(1)
John Reed, The Masses (September,
1914)
No recent words have seemed to me so ludicrously condescending
as the Kaiser's speech to his people when he said that in this supreme
crisis he freely forgave all those who had ever opposed him. I am
ashamed that in this day in a civilized country any one can speak
such archaic nonsense as that speech contained.
More nauseating than the crack-brained bombast of the Kaiser is the
editorial chorus in America which pretends to believe - would have
us believe - that the White and Spotless Knight of Modern Democracy
is marching against the Unspeakably Vile Monster of Medieval Militarism.
What has democracy to do in alliance with Nicholas, the Tsar? It is
Liberalism which is marching from the Petersburg of Father Gapon,
from the Odessa of Progroms? Are our editors naive enough to believe
this?
We, who are Socialists, must hope - we may even expect - that out
of this horror of bloodshed and dire destruction will come far-reaching
social changes - and a long step forward towards our goal of peace
among men. But we must not be duped by this editorial buncombe about
Liberalism going forth to Holy War against Tyranny. This is not our
war.
(2) John Reed, The
Masses (March, 1915)
The French Army has not been fighting well. But it
has been fighting, and the slaughter is appalling. There remains no
effective reserve in France; and the available youth of the nation
down to seventeen years of age is under arms. For my part, all other
considerations aside, I should not care to live half-frozen in a trench,
up to my middle in water, for three or four months, because someone
in authority said I ought to shoot Germans. But if I were a Frenchman
I should do it, because I would have been accustomed to the idea by
my compulsory military service.
I could fill pages of horrors that civilized Europe is inflicted upon
itself. I could describe to you the quiet, dark, saddened streets
of Paris, where every ten feet you are confronted with some miserable
wreck of a human being, or a madman who lost his reason in the trenches
being led around by his wife.
I could tell you of the big hospital in Berlin full of German soldiers
who went crazy from merely hearing the cries of the thirty thousand
Russians drowning in the swamps of East Prussia after the battle of
Tannenburg. Or of the numbness and incalculable demoralization among
men in the trenches. Or of holes torn in bodies with jagged pieces
of melanite shells, of sounds that make people deaf, of gases that
destroy eyesight, of wounded men dying day by day and hour by hour
within forty yards of twenty thousand human beings, who won't stop
killing each other long enough to gather them up.
(3) John Reed, The War in Eastern Europe
(1916)
Slowly we drew near the leisurely sound of the cannon,
that defined itself sharply out of the all-echoing thunder audible
at Novo Sielitza. And topping a steep hill crowned with a straggling
thatched village, we came in sight of the batteries. They lay on the
hither side of an immense rolling hill, where a red gash in the fields
dribbled along for miles. At intervals of half a minute a gun spat
heavily; but you could see neither smoke nor flame - only minute figures
running about, stiffening, and again springing to life. A twanging
drone as the shell soared - and then on the leafy hills across the
river puffs of smoke unfolding.
In the very field of the artillery, peasants were calmly ploughing
with oxen, and in front of the roaring guns a boy in white linen drove
cattle over the hill toward the pasture along the river. We met long-haired
farmers, with orange poppies in their hats, unconcernedly driving
to town. Eastward the world rolled up in another slow hill that bore
curved fields of young wheat, running in great waves before the wind.
Its crest was torn and scarred with mighty excavations, where multitudinous
tiny men swarmed over new trenches and barbed-wire tangles. This was
the second-line position preparing for a retreat that was sure to
come.
(4) John Reed, The War in Eastern
Europe (1916)
The village through which we passed was populous with
great brown soldiers, who eyed us sullenly and suspiciously. Over
a gateway hung a Red Cross flag, and along the road tickled a thin,
steady stream of wounded - some leaning on their comrades, others
bandaged around the head, or with their arms in slings; and peasant
carts jolted by with faintly groaning heaps of arms and legs.
(5) John Reed, Ten Days That Shook
the World (1919)
The policy
of the Provisional Government alternated between ineffective reforms
and stern repressive measures. An edict from the Socialist Minister
of Labour ordered all the Workers' Committees henceforth to meet only
after working hours. Among the troops at the front, 'agitators' of
opposition political parties were arrested, radical newspapers closed
down, and capital punishment applied - to revolutionary propagandists.
Attempts were made to disarm the Red Guard. Cossacks were spent order
in the provinces.
In September 1917, matters reached a crisis. Against the overwhelming
sentiment of the country, Kerensky and the 'moderate' Socialists succeeded
in establishing a Government of Coalition with the propertied classes;
and as a result, the Mensheviki and Socialist Revolutionaries lost
the confidence of the people for ever.
Week by week food became scarcer. The daily allowance of bread fell
from a pound and a half to a pound, than three-quarters, half, and
a quarter-pound. Towards the end there was a week without any bread
at all. Sugar one was entitled to at the rate of two pounds a month
- if one could get it at all, which was seldom. A bar of chocolate
or a pound of tasteless candy cost anywhere from seven to ten roubles
- at least a dollar. For milk and bread and sugar and tobacco one
had to stand in queue. Coming home from an all-night meeting I have
seen the tail beginning to form before dawn, mostly women, some babies
in their arms.
(6) John Reed, was in Petrograd when the Women's
Battalion attempted to defend the Winter Palace against the Bolsheviks.
Immediately following the taking of the Winter Palace all sorts
of sensational stories were published in the anti-Bolshevik press,
and told in the City Duma, about the fate of the Women's Battalion
defending the Palace. It was said that some of the girl-soldiers had
been thrown from the windows into the street, most of the rest had
been violated, and many had committed suicide as a result of the horrors
they had gone through.
The City Duma appointed a commission to investigate the matter. On
16th November the commission returned from Levashovo, headquarters
of the Women's Battalion. Madame Tyrkova reported that the girls had
been taken to the barracks of the Pavlovsky Regiment, and that there
some of them had been badly treated; but that at present most of them
were at Levashovo, and the rest scattered about the city in private
houses. Dr Mandelbaum, another of the commission, testified dryly
that none of the women had been thrown out of the windows of the Winter
Palace, that none were wounded, that three had been violated, and
that one had committed suicide, leaving a note which said that she
had been "disappointed in her ideals."
On 21 November the Military Revolutionary Committee officially dissolved
the Women's Battalion, at the request of the girls themselves, who
returned to civilian clothes.
(7)
In his book, Ten Days That Shook the World, John Reed described
Alexander Kerensky and the Cossacks
entry into Tsarkoye Selo.
The Cossacks
entered Tsarskoye Selo, Kerensky himself riding a white horse and
all the church-bells clamouring. There was no battle. But Kerensky
made a fatal blunder. At seven in the morning he sent word to the
Second Tsarskoye Selo Rifles to lay down their arms. The soldiers
replied they would remain neutral, but would not disarm. Kerensky
gave them ten minutes in which to obey. This angered the soldiers;
for eight months they had been governing themselves by committee,
and this smacked of the old regime. A few minutes later Cossack artillery
opened fire on the barracks, killing eight men. From that moment there
were no more 'neutral' soldiers in Tsarskoye.
(8) Max Eastman, Love and Revolution
(1965)
John Reed, as a pacifist, was only too eager for a fight. He was
a big man with jovial animosities and powerful muscles. I remember
his presence as a rather unsettling phenomenon. He had a habit of
looking away when he was talking to you, not looking in any particular
direction but everywhere, as though he were afraid he might miss something.
(9)
Louise Bryant, letter to Max
Eastman on the death of John Reed (October,
1920)
He was never delirious the way most typhus patients
are. He always knew me and his mind was full of stories and poems
and beautiful thoughts. He would tell me that the water he drank was
full of little songs.
