence, whereas the Socialist organization gives a share of its attention to party politics. It was said until recently, 'Oh, the anarchists are for violence, but the Socialists are for law and order.' Last August it was found that a large part of the Socialists were for immediate revolution. Then it was said that the Communists are revolutionary, but the Socialists are for law and order. The reasoning was that if the Left Wing was for immediate revolution, then the Right Wing must be for law and order!"
Mr. Walling expresses an expert opinion, having been a prominent member of Hillquit's party until this organization, at St. Louis in 1917, began the openly lawless course which led to the conviction of a large number of its leaders under the Espionage Law. Moreover, since January, 1920, when Mr. Walling recorded the above opinion, evidence has come
to light which shows he was exactly right in saying that the American Socialist Party acted "precisely like Lenine" in pretending "to be a peace-loving organization" because it found "itself compelled" to do so.
The tactics of Lenine, Trotzky and Zinovieff, the Bolshevist "triumvirate" of Russia, and of Ludwig C. A. K. Martens and Morris