THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST RELIGION ABROAD
It is but proper to begin this chapter by conceding that there are many church-going members among those who vote the Marxian ticket--not as an indorsement of the teachings of international Socialism, but merely as a protest against political corruption and the abuses of capitalism. Justice, moreover, demands that we acknowledge the existence of a small minority of dues-paying members of the Socialist Party who neither attack religion nor tacitly approve of the atheistic propaganda carried on in the official Marxian press, as well as in the books, pamphlets and magazines on sale not only in the leading Socialist book-stores of America, but even at the National Office of the party in Chicago.
In most countries of Europe, where the war against religion is much more open and widespread than in America, the Socialists are frank in confessing that their movement is atheistic and anti-religious.
In our own country some of the more violent Socialistic enemies of the church admit both in their speeches and in their writings that they would be extremely happy to see the very idea of God become a matter of ancient history. Christian Socialists of the old Carr faction, who constitute a minority of far less than one per cent of the Socialist Party of the United States, have not only conceded the existence of an atheistic propaganda within the ranks, but have attacked it and utterly failed to suppress it.
Apart from these two classes of American Socialists, who admit the existence of a campaign in favor of atheism, most Socialists in our country, because they fear that votes will be lost if our people are