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THE RED WAR
ON THE FAMILY

BY
SAMUEL SALOMAN

Four years of enthroned socialism in Russia, then this confession:

‘‘Poverty-stricken, ragged, starving, the labor republic celebrates the
fourth anniversary of its birth.

‘‘Por four years it has been bleeding, covering the field of battle with
the bones of its best men, giving away all it has for the achievement of
victory.

**Millions of its children are in the bony clutches of famine. The
stacks of hundreds of its factories stand smokeless. Their whistles are
silent. Hundreds of steel horses are pining away on the iron rails.’’

(Everything lost to the socialist beast except his snarl.)

‘*But with a firm foot the red republic stands on the free soil, its own
soll, after vanquishing untold enemies. .. .

‘The iron apparatus of governmental power is still in the hands of the
working people. Guns and cannon are still in the hands of the red army
of workmen and peasants. The land and all the wealth of the country
are under our control. And our will, our ability, our persistence in
labor are still intact and strong. ...

‘‘Laugh, our enemies, laugh louder! On the day of the overthrow
of the Babylonian kingdom of capital, on the first day of the world
uprising against your rule, it will be we who will laugh at you in
triumph!’’

|

(Editorial in special edition of Moscow Pravda.)

Vaan
HX
S46

A.S4\ta"
CopryriGHT, 1922,

By SAMUEL SALOMAN,
Wasuincton, D.C.

: { tochud bus

Press of
J. J. Little & Ives Company
New York, U. S. A.

 
To
MY MOTHER

TO ALL GOOD WOMEN EVERYWHERE
THIS BOOK RESPECTFULLY IS DEDICATED
FOREWORD

Ir should not be necessary to apologize for yet another
volume on socialism.

True, much has been written on both sides, and publica-
tion assuredly will continue until such time, if it ever
comes, when socialism will be an assured fact or will be
relegated to the limbo where peacefully rest for all time
other theories of life that, too, had their outspoken de-
fenders, other philosophies that in their day, like socialism
to-day, made their appeals to the hearts and minds of
men.

But even before the close of the greatest war in history
a material change had taken place in the world’s affairs,
and necessarily in the socialist philosophy. Socialism in
some measure is not as it was, and transmuted into prac-
tice it has undergone radical change. Because of such
change the opposition is compelled to revise its methods
and its arguments and to adopt an entirely different out-
look on what before had been regarded by some fearful
ones as a remote threat but which since has become an
immediate menace to existing institutions.

A material change has taken place in some of the great
countries of the world but lately participants in the Great
War, and socialism, the great “doctrine of despair,” as
ever has thrived on the unrest resulting from defeat.
In some of the countries, notably Russia and for a short
time Hungary, socialism has had its innings, and was able
VI

 
  
   
 

to show to an astounded world just what socialists pur-
pose to do when all power is put into their hands.

It hardly is necessary to state to observant readers that
in those countries where socialism dominated the state
it has not made an impressive showing, even to those
of the socialist faith, as is evidenced by the many
apologies offered by the latter for the lack of success met|
with by socialist visionaries in such countries. But their|
experience has not been without value, and enables us
more correctly to appraise socialism than ever before. |

In this volume we have dealt with possibly the most}
important phase of socialism, that dealing with the moral
issue. We not only have dealt with the very interesting
though destructive theories of the recognized socialist |
fathers of other days, but have been enabled by reason
of the turn of fate’s wheel that brought socialists to the
top in some countries to watch the working out of the
socialist scheme not only in what sneeringly had been.
referred to by Karl Marx as “duodecimo editions of the:
new Jerusalem’—the pocket editions of socialism of
Robert Owen and men like him of earlier days—but what
possibly would have been more to Marx’s liking, the
communist states of Russia and Hungary, where the
attempt seriously was made to hew closer to the line of :
socialism than before had been possible.

For the assistance involuntarily rendered by our in-|
spired comrades of socialism in the makeup of this
volume of facts I am more than grateful. My heartfelt
thanks go out to these would-be saviors of society for the
inestimable privilege afforded me of reverently inspecting
their inspired articles and books and for being permitted
here and there to cull therefrom some priceless thought.

But there is some little difficulty there. Generally when

  
VII

an antisocialist endeavors to employ something of par-
ticular value from socialist sources he is met with the
expression, “But that is a private opinion, for which
socialism reasonably can not be held responsible.”

This view, we are pleased to record, is not always
shared by Morris Hillquit, recognized as one of the great-
est of living socialist authorities, judged by his pre-
liminary statement in his debate with Prof. John Augustine
Ryan, in Everybody's Magazine, October, 1913, in which
he admits that—

The utterances and acts of such writers and representatives,
unless formally repudiated by their party, must be considered as
legitimate expressions and manifestations of the socialist move-
ment, and its defenders and opponents alike may properly refer
to them in support of their contentions. The same rule applies
to the editorial attitude of the official publications of the socialist
party.

This will appear to the average individual, whether
affected or unaffected by the socialist virus, as a fair
and reasonable statement, and no amount of ingenious
disavowal by Mr. Hillquit himself or of any other social-
ist seer must be permitted to blunt the edge of this clear-
cut declaration. It is useless for Mr. Hillquit, before the
ink was dry on the quoted statement, to affirm that what
he said is held to apply only to certain parts of the
socialist faith and reasonably must not be applied to such
alleged extraneous issues as religion and morality. Even
if such disavowal were made in good faith, Mr. Hillquit
destroys the force of his own argument by debating that
which he claimed was not a legitimate subject of dis-
cussion and then by his further admission that with the
incoming of socialism all things materially will change,
even marriage and morals. In this last he is in full
VII

accord with the generality of the socialist philosophers,,
especially those who pin their faith on the determinist
philosophy of Marx and Engels. ;

In order to be still more secure in my position I sent
some years ago a letter to the national secretary of the
socialist party at Chicago, inquiring whether books pub-.
lished by the nationally and internationally prominent,
socialists reflect the socialist attitude on the very important}
questions of religion, morals, the family, etc., and asking)
where such books could be obtained, if they could not be
purchased of the local bookseller. I received a reply on
the official stationery of the national socialist organiza-'
tion, signed by the national secretary, in which I was
informed in part:

I am here inclosing our catalogue, which, however, is not an
official list, as there is no such list in our office, but it contains
all the works that are officially recognized.

Any of the books listed can be secured from this office. (Italics
mine.)

Here we have the official admission that while books
contained in the official catalogue are not to be regarded as
in any way official they are “officially recognized,’ also that
such books can be secured from the national office of the
socialist party.

Whether such books have an official status or merely
are “officially recognized” is after all of but slight con-
sequence. The difference between the two expressions.
is as the difference between tweedledum and tweedledee.
The fact that such books—Bebel’s “Woman” and Engel’s
malodorous “Origin of the Family,” for example—are
“officially recognized” and officially sold by the socialist
party is to the average mind, unclouded by socialist
sophistry, the next thing to official acceptance of such
IX

precious books, for it is inconceivable that an organiza
tion ever propagandizing, ever angling for public sup
‘port, willingly would sell or give away that which dis
torts or misrepresents doctrines it would publish to th
world.

From theory we have gone to practice. And here ou
socialist friends where they had the opportunity hav
done that which they ever threatened to do, and by s
doing have made a sorry mess of things, as they wer
expected to do.

We hope the recital herein of both theory and practic
will stimulate the growing number of the foes of socialisn
and the other allied subversive doctrines to renewe
efforts in their war on that which are harmful as theorie
and destructive in practice.
TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREWORD . 2 5 8 8 6 oe 8 we #@ @ 4%
Tue Soctatist INDICTMENT . . . «©. se
THE SoctaList CURE—IN THEORY . . .. .
THE SoctIaList CURE—IN PRACTICE. . . . .
Mopern Socratist PaRADISES . . . . 1.
A VERITABLE “SLAUGHTER OF THE Tigaceure” ;

Socratist Success MEANS THE DESTRUCTION OF

CIVILIZATION . . 1 wee
APPENDIX:
Sovier Russia’s Cope of Laws . . . .

Mme. KoLiontay ON PROSTITUTION AND Mar-
RIAGE Gl. gi. av “igs Ce <ecS8 CRA Se eh oes

118

139

166
THE SOCIALIST INDICTMENT

Tue views of our socialist friends on any conceivable
subject are most interesting, though rarely convincing.
Their views on economics, politics, religion, morals, and
the other questions that interest man contribute to that
infinite variety, that interesting diversity of opinion, that
is or should be relished in this too prosaic age.

It is not generally known that socialists have a well-
defined moral program, just as they have a political and
economic program, that may be studied with advantage,
not only by those opposed to socialism but as well by the
class-conscious socialist, who with all of his or her
knowledge may yet be uninformed or misinformed on this
vital phase of socialism.

Socialists ever have inveighed against the present sys-
tem of society, holding it directly responsible for the
“social evil,” intemperance, crime, poverty—in fact, for
every ill society suffers from at this time.

As for the social evil, so called, as well as for im-
morality in general, recognized socialist writers have gone
into the matter in sufficient detail and have set forth in
their rather voluminous literature on the subject what
appears to them, if not to the better informed individual,
an adequate remedy for such evil.

Socialists ever have claimed that the social evil is one
of the direct results of poverty, of withholding from the
female worker the greater share of the fruits of her

industry. The socialist remedy for this particular social
I
2 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

disease, it goes without saying, is the elimination
poverty, and such elimination, according to the sociali
view, can only be brought about by the entire socializatic
of industry.

If socialists and the other uninformed ones who b
lieve that the present claimed epidemic of immorality
due to such cause were able to reason from cause ©
effect, they would very soon perceive, and possibly adm
that poverty no more is responsible for the immorali
that exists than for some of the peculiar dress combin
tions women delight in at various times, and that no
is in evidence on our public thoroughfares and tho:
places where the “better-class people” congregate, or fc
some of the suggestive and immodest dances that delig]
society at different times.

If we ask our socialist friends to furnish a bill of pa:
ticulars with the oft-repeated charge, publicly made, thi
immorality is due almost entirely to bad economic co1
ditions, to show that such charge is based on somethin
more than mere assertion, it. is most certain that ver
little in the shape of real evidence will be forthcomin,

At a recent meeting of one of the Washington, D. C
organizations, where one of the reckless, soap-box tyf
of socialist speakers was permitted to rave and rant for
spell, the claim once more was made that the virus c
immorality was spreading at an alarming rate among th
people.. The speaker, as might be expected, gave it as h:
opinion that increasing poverty was the particular caus
of the dreadful conditions he pictured.

At this point he was asked by one of his audience hon
he accounted for the known and proved fact that ther
was as much, if not more, immorality among the ric
and middle classes as among the poor. If poverty wa
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 3

the determining cause, logically continued the questioner,
it stood to reason that those in comfortable financial
circumstances should be models. of morality while the
poverty-stricken would be grossly immoral.

The further question was put to the speaker by another
of his audience whether in the cloak and suit industries,
for example, girls employed as models at good salaries
were shown to be more moral than girls getting but a
fraction of the salaries paid the former in those indus-
tries; whether manicure artists. were shown to be more
moral than their poorer paid sisters of the department
stores; whether the women of the stage, in receipt of
comparatively large salaries, were shown to be more moral
than the girls of the factories—all in all, whether the
girls in the various industries in receipt of small salaries
were more prone to immorality than girls getting higher
salaries in the same or other industries.

Our socialist friend, like others of his ilk when con-
fronted with irritating facts or embarrassing questions,
adroitly turned the discussion into other and less dan-
gerous channels and left the questions put to him un-
answered.

While those afflicted with socialism are content to rest
their case on unproved and utterly false premises, many
are determined to get at the facts, that a cure may be
had, if a cure is at all possible. To mention but one of
the many agencies at work for the improvement, at least,
of the public morals, a volunteer committee of nationally
prominent social workers met in New York City in April,
1913, to investigate the charge made at divers times that
the social evil is directly due to the low wages paid the
female workers in the stores and factories.
4 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

The committee was composed of the following met
and women:

Sophie C. Barkley, superintendent of the Margaret J
Bennet Home, Baltimore, Md.; Kate Waller Barrett
president of the National Florence Crittenden Mission
Alexandria, Va.; Mary J. Bartelme, director of the
Schmidlapp Bureau for Women and Girls, Cincinnati
Ohio; R. J. Gorwin, chairman of the special committec
on public health problems of the American Medical As-
sociation, Pueblo, Colo.; Thomas Estill, commissioner o1
the Salvation Army, Chicago, Ill.; Géorge J. Kneeland
director of the commission to. investigate vice conditions
Chicago, Ill.; Graham Taylor, president of the Schoo:
of Civics and Philanthropy, Chicago, IIl.; and Marion D
Shutter, chairman of the morals commission, Minne-
apolis, Minn.

After a most exhaustive investigation, after every
possible clue had been followed to its source, the com-
mittee arrived at the only possible conclusion, “that it had
not been satisfactorily demonstrated that low wages are
a direct cause of loss of virtue in working girls.”

In its report the committee called attention to the very
important fact the many irresponsible ones spreading
such unwarranted and false charge entirely overlook,
that injustice is being done tens of thousands of thor-
oughly respectable working girls, especially the employees
of department stores, “by the widespread publicity given
to a mistaken view of industrial responsibility for the
so-called ‘white-slave’ condition.”

As to this phase of the question, the Omaha Bee,
commenting editorially on the findings of the Kansas
City commission, that also investigated the claimed con-
nection between low wages and immorality, which com-
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 5

mission also found little evidence to substantiate the too
popular charge, said as to the harm done by the direct or
implied charge that a woman can not remain respectable
on a low salary:

But the greatest wrong lies not in the false assumption so much
as in its unjust imputations. In the first place, it is grossly
wrong to assume that a level of low wages to girls implies im-
morality. As has already been said, it is unjust to thousands of
good, honorable working girls and women. It was blunderbuss
reasoning to affirm that the question of wages is wholly a moral
question instead of mainly an economic one. Whatever problems
are here involved can not possibly be solved by reckoning from
the wrong basis, for we can never reach right conclusions from
wrong premises.

The real causes of immorality among working girls,
as set forth by the New York Committee follow:

Our observations and experience indicate that the most im-
portant contributing cause of immorality among girls are weak-
ness of mind and will; individual temperament; immoral asso-
ciates; lack of religious or ethical training; injurious home in-
fluences; cramped living conditions, rendering privacy difficult;
lack of industrial efficiency; idleness; unwillingness to~ accept
available employment; love of finery and pleasure; unwholesome
amusements ; inexperience and ignorance of social temptations.

In the category of causes mentioned by the committee
to account for immorality in women the committee fails
to mention certain potent causes that can not very well
be overlooked; for example, the general freedom accorded
the young of this day, particularly impressionable young
girls, from parental restraint—freedom to go where they
will and do those things they want to do, without so much
as a word of caution from those who should be their
guides and protectors. Another influence that certainly
has a tendency to debauch the morals of the morally weak
and irresponsible we see on all sides is the pernicious
6 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

teachings and equally pernicious examples of notoriot
moral perverts we have dished up to us daily in the set
sational press as delectable morsels. Still another it
fluence for evil, just beginning to be recognized, is tt
depraved sex literature—a great deal from socialist an
feminist sources—and erotic plays and motion picture
offered for public consumption, seemingly with the cor
sent and full concurrence of those delegated to enforc
the laws against this very evil.

A further fact, generally overlooked. by the soci:
physician, is that the descent from virtue to open prost
tution generally is a very gradual one. The averag
woman of the streets or brothel, it can not well be deniex
had disposed of her person to some favored individu:
or individuals before definitely entering on a life c
shame.

Pittsburgh, Pa., also had its appointed commission t
inquire into the causes of immorality, which made ii
report in December, 1913, to the city council. The cor
clusions arrived at in the main agree with conclusior
of commissions that investigated vice conditions in Ne
York, Kansas City, Chicago, and other points in tk
United States and elsewhere. All held that parent;
neglect is possibly the principal cause of girls going wron
and fixed from 16 to 19 as the dangerous age for girls.

While poverty is mentioned as a contributing caus
the Pittsburgh commission affirms that poverty is in n
sense an important cause. Underlying all causes, tt
report points out, is the predisposition to immorality o
the part of the women dealt with. It was also pointe
out that possibly 80 per cent of the prostitutes examine
were feeble-minded, born with defective intelligence an
shiftless tendencies.
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 7

The number of prostitutes that can be reformed, this
report states, is very small, so small that out of 500
prostitutes examined not more than 20 have quit their
immoral trade, though every inducement had been offered
them to lead decent lives.

Which fact, if properly weighed, is sufficient to dispose
of the socialist claim of the connection between com-
mercialized immorality and economics.

It also was stated, to prove that the economic is but a
minor factor in prostitution, that a general tendency exists
among the women of loose virtue to squander their ill-
gotten gains as fast as earned on useless finery and in
other senseless ways. Less than 20 per cent of the prosti-
tutes examined had any bank accounts at all, and those
who saved did so, as a rule, to provide for the “regular
holiday escapades of extravagance.”

The commission also pointed out in its report:

Along with legislative and administrative efforts in this direc-
tion (better housing, cheaper living, and good family life) we
should have educational movements to inculcate a saner philos-
ophy of life. Not, indeed, the sort of education which by pro-
longing the period of men’s dependency—without regard to their
mental qualifications or the needs of the community—to nearly
the thirtieth year causes marriage to be deferred and encourages
prostitution, but the sort of education that makes young men self-
supporting in honest industries, makes them producers instead of
parasites, teaches young women the neglected domestic vocations
and the forgotten virtue of economy, teaches them that true hap-
piness is in the simple life and in the love of home.

Church and school and press—the three great educational
agencies of our time—have all neglected their duty in this regard.
Pastors are true shepherds no longer; educators have stimulated
the overcrowding of the so-called learned professions, which
tend to exploit the producers; newspapers, by catering to silly
sentiment and parading the extravagances of the imbecile rich,
stir up imitative envy and foster foolish ideals.
8 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

If we carefully examine the voluminous literatur
devoted to the subject of vice in general, we will find tha
where the matter is treated of in dispassionate, trul
scientific fashion, the economic factor, that the unscien
tific socialist ever stresses, barely is considered. Scientifi
investigators are in agreement that commercialized im
morality is due especially to liquor, habit-forming drug:
degeneracy, and other allied causes.

Thus in “Diseases of Society and Degeneracy” (1
335), Dr. Frank Lydston, a recognized authority on th
subject, classifies the especial causes. It is to be note
that what socialists and other uninformed ones claim t
be the chief, if not the only cause, the economic, is nc
even mentioned:

1. Seduction is responsible for the primary fall from virtue c
most prostitutes.

This in a measure is qualified by what follows:

2. There is a numerous class in which the woman is more tha
compliant, and perhaps seeks danger or even enacts the activ
réle in the so-called seduction. This class of woman comprise
the degenerates. The victims of nymphomania from nervous c
sexual disease and most of the low-class prostitutes come unde
this head.

3. Necessity impels many women to prostitution. It operate
with especial stress upon women who have already fallen, wh
are prone to exaggerate their necessities in the face of the tem
tation to lead an easy and luxurious life.

4. Prostitutes often adopt the life from choice and remain i
it from choice. The clandestine prostitute is such as a matte
of volition. The clandestine prostitute who under the cloak c
respectability taints middle and upper tendom is a typic harlo
as a rule, who is to the manner born.

If further evidence is necessary to prove beyond th
shadow of a doubt that our socialist friends are ur
measured miles from the truth when they claim th
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 9

economic as the sole or even the principal cause of com-
mercialized immorality, it can be found in the fact that
generally girls are drawn into prostitution at a compara-
tively early age, as evidenced by every competent author-
ity who has sought scientifically to deal with the subject.

Thus we have the oft-quoted tables of Dr. Pileur and
Rev. G. P. Merrick, the first dealing with 582 prostitutes
and the other with 7,365, which show that by far the
greater number of those drawn into this hellish traffic
are between the ages of 15 or 16 and 21.

That effectively disposes of the contention of short-
sighted individuals that prostitution is due primarily to
economic causes, to grinding poverty. Those who accept
this latter view—and there are many such—utterly fail
to show that poverty bears harder on girls from 15 to 21
than on their older sisters. Until they can show that be-
yond the shadow of a doubt those who view the matter
scientifically will have to throw aside the economic as
the sole or even the principal factor in the causation of
this social disease.

The fact that there is a recognized critical period in the
life of young women proves conclusively that other than
economic conditions operate to debauch womanhood. The
undisputed fact remains that the female continually faces
pitfalls during the transition period from girlhood to
womanhood that may engulf her if she is not continually
on her guard, Because of inexperience in worldly matters
and worldly temptations, because of almost complete
ignorance of vital sex matters or distorted knowledge of
the subject gleaned from questionable sources, because of
lack of control over themselves and their unholy desires,
many young women fall from grace between the ages
of 15 to 21. These causes, operating either separately or
10 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

in combination, in the opinion of all who seriously have
investigated this most important of social questions, are
responsible more than any or all causes that may be
mentioned for so many young women taking the fatal
first step that in so many cases leads to the brothel or the
streets.

Our socialist friends prove their utter dishonesty by
seeking to capitalize immorality as one of their principal
assets, as they ever capitalize economic discontent and
dissatisfaction.

It hardly is necessary to show that which looms up so
very plainly, that there is no honest attempt on their part
to examine into the subject and to present an honest
remedy. Like the medical quack, they ever find what
they seek, if they do not give up the search when it leads
in another direction.

While the new responsible leaders, those who really are
able to think logically, are disposed to go slowly on the
charge of economic conditions being the causa causans of
immorality, they show political cowardice in not calling
to account the less scientific of their movement for what
they know to be unwarranted assertions. These are
permitted to accuse capitalism of being responsible and
to spread their charges ad libitum among the ignorant
masses.

But it is not to be expected that they, the average among
the socialists, who in other fields have shown the most
childlike ignorance of the simplest and plainest facts, will
show more proficiency in an examination of a subject that
is most complex, that has been with us from the very
dawn of civilization, and that promises to be with us,
despite all that can and will be done by honest reformers,
for a considerable time longer.
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY II

If our socialist friends are such poor social diagnos-
ticians that they ever misread the plain symptoms ex-
hibited by this social disease, we ask how it is possible
for them effectively to prescribe for this and for our
other social ills? Subsequent chapters plainly will show,
citing the best evidence obtainable from socialist sources,
that in this, too, they are not at all to be trusted.

Our investigations have almost led us to the belief that
in the bright lexicon of socialism there is no such word
as “morality ;” that their evident purpose, as sagely stated
by an English critic of socialism, is to “improve morality
by abolishing occasions for its exercise.”
THE SOCIALIST CURE—IN THEORY

Let us now pass from the diagnosis of this hideous
social disease, this noisome ulcer on the body of society,
to the remedies proposed, first, by those rational ones who
have interested themselves in the war on immorality and
then by a certain branch of political and economic thought
now unduly prominent by reason of the unceasing labors
of those at the helm of such movement to keep in the
limelight.

Some few there are who would adopt the logical and
sensible method of fighting the disease by removing the
cause. The cause being fairly well defined, it should not
be an especially difficult task to put into effect measures
that may at least help to minimize the evil.

/ To that end it is proposed to make woman more self-
jreliant through adequate training in the school and in the
home, that she may when occasion demands be self-
supporting, in a condition to help herself under reasonably
\ normal conditions.
¢ It further is proposed to put into effect a minimum-
wage scale, at least for women, that women in the indus-
, tries may not be exploited by conscienceless employers.
‘Such movement, in its infancy at this time, is surely
/ growing, and promises to be an important industrial fac-
‘tor in the near future.
The tendency in the direction of mothers’ pensions may
\ be cited in the war against immorality. This reform, as

' abundantly has been proven in all lands where such policy
cased ica. 12

a
‘eb as, * 4
_) Aus 1a
if a
Tots Oe

tee h

 
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY I;

has been adopted, enables women who have had thrus'
upon them the care of families to keep their flocks intac:
and properly to watch over the helpless ones committec
to their care. Institutional care of orphans and other:
of our dependent young has fairly been tried and beer
found wanting in the majority of cases. The new policy
deserves a fair trial, if for no other reason than thai
practically all other methods for dealing with this press-
ing social problem had been tried and had failed.

Sex instruction for those who most need it at present
engages the attention of earnest individuals in all enlight-
ened countries of the world. Properly confined withir
legitimate limits—that is, by having such instruction im-
parted by properly instructed parents in the home and not
by paid instructors in the schools—such instruction surely
must serve a good purpose. There is no question but that
innocence or ignorance of sex matters never served as a
protecting influence and never will. To be fully informed,
it goes without saying, is fully to be protected at all
points. At the present time such movement is in its
infancy, and suffers as a consequence at the hands of some
of its too-zealous friends. Hope, therefore, is entertained
by those with the best interests of society at heart that
some safe plan may be formulated for imparting sex
instruction to those growing to manhood and womanhood,
without undue risk to the morals of those of tender years
who may receive such instruction.

/It may also be mentioned that the double standard of
morals that now prevails—judging man by a different
standard from that employed to judge women—is destined
soon to go by the boards. It is beginning to be recognized
that even men may not sow their “wild oats” with im-
punity ; that the after-effects of man’s sexual indiscretions
14 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

often are visited upon innocent wife and children, the
latter to the “third and fourth generations.” For that
reason, if for no other, the male rake soon may be brought
under the just condemnation of society, just as his erring
sister now is.

Another fruitful source of commercialized immorality
is rapidly being brought under the ban of state and nation.
The Mann white-slave law, now in effect, makes it a
felony to transport women from one state to another, or
from a foreign country to any of the states, or from a
state to a foreign country for immoral purposes, and
visits severe and well-deserved punishment on those found
guilty of such crime. The adoption of necessary local laws
against the white-slave evil effectively to supplement the
national law—and that is a work public-spirited women
everywhere should strive to secure—may possibly have a
deterrent effect on those who so employ weak women for
their profit.

Last, and certainly not least, those who have entered
the lists against this particular social evil may congratu-
late themselves that what has been rated as two of the
principal factors in immorality and prostitution—alcohol
and narcotic habit-forming drugs—have in the last few
years been outlawed, the first by a constitutional amend-
ment and supplementary laws and the other by a drastic
national law, so these particular influences for evil have
to a great extent been shorn of their sinister powers, even
if, at the present time, it is impossible to eliminate them
entirely as commodities in commerce.

To those of our socialist and radical friends who may
contend that in the foregoing we have not provided a
remedy for the social evil it is but necessary to reply that
there is no real remedy for the disease. The only thing
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 15

». . eo. . ——

we possibly can do is to minimize the evil. So long as
there are women of loose morals—and such type of
woman will be with us for a while longer—and men with
abnormal sex appetites, such traffic will continue, if not
in the present form certainly in another. So long as
society provides something that will serve as a medium
of exchange, just so long will purchasable women offer
themselves for hire and impressionable men will continue
to buy. a

Some few of the more honest of the socialist fraternity
admit in their writings and speeches that no real remedy
is in prospect. To mention just one, Mrs. Snowden, a
prominent British socialist (“The Woman Socialist’),
said (p. 56):

But if, as at present, the “unfortunate woman” be regarded

as a necessity in these days of advanced thought and increased
opportunities, then her status must be raised.
Prostitution, according to Mrs. Snowden, may not
come to an end, even under socialism, but the woman
engaged in such debasing and .debased traffic will be ac-
corded a “higher status,” because “she will be held as
performing a necessary social service.’ The remedy,
therefore, of our socialist friend is merely to advance the
social status of the prostitute, because it is recognized by
the enlightened individuals of the new order that, after
all, she is a oe rae fal Fach perpen 2: a “neces-
sary social service.”

But some few ihe of our socialist friends contend
that there is a remedy for this evil, one that effectively
will cast out immorality from the haunts of men and
enthrone morality in its place.

If we examine the published works of the acknowledged
socialist authorities, where they touch on the subject of
16 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

morals at all, we can not help come to the conclusion that
the socialist plan for bringing about a better moral atmos-
phere is the very ingenious one of abolishing for all time
our present moral standards. iil

‘There seems to be general concurrence among socialist
literary lights in the oft-repeated socialist view that moral-
ity, as we understand the term, is a “bourgeois. virtue” ;
that the utter elimination of such virtue is to be com-
mended than otherwise.

In order to minimize the force of the antisocialist con-
tention that socialism, judged by its literature, advocates
a type of morality much inferior to that which we now
have, the claim is made that what had been published by
socialists on the moral issue, just as the claim had been
made in regard to religion, is to be regarded as the “pri-
vate opinion” of its authors; that socialism no more is to
be held responsible for the opinions of some of its ad-
vocates than the other political movements are to be
saddled with the rash opinions of some of its overzealous
advocates.

The comparison oftentimes is made by socialists be-
tween the opinions of Bebel, Engels, Deville, Bax, and
others of the anointed ones of socialism, who in their books
and articles in the radical press advocated a loose form of
morality, and the published views of the wife of a former
representative of the . United States | Congress from the
State of New York, who in a book published some few
years ago advocated “‘trial marriages,” which book re-
ceived fulsome notice in the “yellow” American press at
the time. 4 If socialists are to be held up to the scorn of
all decent men and women because some of their leaders
advocate what may be construed as immorality, they un-
wisely argue, so also should the Republican party be held
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY I

up to scorn because of the published views of the wife o
one of its then recognized leaders. ?

The dragging in of the trial-marriage incident in thi
connection—and such argument was advanced by Mrs
Rose Pastor Stokes in a discussion had with the autho
before one of the New York organizations a few year
ago—merely proves the desperate straits of our socialis
friends. It will be a comparatively easy task to prov
to all except those blinded by their socialist views that n
similarity exists between the incidents cited.

To show that there is no real analogy between the so
cialist and the republican position it is but necessar
to state that the fair author of the trial-marriage idea wa
not even a member of the republican party; that her con
nection with the republican party was due to the acciden
of marriage with one of its influential members; that suc
party never stood sponsor for the book containing th
trial-marriage idea, or for anything therein containec
in any form or manner; that its author never so muc
as intimated that her startling idea was to be considere
a republican idea. We may mention, if at all necessary
that not one of the 6,000 or more of the republican news
papers of the United States has to this day recommende
the book or the idea in it that gave it undue prominenc
to their readers as good republican doctrine.

On the other hand, it can be shown without the slight
est trouble that Marx, Engels, Bebel, Deville, Hillqui
and the other purveyors of the free-love idea are an
ever have been looked up to as leaders in the socialis
movement ; that their views on that important subject ar
put forth by socialists as good socialist doctrine; and the
the socialist organizations throughout the world practicall
put their stamp of approval on such views when the
18 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

gratuitously advertise books containing such views in offi-
cial socialist publications, recommending the books to the
membership as sound socialist doctrine, go even further
and officially circulate such books to the membership from
local and national socialist headquarters.

If organized socialism would clear its skirts from the
muck of free love, let it sever the connection between the
books complained of and the socialist organization by
withholding its approval of such books; advise the pub-
lications it controls that free-love literature must stand
on its own feet and not bear, as in the past and at present,
the indorsement, express or implied, of the socialist or-
ganization; have one of the national conventions honestly
repudiate the sex views of the socialist masters, past and
present; and, if they dare, put a strong plank in their
national programs that socialism stands, first and last, for
the monogamic marriage and not for the “free union” of
men and women—do that and we will most cheerfully
admit and advertise to the world that socialism is sincere
in its protestations and honest with its many dupes and
with itself.

But it hardly is to be expected that organized socialism
will take any such step. The literature end of the game
is a paying one for the organization, and we do not for
one moment imagine that the socialist organizations will
dispense with the wealth secured from the sale of its
salacious literature. Further, it is “good tactics’—and
good tactics explains many otherwise unexplainable mat-
ters—to blow hot and cold at one and the same time, to
preach free love to the free-love advocates and the strict-
est morality to the many in the socialist ranks who are not
prepared to throw overboard our present moral code.

The views of Mr. Hillquit on the value of the socialist
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY IC

authorities we shall quote may here be presented. Ir
his debate with Prof. Ryan in Everybody's Magazine
October, 1913, issue, he very logically said:

For while the official statements and declarations of the or.
ganized socialist parties, national and international, constitute the
most indisputable authority on the questions with which they
deal, there are certain other sources which can not properly be
left out of account in a comprehensive and intelligent discussior
of socialism.

The practical socialist movement is supported by a social phi:
losophy which was formulated by the “theoreticians” of thi
movement, and was and still is constantly elaborated by it
students and writers. In its everyday work and struggles th
socialist movement acts and speaks through its recognized repre
sentatives on the public platform, in legislative bodies, o
administrative offices. The utterances and acts of such writer.
and representatives, unless formally repudiated by their party
must be considered as legitimate expressions and manifestation
of the socialist movement, and its opponents and defenders alik,
may properly refer to them in support of their contentions. Th
same rule applies to the editorial attitude of the official publica
tions of the socialist parties.

We recognize by such declaration that Mr. Hillqui
places himself and the others of his party squarely be.
tween the two horns of the dilemma conjured up by them:
selves. Escape the one horn and they surely will impak
themselves on the other. Publicly acknowledge that wha
had been published by socialist leaders are authoritative
utterances on socialism, unless officially repudiated, anc
they risk losing the support of the public because of ex:
treme radicalism; take away, on the other hand, every
shred of authority from the socialist classics, and at tha:
moment you deprive the socialist movement of ever)
stable element, leaving it a shifting mass, ever at the
mercy of the whims and caprices of whoever may be ir
temporary control of the party.
20 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

But, claims Mr. Hillquit with refreshing naiveté, the
quotation which we had before taken the liberty of setting
forth applies to the economics and politics of the move-
ment and not to such unrelated matters as religion and
morals. As to that he said: 4

It would obviously be preposterous to claim that Mr. Shaw’s
volumes of dramatic criticism represent the socialist view of the
drama, and, perhaps, in a minor degree, it is similarly unwar-
ranted to claim that Engels’s religious beliefs or Bebel’s views on
the institution of the family represent the socialist conception of
these subjects. Like the opinion of a judge on a subject not
directly involved in a matter subject to his decision, such ex-
traneous views are obiter dicta, and not binding on anybody but

the author.

Mr. Hillquit slightly is in error as to this, as he is in
other matters. The published views of Bebel on the
family and morals, as well as the views on the subject by
the other anointed ones of socialism that are often cited
by those opposed to socialism, are not in any sense to be
considered the personal opinions of their authors respect-
ing such matters; rather are they personal interpretations
and amplifications of the recognized socialist views on
morals. Being on the inside, with full opportunity to see
what is going on in their organizations, the views of
Bebel and the others on this and other related matters
should have some slight weight with socialists not so for-
tunately situated, as well as with the millions outside the
socialist ranks, even if such views do not bear the stamp
of official socialist approval.

Further, \Mr. Hillquit shows an utter lack of consis-
tency, like all true socialists, by declaring in one part of
the debate that the moral issue is not to be considered as
within the purview of a discussion on socialism and in
another part of the same debate including as a legitimate
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 21

topic of discussion the claimed extraneous issue of morals
and the family. Mr. Hillquit knows as a lawyer that he
can not accept and debate an issue and then have the issue
that he had accepted and debated as a legitimate issue
ruled out as “obster dicta, not binding on anybody but
the authors,” on his later motion.

I believe it can easily be shown that the moral issue
looms up as most prominent in the socialist philosophy,
despite the assertions of our usually well-informed friend.
In that event it logically follows that the views of promi-
nent socialists, to quote Mr. Hillquit, “unless formally
repudiated by their party, must be considered as legitimate
expressions and manifestations of the socialist movement,
and its opponents and defenders alike may properly refer
to them in support of their contentions.”

In the same contribution in which is set forth Mr.
Hillquit’s views on the admissibility of Bebel’s views on
the family is contained the following as to what legiti-
mately is embraced within the socialist philosophy:

The program implies radical changes in the existing industrial
machinery, political structure, and social relations. The form
of society which would result from such changes is usually desig-
nated in the literature on the subject as the socialist state or the
socialist ideal.

Thus the dominant factors in the socialist thought, movement
and ideal may be said to be of a politico-economic nature. But
socialism is not devoid of ethical and spiritual implications. The
socialist philosophy involves certain definite views of right and
wrong in the individual and social conduct of men, which are
sometimes at variance with accepted standards; and the socialist
ideal is predicated on a change in the reciprocal relations of men
and society which are bound to affect our conceptions of individ-
ual and social duty. The moral conceptions thus implied in the
social program constitute the code of socialist ethics.

Further, if we accept the claimed socialist doctrine of
22 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

economic determinism—and the generality of socialists do
accept this fallacious doctrine as an integral part of the
socialist philosophy—we can no more repudiate the pub-
lished socialist declarations on morals than we can the dec-
larations from the same unholy source on politics and
economics.

Socialism, it will be admitted by those qualified to speak
on the subject, is more than a politico-economic move-
ment, as contended by some few unthinking or dishonest
socialists. It is, rather, a philosophy of life, as such
touching every phase of human existence. Therefore the
socialist movement presents a definite moral program,
that we no more can overlook than the economic-political
one, so very much in the limelight at this time. Thus
it is permissible to cite in this discussion on morals the
many socialist pronouncements on the moral issue, espe-
cially those which, as later will be shown, meet with the
full approval of a large number—possibly a majority—of
those enrolled in the socialist movement.

In “Woman and Socialism,” by August Bebel, a book
indorsed by practically every socialist publication in this
and other countries, the socialist moral plan is duly set
forth in the following very interesting paragraphs (pp.
466-467) :

In the new society women will be entirely independent, both

‘ socially and economically. She will not be subjected to even a

trace of domination and exploitation, but will be free and man’s
equal and mistress of her own lot. * * *

In the choice of love she is as free and unhampered as man.
She wooes or is wooed, and enters into a union prompted by no
other considerations than her own feelings. The union is a pri-
vate agreement, without the interference of a functionary, just
as marriage had been a private agreement until far into the
Middle Ages. Here socialism will create nothing new; it will
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 23

merely reinstate on a higher level of civilization and under a dif-
ferent social form what generally prevailed before private prop-
erty dominated society.

Man shall dispose of his own person, provided that the grati-
fication of the impulses is not harmful or detrimental to others.
The satisfaction of the sexual impulse is as much the private con-
cern of such individual as the satisfaction of any other natural
impulse. No one ts accountable to anyone else, and no third
person has a right to interfere. What I eat and drink, how 1
sleep and dress, ts.my. own private affair, and my private affair also
is my “intercourse with a person of the opposite sex.” Intelligence
and culture, personal independence—qualities which will becom.
natural, owing to education and conditions prevailing in the new
society—will prevent persons from committing actions that wil!
prove detrimental to themselves. Men and women of the future
society will possess far more self-control and a better knowledge
of their own natures than men and women of to-day. The one
fact that the foolish prudery and secrecy connected with ‘sexual
matters will disappear will make the relations of the sexes a far
moré natural and healthful one. If between a man and woman
who have entered into a union incompatibility, disappointment, or
revulsion should appear, morality commands a dissolution of the
union which has become unnatural, and therefore immoral. As
all these circumstances will have vanished that have so far com-
pelted” a great many women either to choose celibacy or prostitu-
tion, men can no longer dominate over women. On the other
hand, the completely changed social conditions will have removed
the many hindrances and harmful influences that affect married
life to-day and frequently prevent its full development or make
it quite impossible.

At the present time, according to Bebel, we have a state
of affairs such as he pictures, but unfortunately it is con-
fined to but a few, those in favored financial or social
circumstances. He would extend these blessings to all.

So he follows that which before had been quoted with
this (pp. 467-468) :

The impediments, contradictions, and unnatural features in the
present position of woman are being recognized by ever wider
24 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

circles, and find expression in our modern literature on social
questions, as well as in modern fiction, only the form in which it
is expressed sometimes fails to answer the purpose. That pres-
ent-day marriage is not suited to its purpose is no longer denied
by any thinking person. So it is not surprising that even such
persons favor a free choice of love and a free dissolution of the
marriage relation who are not inclined to draw the resulting con-
clusions that point to a change of the entire social system. They
believe that freedom in sexual intercourse is justifiable among
members of the privileged classes only.

He is, as will appear in another chapter, entirely correct
in his assumption that some few progressive ones favor
a “free choice of love” and a “free dissolution of the
marriage relation” who are opposed to a change in the
industrial system that Bebel considers should go hand in
hand with marital change. But at that he is with them
in the proposition of extension to all of that which now
is enjoyed by the few. He says as to that (p. 469):

But why should only the “great souls” lay claim to this right
and not also the others who are not great souls? If a Goethe
and a George Sand, to select only these two from among the
many who have done and are doing likewise, could follow the in-
clination of their hearts; if on Goethe’s love affairs, especially,
entire libraries are published that are devoured in a sort of rev-
erent ecstasy by his admirers, why should we condemn in others
what becomes an object of admiration in the case of a Goethe
or a George Sand?

Of course, it is impossible to assert the free choice of love in
bourgeois society, as we have shown by our entire line of argu-
ment, but if the community were placed under similar social con-
ditions as are enjoyed to-day only by the few who are materially
and intellectually favored, all would have the possibility of a
similar freedom. In “Jacques” George Sand depicts a husband
who judges the illicit relation of his wife with another man in
the following manner:

“No human being can command love, and none is guilty if he
feels or goes without it. What degrades the woman is the lie;
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 25

what constitutes the adultery is not the hour she grants to her
lover but the night that she thereupon spends with her husband.”

Men and women of to-day are hypocrites, according to
Bebel (p. 470):

But the propertied and cultured classes do not venture even
to-day openly to avow the principles of George Sand, although
they actually live in accordance with them. They are hypocrites
in marriage as they are hypocrites in morals and religion.

But 1 with change in the industrial system will come a

change i in m _Marriage :

So women will be free, and the children she may have will not
impair her freedom; they will only increase her pleasure in life. .

Bebel thus continues to the end of the chapter, thus to ,
excite the fondest hopes of the dissolute of both sexes
by a recital of what may be expected when socialists have
come into their kingdom.

“Man shall dispose of his own person, provided that
the gratification of his impulses is not harmful or detri-
mental to others. The satisfaction of the sexual impulse
is as much the private concern of each individual as the
satisfaction of any other natural impulse.” What more
does the libertine or the courtesan ask for at this time
than that? What greater privilege does he or she, ham-
pered by the “artificial restraints” that society has wisely
—or, it seems, unwisely—imposed, beg for than what
Bebel assures his dupes will be the portion of the free
citizens of the socialist state?

Bebel, however, neglects to state who is to be the judge
of what is to be considered a moderate or an immoderate
gratification of the sexual impulses or when such gratifi-
cation becomes detrimental to others. Possibly such minor
matter will be left, with the other matters of like nature,
to a board or commission, the members of which, also
26 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

having sinned in this particular respect, may be most
lenient when passing judgment on others of no greater
guilt.

It has been contended that the views of Bebel on sexual
matters are his personal views; that organized socialism
should not be called upon to shoulder any blame, if blame
there be, for the publicly expressed views of Bebel and
others of the socialist fraternity. While such contention
in other circumstances may be considered a valid one,
when we remember that “Woman and Socialism” re-
ceived the warm indorsement of the socialist hierarchy,
the omniscient and omnipotent inner circle that dominates
the socialist movement to-day; that such book is recom-
mended as good socialist doctrine by practically every
socialist publication; further, that Bebel’s classic and like
literature circulates from socialist headquarters and are
on sale at all socialist meeting places—that, in the opinion
of all but our purblind socialist brethren, constitutes at
least an indirect indorsement of such book and all therein
contained. |

Evidence in abundance may be found, if one will but
look in the right direction, to support the contention of
those opposed to socialism that the decadent sex views
of Bebel and those of his kind are not, as claimed, the
views of but an inconsequential minority of the socialist
organizations, but rather the views of a large and influen-
tial portion of those in the socialist movement.

On the occasion of the seventieth birthday of August
Bebel the national women’s committee of the socialist
party, composed of Meta L. Stern, Theresa Malkiel, Dr.
Antoinette Kanikow, May Wood Simons, and Winnie
Branstetter, names known to all in the socialist move-
ment, sent on behalf of the socialist women of the United
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 27

States congratulations to Bebel and full indorsement of
his book. They said in part:

We, too, feel privileged to say our August Bebel. Although
the ocean rolls between his country and ours, although we be-
long to another nation and speak a different language, he is still
ours in heart and spirit, for August Bebel and the immortal book
that he has given to women are as international as socialism
itself.

Perhaps the printer had juggled with the types. It may
be that the word “immortal” had been inserted when “im-
moral” was intended. They continue:

Bebel’s “Woman” has become the foundation of the proletarian
woman’s movement of all lands. Coming generations will rec-
ognize it as a historical document, recording the enslavement and
the emancipation of women.

It is not at all surprising that the national women’s
committee had publicly commended Bebel’s book, with its
clearly immoral portions, when we consider that such
committee was fully impregnated with the free-love idea
that Bebel extols; but surprising, indeed, is the implied
assent of the decent, thoroughly respectable women of the
party—and they possibly constitute the majority of the
socialist party—in permitting a committee of their party
to align them with the sexually progressive element of
the party in commendation of that which clearly is im-
moral. Until they publicly repudiate such leadership,
until they publicly denounce the attempt of the national
women’s committee publicly to brand all women of the
party as favorable to the erotic views of Bebel, the re-
spectable women of socialism should bear without com-
plaint the condemnation of all opposed to the free-love
ideal and all it entails to the individual and to society for
their action or nonaction in the premises.

The Socialist Woman, in its issue of October, 1907,
28 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

added its word of praise to the socialist encomiums freely
showered on Bebel’s classic when it said:

Bebel’s book shows how the overthrow of the capitalist sys-
tem and the inauguration of the socialist régime will give her the
coveted place in social progress for which she vainly strives
to-day.

This but adds insult to injury. The “coveted place”
for which the women, socialist and other, are said to be
striving for is that of the harlot, the clandestine prosti-
tute, and the “kept woman,” rather than that occupied
by the decent women of to-day.

The editor of Wilshire’s Magazine, women’s depart-
ment, some time ago announced a course of study, the
subject “Woman,” with Bebel’s masterpiece as the text-
book. In its issue of September, 1910, it said:

No better basis could have been chosen for such a course of
study than the book on woman by Bebel.

It might also be well to mention that practically all
socialist publications, in addition to the indorsement of
the book, place it with Engel’s “The Origin of the Family”
at the head of the list of books of “interest to women.”

What appears to be an official indorsement of Bebel
and his book is that a subcommittee of seven of the na-
tional executive committee of the national socialist party
recommended such book to the membership, presumably
as good socialist doctrine.

All of which is accepted by the unprejudiced observer
as evidence fully to substantiate our charge that Bebel’s
“personal opinions” on morals properly had been trans-
muted into good socialist doctrine.

Frederic Engels’s views on morals also may be studied
with profit by socialist and nonsocialist alike. In “The
Origin of the Family,” considered by socialists the par-
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 29

ticular gem of their literature, occur these scintillating
paragraphs (p. 91):

We are now approaching a social revolution, in which the old
economic foundations of monogamy will disappear just as surely
as those of its complement, prostitution. Monogamy arose
through the concentration of considerable wealth in one hand—a
man’s hand—and from the endeavor to bequeath this wealth to
the children of the man to the exclusion of all others. This
necessitated monogamy on the woman’s but not on the man’s
part. Hence this monogamy of woman in no way hindered open
or secret polygamy of man. Now, the impending social revolu-
tion will reduce this whole care of inheritance to a minimum by
changing at least the overwhelming part of permanent and in-
heritable wealth—the means of production—into social property.
Since monogamy was caused by economic conditions, will it dis-

_appear when these causes are abolished?

One might reply, not without reason, not only will it not dis-
appear but it will rather be perfectly realized. For with the
transformation of the means of production into collective prop- |
erty wage labor will also disappear, and with it the proletariat
and the necessity for a certain statistically ascertainable number
of women to surrender for money. Prostitution disappears, and
monogamy, instead of going out of existence, at last becomes a
reality—for men also.

And this is the particular type of morality and monog-
amy that is to come with the cooperative commonwealth,
on the authority of our friend Engels (pp. 91-92):

At all events the situation will be very much changed for
men, But also that of women, and of all women, will be consid-
erably altered. With the transformation of the means of produc-

: tion into collective property the monogamous family ceases to be
the unit of society. The private household changes to a social
industry. The care and education of children becomes a public
matter. Society cares equally well for all children, legal or sl-

é legal. This removes the care about the “consequences,” which
‘now forms the essential social factor—moral and economic—

hindering a girl to surrender unconditionally to the beloved man.
\ ' ‘

nn !
4 ;
30 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

Will not this be sufficient cause for a gradual rise of a more un-
conventional intercourse of the sexes and a more lenient public
opinion regarding virgin honor and female shame? And finally,
did we not see that in the modern world monogamy and prosti-
tution, although antitheses, are inseparable and poles of the same
social condition? Can prostitution disappear without engulfing at
the same time monogamy?

Here a new social element becomes active, an element which at
best existed only in the germ at the time when monogamy de-
veloped—individual sex love.

According to the same exalted authority, this is the way

the new monogamic order, that based entirely on “sex

love,” is expected to function in the new order (pp. 99-
100) :

The supremacy of man in marriage is simply the consequence
of his economic superiority, and will fall with the abolition of
the latter.

The indissolubility of marriage is partly the consequence of
economic conditions, under which monogamy arose, partly tra-
dition from the time where the connection between the economic
situation and monogamy, not clearly understood, was carried to
extremes by religion. To-day it has been perforated a thousand
times. If marriage founded on love is alone moral, then it fol-
lows that marriage ts moral only as long as love lasts. The dura-
tion of an attack of individual sex love varies considerably ac-
cording to individual disposition, especially in men. A positive
cessation of fondness or its replacement by a new passionate
love makes a separation a blessing for both parties and for so-
ciety. But humanity will be spared the useless wading through
the mire of a divorce court.

Our very liberal friend is somewhat of a prophet and
loves to indulge his prophetic bent on occasions to the
limit. Thus we have this from his gifted pen (p. 100):

What we may anticipate about the adjustment of sexual rela-
tions after the impending downfall of capitalistic production is
mainly of a negative nature, and mostly confined to elements that
will disappear. But what will be added? That will be decided
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 31

after a new generation has come to maturity—a race of men who
never in their lives have had occasion for buying with money or ‘
other economic means of power the surrender of a woman; a
race of women who never had any occasion for surrendering to
any man for any other reason but love or for refusing to sur- ‘
render to their lover for fear of economic consequences. Once ‘|
such people are in the world, they will not give a moment's /
thought to what we to-day believe should be their course. They
will follow their own practice and fashion their own public opin-
ion about the individual practice of every person—only this and
nothing more.

If Engels but knew it, such a generation of people was
in full flower in his time and exists to-day. In the Aleu-
tian Islands we have this state of affairs, according to

r. James Weir, Jr. (“Religion and Lust,” p. 176):

Huddled about in their communal kachims, naked without any
thought of immodesty, men, women, and children share the same
fire and eat from the same pot. They recognize no immorality
in the fact of the father cohabiting with his daughter—one of
them naively remarking to Langsdorf, who reproached him for
having committed this crime: “Why not; the otters do it.”
Later in life the men and women mate; but even then there is no
sanctity in the marriage tie, for the Aleutian will freely offer his
wife to the stranger within his gates, and will consider it an insult ,
if he refuses to enjoy her company. _

As with many savages and half-civilized people, the man who’ me
would not offer his guest the hospitality of the conjugal couch
or the company of his best-looking daughter would be consid- '
ered an ill-bred person. v

Dr. Weir also stated (p. 177):

This laxity in sexual relations was at first common to all races
of primitive men, but after a time there arose certain influences
which modified to a certain extent this free and indiscriminate
intercourse.

So we see that Engels’s sex progress is in any but a
forward direction.

In the paragraphs we have quoted from Engels we

Ne,

‘
32 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

have the familiar socialist claim that monogamic marriage,
or the faults underlying it, and prostitution are due to
capitalistic production and distribution, and an entire
change will be had when capitalism is supplanted by so-
cialist cooperation ; we also have the gratuitous bracketing
of marriage with prostitution, the one the claimed com-
plement of the other; and we have the promise to those
pulsating with sex love, who ever hunger after forbidden
sex fruits, that along with the new economic conditions
socialism will cause the fruition of their fondest sex hopes,
and they will be permitted to satisty their sexual cravings
to satiety. \

Socialists and nonsocialists alike, all who have mothers,
sisters, wives, and daughters, well can afford to ask them-
selves whether the form of morality set forth by Engels
in the paragraphs we have quoted—the morality of the
brothel—is suited to their own homes and to society in
general; whether it is well for society to throw overboard
its present moral code for a “more lenient opinion regard-
ing virgin honor and female shame.”

' Again it will be claimed that the views of Engels on this
subject are his views and not those of organized socialism.
In reply we can only say that “The Origin of the Family,”
said to represent the sex views of Karl Marx, the high
priest of scientific socialism, as well as those of Frederick
Engels, is indorsed by the socialist press as “one of the
great classics of socialist literature” and recommended as
such by prominent officials in the socialist organizations.

We present herewith a few of the many laudatory
comments from socialist sources and leave it to the un-
prejudiced whether we are right in our contention that
the “Origin of the Family” must be regarded as good
socialist doctrine.
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 33

The Internatéonalist Socialist Review of September,
1902, said:

Any reader who masters this work of Engels will be rid, once
for all, of the complacent notion that things have always been
as they are, and therefore must always remain so. He will find
himself better able to understand the complicated problem which
must be faced of adjusting the relations of husband and wife,
parent and child, to the radically different economic conditions
which are at hand.

The same publication, in its issue of October, 1902,
contained this:

The book is really one of the two or three great socialist clas-
sics, and now that it is in English it must find a place in the li-

brary of everyone who hopes to master the real fundamental
philosophy underlying socialism.

The following is from the Comrade (John Spargo, edi-
tor), November, 1902. Mr. Spargo at that time was one
of the most prominent socialists in the United States and
looked up to as one of the authorities on socialism:

This book, first published in 1884, has been translated into al-
most every European language, and has long been regarded as
one of the “classics” of socialist philosophic literature. That it
has not heretofore been accessible to English readers is surpris-
ing, and too much can not be said in praise of the publishers who
have supplied the movement with an admirable translation.

The Worker, in its issue of July, 1913, referring to
Engels’s chef d’ceeuvre and another like work, said that
“these will be among the most important additions to the
literature of socialism in the English language since the
translation of ‘Capital.’ ”

The Appeal to Reason, in its “special religious edi-
tion,” February 21, 1913, recommended the “Communist
Manifesto” and “The Origin of the Family” as authori-
tative utterances of socialism on morals and the family.
34 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

Just one more indorsement of such precious work of
Engels, that contained in an editorial in that very influen-
tial socialist daily, the New York Call. In its issue of
February 27, 1910, we find the following:

Woman, to fight effectively for her freedom, ought to know
exactly how the present relations between men and women came
into being. Never was a great movement so sadly handicapped
by historical ignorance as is the woman suffrage movement of
to-day. The book that contains in small compass “what every
woman ought to know” is Frederick Engels’s “The Origin of the
Family.” Every socialist woman should become a book agent
to sell this book.

The socialist alliance of Geneva, Switzerland, not so
very many years ago not only declared itself atheist and
demanded the “abolition of all worship, the substitution
of science for faith and divine practice’—whatever that
may be—and “for human justice,” but declared in
emphatic terms for the “abolition of marriage, so far as
it is a political, religious, judicial, or civil institution.”
In other words, for the same type of “private agreement”
so alluringly set forth by Bebel, Engels, and the other
master minds of socialism.

If we were called upon to cite an even more official
declaration of organized socialism in proof of the charge
that we bring against the movement that community of
goods inevitably carries with it community of women,
we have only to quote from the “Communist Manifesto.”
What socialist is so bold as to say that the “Manifesto”
is but the personal opinions of Marx and Engels, co-
authors, rather than a supreme socialist declaration? As
is well known, no document in all the literature of social-
ism, not even excepting “Das Kapital,” is more looked up
to by socialists as an authoritative guide to all things
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 35

socialistic than the “Communist Manifesto.” Says such
jones document anent marriage (pp. 37-38): x

The bourgeois marriage will vanish as a matter of course when |
| its complement (prostitution) vanishes, and both will vanish |
\ with the vanishing of capital.

.The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimen-

al veil, and has reduced the family relation to a money relation.

Nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our
bourgeois at the community of women, which, they pretend, is to
be openly and officially established by the communists. The com-
munists have no need to introduce community of women; it has
existed almost from time immemorial.

Bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common,
and thus, at the most, what the communists might possibly be |
reproached with is that they desire to introduce in substitution
for a hypocritically concealed an openly legalized community of
women. For the rest it is self-evident that the abolition of the
present system of production must bring with it the abolition of |
the community of women springing from that system, ie., )

 

prostitution, both public and private.

Prostitution the “complement” of marriage! To th
astigmatic vision of the socialist that may appear as a
fact, but to no one else. As well say that black is the
complement of white or vice the complement of virtue.

In the “Communist Manifesto” it appears that socialists —
employ their usual shallow dodge in order to excuse their
very loose brand of morals. Do we charge socialists with |
advocating wholesale theft, they reply that theft is ram- -
pant in capitalistic society, as if that is a sufficient answer.
Do we charge them with advocating free love as a doc-
trine, they retort that love is bought and sold in the open |
market to-day. Do we charge them with conspiring to |
disrupt the family, they reply in true socialist fashion that |
we have no such institution as the family, that what ap- |
pears as such is merely the complement of prostitution,

ng HE

‘
1

ths
36 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

therefore the family—the capitalist family—is not worth
preserving.

This very ingenious idea of the sexually emancipated
of socialism of bracketing prostitution with marriage
abundantly is made use of by the socialist lstterateurs, as
will be seen by other quotations from inspired socialist
sources we are in position to drag into the light.

Prostitution, that vile traffic in women, entailing, as
it does, the prostitution of women’s noblest functions to
the basest possible purposes, has never been glorified,
even indirectly, in modern times, except by socialist or
feminist writers. If we wish an indirect official justifica-
tion for this most indefensible practice, we have but to
refer to the documents issued by the socialist leaders and
practically indorsed by the socialist organizations such
as the “Communist Manifesto” and the quasi official utter-
ances on morals by Bebel, Engels, Deville, Bax, Lafargue,
Eleanor Marx, and a host of others of lesser light.

Says Deville, prominent French socialist, as quoted in
the “Encyclopedia of Social Reform” (quoted in “Case
Against Socialism,” pp. 376-377) :

Marriage is a regulation of property. * * * When property is
transformed, and only after that transformation, marriage will
lose its reason for existence, and boys and girls may freely and
without censure listen to the wants and promptings of their own
nature, * * * There will be no room for prostitution or marriage,
which is nothing more than prostitution before the mayor.

In an assembly of the German Workingmen’s Union at
Berlin Hasenclever (one of Lassalle’s friends and a mem-
ber of the German Reichstag) said (quoted in “Socialism
and Communism” (Woolsey), p. 257):

When the spoliation (of the working class by the capitalists)
should cease, then first prostitution would cease, and the woman
be given back to her calling—to the education of children. The

h. ay RED yoke eg UK get: CALLA fee. ow we!
hore com gee CO Pe gat ‘i oe aad
: : 7 es Medal Cue VAL,
3 ree “oy 6 ;

Pe SoHE i PO ttle et ge ofA OF
cae a fee ae - i s hehe oe ky
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 37

woman question would then be taken by the developed socialistic
—or, more correctly speaking, communistic—state under its con-
trol; for in this state, where_the community bears. the-obligation | |
of educating and maintaining the. children, where no private capi-;,°
tal subsist but all instruments of production are common prop-.*
erty, the woman needs no longer, out of respect for her children, i
to be legally chained to one man. The bond between the sexes . So
will be simply a moral one; and then such a bond, if the char-
acters did not harmonize, could be dissolved.

Commenting on this characteristic socialist utterance, _
Jager (“Socialismus”) said (Ibid., 257-258) :

These words approach already pretty near to community of °~
wives; but another orator, Jorissen, expressed more openly the _'‘
removal of all barriers, in saying that a maiden who disposed of |
her love was no prostitute—she was the free wife of the future.
In the state of the future only love would direct the unions of the
sexes. Between the married wife and the so-called prostitute ."
there was only a quantitative difference. The children would ,,
necessarily belong to the state, and the state provide for both. iM
These views did not exactly meet with full approbation, but they \:
met with no opposition based on principle. Ale

Ernest Belford Bax, author of several inspired works’;
on socialism, who is looked up to by socialists, not only in ;
Great Britain but wherever socialism has any standing, as ,
one of the great authorities on socialism, said as to mar- ',

riage in his “Religion of Socialism” (p. 141): a

We defy any human being to point to a single reality, good or
bad, in the composition of the family. It has the merits of being
the most perfectly preserved specimen of the complete sham that
history has preserved to the world. «

In his “Outlook from the New Standpoint,” in the | :
chapter on marriage, Bax gives a rather too frank opinion '
of marriage and its “complement,” prostitution, in the «
following paragraph (p. 151):

There are few points on which the advanced radical and the
socialist are more completely in accord than in their theoretical

; Ce : Oe
ée fiave et Lh Ga ba MS tx fe Re easy
. i one OI, aad sy, ¥
aa Re eR Oe gn Pee, [tee
bw at y Fe 8
Te 4 y Zouk pee pes oe oo DR re

ae

ny
38 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

hostility to the modern legal monogamic marriage. The ma-
jority of them hold it, even at the present time and in the exist-
ing state of society, to be an evil. Yet, strange to say, they,
most of them, contract these legalized monogamic unions, the ex-
cuse being the stigma on offspring and other inconveniences which
are attendant upon the adoption of any other course, That there
is considerable inconvenience in any other course can not be
denied. It can not be denied that this is largely because persons
who profess to be otherwise emancipated, and who ought to know
better, pander to the current view by adopting an ostracizing at-
titude toward at least the female side of the illicit equation.

That we may not be left in ignorance of what is a
“monogamic marriage,” Bax, in a footnote, gives to his
readers this definition:

By the word “monogamy,” as used below, is to be understood
not merely the union, either temporary or permanent, of one man
with one woman, but such union plus some form of legal com-
pulsion or interference other than which obtains in ordinary cases
of contracts.

In the concluding paragraphs of the same chapter Bax
has this to say (pp. 159-160):

Socialism will strike at the root at once of compulsory
monogamy and prostitution by inaugurating an era of marriage
based on free choice and intention and characterized by no ex-
ternal coercion.

In this, as in other departments, the modern man, immersed
in the categories of the bourgeois world, sees everything through
them. For him, therefore, there exists only legalized monogamic
marriage and prostitution, both of which are based essentially on
commercial considerations. The one is purchase and the other
is hire. He can not see the higher and only really moral form
of the marriage relation, which transcends both, and which is
based neither on sale nor hire. Prostitution is immoral as im-
plying the taking advantage by the woman of a monopoly which
costs her no labor for the sake of extorting money from the
man. But the condition of legal marriage—maintenance—does

the samé. ; we Ama Ae he.
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY — 39

If it be asked, Is marriage a failure? the answer of any im-
partial person must be monogamic marriage is a failure—the rest
is silence. We know not what the new form of the family, the
society of the future, in which men and women will be alike
economically free, may evolve, and which may be generally
adopted therein. Meanwhile we ought to combat by every means
within our power the metaphysical dogma of the inherent sanc-
tity of the monogamic principle.

We know not, and care not, whether Bax has wife,
daughters, and sisters. He at least had a mother, and
her views upon those of her eminent son that marriage
is purchase and prostitution hire, and that thus is mar-
riage—the monogamic marriage that she had entered into
—to be distinguished from prostitution, may be of interest
could they be secured. Bax has said the very last word
on marriage and prostitution. It is useless to go further.
He goes further, however, than any socialist ever dared
to go when he puts his stamp of approval on prostitution.
He said in the same book from which the other interest-
ing quotation is taken (pp. 123-124):

Supposing that in Russia or elsewhere a sudden and urgent
demand for material resources for party purposes arose, and
that much hung on its being immediately satisfied. Suppose,
again, that as a last resort a female member of the party were,
without any hypocritical pretense, to sell her body to raise the
money. Would not this be a commendable act? Given the elimi-
nation of the mystical theory of the sexual relation, I would say,
“Yes.” Prostitution for private gain is morally repellent. But
the same outward act done for a cause transcending individual

interest loses its character of prostitution and acquires a new

content. <1 ng oles *

This particular paragraph, we are safe in saying, is
possibly the most brazen defense of prostitution that ap-
pears in modern literature. To our overfrank friend and
the many in the socialist organization who may subscribe
40 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

to his vile views prostitution the fruits of which are given
to the socialist cause as one “transcending individual in-
terest” loses its repellent character and becomes a positive
virtue, one deserving the commendation of all with the
best interests of the socialist cause at heart.

As the socialist organizations everywhere and at all
times have been confronted by “sudden and urgent de-
mands for material resources for party purposes, and
that much hung on its being immediately satisfied,” we
may be pardoned for viewing in such statement an insin-
uating appeal to the more attractive of the females of the
socialist organization to “take advantage of a monopoly
which costs them no labor” to extort money from men
within and without the socialist organizations in order
that the movement may go forward. Without any desire
to see Bax’s interesting theory put to the test, we never-
theless are the least bit curious just how its application
would be regarded by the general public as well as those
not at present sexually emancipated within the socialist
party.

Remember that the thrice-precious book from which
these very interesting excerpts were taken, and which
supposedly gives the socialist views of marriage, morals,
and other related matters, has never officially been con-
demned in any of its parts by the socialist organizations,
here or abroad; rather is such book included in the semi-
official lists of “books of interest to socialists.”

We have been quoting from the radicals of the radical
socialist movement. Let us now briefly quote from a
conservative socialist source—the same source, by the
way, that tried to have incorporated in the socialist pro-
gram or platform of 1908 a plank which declared that
socialism “is not concerned with the institution of mar-
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 41

riage and religion.” To show his consistency, a character-
istic trait of all socialists, especially those who set out to
teach an unregenerate public, Mr. Hillquit in his Every-
body’s Magazine debate, February, 1914, thought it neces-
sary to modify his proposed platform declaration when
he said:

Socialism will vastly raise the economic level of the masses
and will put an end to the material dependence of adult normal
human beings on others. It will thus remove all sordid mer-
cenary motives from marriage, and will naturally leave but one
basis of marital union. It is @ logical corollary that a marriage
based on love can only endure so long as love continues. In
other words, most socialists stand for the dissolubility of the
marriage tie at the pleasure of the contracting parties. f

ie
FE

a

As most socialists stand for the “easy” marriage, that ~~

terminates at the “pleasure of the contracting parties,”
it is logical to assume that when they secure control of
the state they will not be slow in putting such highly
desirable and progressive plan into effective operation.

As Mr. Hillquit is perhaps the foremost socialist in this
country, and as he has come into contact with and ex-
changes views on socialist ideals with all the leading so-
cialists of the country and of the world, his statement
that “most socialists” subscribe to these views must be
accepted as an undeniable fact. His gratuitous declara-
tion thus removes the punch from the statement officially
made at divers times that the socialists who issue and have
issued rather startling sex views are solely responsible
therefor. Our friend carelessly “spills the beans” when
he makes “most socialists” partsceps criminis with the
socialist sex emancipators.

Just one more contribution from an inspired socialist
source on the subject of morals, this time from one of
the founders of the National Socialist Party, George D.

a
42 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

Herron (ex-Rev.), appointed by President Wilson, along
with William Allen White, envoy extraordinary and min-
ister plenipotentiary to the satanic majesties, Lenin and
Trotsky, rulers by grace of German autocracy and some
deluded Russians over a large and populous part of Rus-
sia. This is taken from letter to Grinnell Church com-
mittee, that had him up on charges, dated New York,
May 24, 1901 (quoted in Goldstein and Avery’s “Social-
ism: The Nation of Fatherless Children,” pp. 282-283) :

In order that your action on this point may be complete, let
me say to you that I do not believe that the present marriage
system is sacred or good. It rather seems to me to be the de-
struction of the liberty and love and truth which makes life
sacred and worth living. If love and truth are the basis of
morality, then a marriage system which makes one human being
the property of another, without regard to the well-being of
either the owned or the owner, seems to me to be the very soul
of blasphemy and immorality.

Like socialists and radicals everywhere, our ex-reverend
friend conjures up an impossible premise, as the above
certainly is, and proceeds to build on it. He continues
in the same strain:

The family founded on force is a survival of slavery and one
of the expressions of the slave principles on which our whole
civilization is built. It is a mode of the superstition which thinks
it good for human beings to own each other and good for the
race to have all its sources and tools of life owned by the few
who are strong and cunning enough to possess them. The ethics
of the legally and ecclesiastically enforced family make it pos-
sible for a man to live a life of monstrous wrong, of ghastly
falsehood, even of unbridled lust, and yet be highly moral
according to the standards by which we are judged. The same
standards condemn and disgrace the purest expressions of com-
radeship, if they cross the conventions or forget the decrees of
custom. Free and truthful living is thus made a tragedy, to have
overwhelming and revengeful retribution added unto it, while

a
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 43

slave living and falsehood may be rewarded with world blessings
and ecclesiastical canonization. I thoroughly believe in the vital
and abiding union of one man with one woman as a true basis of
the family life. But we shall have few such unions until we
have a free family. Men and women must be economically free
—free to use their powers to the fullest extent—free from the

interference of legal an iastical_force,-and free_to correct.

their mistakes, before we can have a family that is noble, built
on unions that are good. race = be Ae

Lives that are essentially one, cooperative in the love and truth
that make oneness, need not law of state or church to bind or
keep them together. Upon such the imposition of force ts a de-
struction and a blasphemy. On the other hand, no law in the
universe has a right to keep together those who are not vitally
and essentially one. It is only in freedom that love can find its
own, or truth blossom in the soul, or other than a slave individu-
ality unfold. It is the business of society to see to it that every
child is surrounded by the full and free resources of a complete
life; it is the business of society to see to its own fatherhood
and motherhood of every | child, _as “well as _to hold every parent
responsible; it is ‘the business of society to know every child of
woman as a free and 1 legitimate child of God, and welcome it
as s an inheritor of the 1 ‘Feverence a and resources of the earth; but
it is not the business of society ‘to. ‘unite or separate men and
momen ¢ inthe m _marriage re relation. .

Love must be set free and liberty must be trusted if noble and
beautiful homes are to spring up to make the earth a garden
of truth and gladness. The coercive family system is filling the
earth with falsehood and hypocrisy, misery and soul disintegra-
tion, and is perpetuating the morality of slaves and liars. In
times past men have thrown away their lives in protest against
what seemed to them tyranny and wrong. There is a new world
coming whose way can be made ready only by those who will
throw away their good names and accept, perhaps, everlasting
disgrace as the price of their protest.

And if I willingly accept all the obloquy and retribution which
church and society may visit upon me in making a protest against
a system that seems to me destructive of all true morality, and

 

 

re A
4 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

o the very citadel of the souls integrity, then my protest has
‘arned its right to be heard. /

It seems useless and hopeless to speak to religious or moral
uustodians about the agony of the soul for self-revelation, about
he increasing and intensifying struggle of man to outwardly
xpress what he inwardly is. Our morality is so altogether based
m appearances, on calculated action, and has so little to do with
ruth or reality, that the spectacle of a man trying to be simply
1onest with the world, in order to be honest with his soul, causes
im to be taken for either a criminal or a madman. {* * *

Civilization, with its network of falsehood and suspicion, of
‘etribution and revenge, is a sort of world conspiracy against
he soul’s integrity and against individuality. Vet the right of a
ingle soul to fully and freely express itself, to live out and show
‘orth all the truth about itself, so that it need not have within
tself any hid thing, but be naked before the universe and not be
shamed, is infinitely more important than the whole fabric of
ivilization.

The travail of the soul to become honest, the whole struggle
»f man to come to himself, is far more vital and revolutionary,
nore menacing to what we call civilization, than any questioning
of the marriage system or the questioning of any institution. You
nay be sure that when the son of man rises out of the common
ife there will not be left a shred of any kind of institutional
vond and there will be no sentinels on the walls of the soul’s
vossibilities. {

There is more in this letter of the ravings and rantings
hat we have here set forth about the marriage state in
society under capitalism, more of the perverted logic of
mne who once wore the cloth of a minister of God, but
we have, we believe, set forth enough to show Dr. Her-
‘on’s conce pions of the present marriage “slavery” -and~
he “free union” that i is ‘to be a feature of socialism.

And with him it was not only a question of | principle
out of precept as well. He deserves full credit for living
1p to his convictions, even when they are, according to
existing standards, of the basest possible sort, for as later

 
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 45

will be shown our ex-reverend friend carried out to the
very letter the plan before set forth and with his female
partner did not “fear to throw away their good names and
accept, perhaps, everlasting disgrace as the price of their
protest.”

The foregoing rather interesting socialist sex expres-
sions apply to occidental countries. Information, how-
ever, has reached us that such teachings have made decided
progress in the claimed decadent orient.

There also socialism connotes antireligion and the loos-
est form of morality. Our slant-eyed, tradition-bound
oriental finds both in the socialist philosophy, and may
be expected to scrap both religion and morality as soon
as the red revolution puts the class-conscious socialist in
control of things’ political and industrial.

According to an illuminating article by Dora Russell
in the “progressive” Freeman, issue of July 5, 1922, en-
titled ‘Feminism versus Christianity,” the young women
of China have gone ahead with a rush. Read and ponder
this statement by the Non-Christian Student Federation
of the Peking Women Teachers’ College to the world
conference of the Student Christian Movement, held in
Peking in 1922:

Religion destroys true reason, obstructs progress, and disgraces
human history. It has worked indefatigably against the growth
of women’s rights. * * * The churches and the Y. M.C. A.,
whose pernicious influence seems burning as fiercely as ever, has
led many of our youths astray. They are the tools of the tigers
and willing to aid the evil. We who uphold truth, who maintain
humanity, and are the enemy of capitalism stand in a belligerent
position with these organs.

The manifesto concludes with the hope that all with
the interest of New China at heart will “rise up and de-
nounce the Student Christian Federation.”
46 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

According to the fair author of this interesting article,
the Christian Church is more of a hindrance than a help
to the women of the Young China movement. The mis-
sions, it seems, emphasize “marriage and domestic work,”
whereas the Chinese woman, we are informed, “wants
economic independence, the opportunity to obtain a free
career in the world, and adequate intellectual and technical
preparation for it.” Following are some of the basic
demands of these now emancipated women:

Complete equality of citizenship, education and opportunity for
men and for women is the only program that the women of the
Young China movement will recognize. Nearly all of them are
socialists, and they demand furthermore that children be sup-
ported by public grants, and that the state abstain from interfer-
ing in the relations between the sexes, except in so far as the
welfare of children is concerned. Birth-control is another plank
in their platform.

Friend Russell complains that the majority of Chris-
tians in Europe and America have been rather negligent
in “advocating women’s rights, the abolition of capitalism,
free love—or, at the least, free divorce—and birth-control.
It is not likely, therefore, that they will give these reforms
a prominent place in their programs for the uplift of
China.”

Christianity—or all religion, for that matter—is utterly
without influence, say these reformers, on the China
that is to be, or any other country earnestly seeking for
the light.

Our fair deponent is silent as to the source of the
“uplift” movement now on in China she but adumbrates,
whether it came by way of Moscow or is a product of
that socialist-feminist philosophy that in some measure is
running wild among the enlightened and emancipated and
sex-conscious women of America and Europe. Be that
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 47

as it is, the women of China seemingly are apt pupils, to
an extent better the instruction, and stand a chance of
getting a high mark whenever examinations are had to
determine if the orient in any way had profited by the
“moral” instruction so diligently pushed for years by
socialist-feminist missionaries. If they continue to
progress, the led may lead, and Young China may be
called on to dispel the sex darkness that now, according
to fully enlightened socialism and feminism, hangs over
the Occident like a pall.

Socialists continually point to themselves as the con-
servators of morals and the family. Possibly the few
quotations here set forth from the very many socialist
expressions on the subject of like import may show the
direction in which such conservation tends.

The very interesting quotations from the socialist
classics before quoted are not, as some may claim, but
isolated socialist expressions, the views of but an incon-
sequential and uninfluential few of the socialist authorities.
If one has the inclination and the time to wade through
the entire socialist literature on marriage and the family,
he will find many other examples akin to the few rather
interesting ones we have herein cited.

Though denied again and again by the slick socialist
apologists, the student of socialism can not help but come
to the conclusion that community of property necessarily
and logically involves community of women.

The denial by socialists will not avail, for it easily is to
be seen that denial is due to the fact that if the connection
between socialism and the lowest possible morality were
established, that of itself would have a most injurious
effect on the propaganda for socialism going on in all
quarters of the world and would of a certainty drive many
48 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

of the neophyte from the socialist ranks as well as scare
away the near-socialists and the dissatisfied of society
now nibbling at the socialist economic and political bait.
Such individuals, as socialists well know, may tolerate
even the most radical of political and economic reforms,
but may be unalterably opposed to a civilization builded
on the shifting sands of ‘“‘sex love” and “sexual impulse.”

In the early days of the socialist movement in this and
other countries the forces organized to achieve the social
reforms of Karl Marx and his school were more frank,
more honest in setting forth for all the world to see their
political, economic, religious, and moral views, that all
might take due notice thereof and govern themselves
accordingly.

But a decided change has come over the socialist host,
though not necessarily over the particular “reforms” em-
bodied in the unholy socialist creed. Remember: that the
socialists have entered the political arena; that they are
now in the scramble for political office and the spoils that
go with office; that the arts and artifices of the political
trickster have been adopted by them in their unholy zeal
for political office. Popular reforms have the call these
days; the other “basic reforms,” in a measure unpopular
with the many socialists hope to reach, are glossed over or
shunted to the rear for the moment.

Expediency operates these days; right dealing with the
public through an honest expression of the fundamentals
of socialism is for the moment forgotten by our socialist
friends. The good ship Socsalism sails the political seas
stripped of everything that may impede her progress,
that may prevent her from making the port for which she
is headed—the codperative commonwealth.

The pirate craft that formerly sailed the seas, on the
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 49

authority of our favorite romancers of other and more
youthful days, the better to carry out its fell designs
against the honest and unsuspecting merchantmen, was
wont to conceal all that might reveal its true character.
The black flag with its sinister design was for the nonce
replaced by some honest ensign; the evil crew was sent
below, to await the signal to set about their hellish work;
the guns and other implements of murder were concealed
until such time when concealment no longer was necessary,
when the pirate’s prey was wholly within range.

The long, rakish craft that plies the political seas, flying
at its masthead the blood-red flag of riot and revolution,
in like manner considers it necessary at times to appear
as other than it really is. Its flag undergoes a transforma-
tion, appearing for the moment as the symbol of the
brotherhood of men; the motley crew appears in other
and more favorable guise; the assaults upon property by
the syndicalist and I. W. W. corps, the sappers and miners
of the socialist army, upon religion and morals, evolved
in the countless centuries to their present stage, upon the
most sacred and cherished institutions of men, the better
to deceive the progressive elements of society and enlist the
support of all who make war on the evils that menace
society ceases for a time, again to be taken up when con-
ditions become more favorable.

The pity of it all is that the very transparent scheme
of organized socialism too often succeeds ; that the unholy
propaganda employed succeeds in deluding so large a por-
tion of the public into the belief that the socialist phi-
losophy has undergone an entire change, thus meriting
the support of all who consider themselves socially pro-
gressive,

The socialist view of the marriage relation and of

Gorrnbians > be wah
50 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

divorce, before more or less. fully set forth, well -merits
the attention of all wt who have the well-being of society. at
heart. The loose socialist marriage, if such union so can
be dignified—“a private agreement, without the inter-
ference of a functionary,” civil or religious—that appeals
to so many who consider themselves sexually progressive,
though not to those who are able to take a more reasonable
view of the matter, and the facility with which such
flimsy tie is to be dissolved, constitutes a menace society
would do well to heed if our much vaunted civilization is
to endure.

We are more than willing to concede that in the event
that socialism institutes its ‘reforms’ in the marriage
relation prostitution practically will cease, for it is reason-
able to assume that the average man will not pay for that
which can be had practically for the asking.

“Tn such th ee socialist age—to the men and
some women affli ise xual lyst—the ma: n who con-
ceives a momentary se wal passion “for fie “neighbor’ s
daughter merely goes through the mummeries of a social-
ist marriage, or an agreement is entered into without being
recorded by a socialist functionary, and the maid is his for
as long or short a period as he may desire. When he tires
of her charms, when the other party to the contract ceases
to please, when, perchance, broken on the matrimonial
wheel, she loses that which made the man a willing captive
in other days, or when his sex lust lights on another
victim, the law affords him the means to dispense with
his now irksome matrimonial burdens, to throw aside the
old wife and take on the new, and to repeat—to him—
such pleasant experience until he becomes thoroughly
sated.

How long, think you, would our civilization last under

CY
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 51

such conditions? Not very long, judged by the experience

of other civilizations that followed a similar matrimonial
plan. If we wish to get an insight into a civilization _
founded on private marriage “agreements,” where divorce...
was to be had for the asking, we would do well to read
up on Roman history in its palmiest days, for with certain
modifications that is the particular type of civilization,
as it applies to the home, our socialist friends would have
us pattern after.

an
THE SOCIALIST CURE—IN PRACTICE

But socialists are not, as many believe, content to
indulge in mere theory, however interesting it may be.
Wherever possible they have attempted to put some of
their theories into practice.

It has not always been possible to carry out to the letter
their economic and political plans, the socialist leaders
realizing that slow change must be had if utter failure
would be prevented at the very inception of the experi-
ment. But with the moral issue no such self-imposed
check was considered necessary. Quick dividends could
be secured for those who ever lust for forbidden sex
fruits, and these individuals hardly could be forced to
forego that which they long had longed for just because
the more squeamish of the membership or the more
straight-laced outside world interposed objections.

Some of the more impatient of the membership could
not even wait for the projected free-love paradise, so
started out on their own hook to prove to doubting
Thomases the feasibility and desirability of their thrice-
precious scheme. We shall mention two or three espe-
cially interesting cases, involving those pretty close to the
socialist throne of administration, and then pass on to
where the socialist scheme was tried on a more extended
scale.

Eleanor Marx, daughter of Karl Marx, was one of the
many of the socialist fold who tried the free-love scheme
and was compelled to acknowledge utter failure. She,

52
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 53

poor fool, thought she could brave convention and set at
defiance the laws of God and man, and perished miserably
as a result. Brought up in a socialist atmosphere, her
views on morality, as we understand the term, and the
marriage relation were in full accord with the socialist
views of her time and now. Her sex philosophy, summed
up in her own words, was as follows (from speech re-
ported by Chicago Tribune, November 14, 1886) :

Love ts the only recognized marriage in socialism; conse-
quently no bonds of any kind would be recognized. Divorce
would be impossible, as there would be nothing to divorce, for
when love ceased separation would naturally ensue.

She put such decadent philosophy to a personal test,
and utterly failed to achieve her fondest hopes, as all
others had failed in the past in like undertakings.
Prompted by “sex love”’—or was it “sexual impulse”—
Eleanor entered into a “private agreement” with Dr. Ave-
ling, friend of her father and translator into English of
“Capital” and others of Marx’s works. Dr. Aveling at
that time had an invalid wife in England, of which fact
Eleanor undoubtedly was aware. The “progressive
union” of Eleanor and Aveling endured for but a short
time. Disenchantment set in on the part of Aveling,
though not on the part of his female partner to the ar-
rangement. He left her and contracted another “private
agreement,” as he was free to do according to Eleanor’s
philosophy, leaving her to find solace in remembrance of
possibly happy hours of the recent past. As with others
who had drunk deeply of the socialist “gospel of despair,”
with its very destructive sex teachings, and suffered
thereby, Eleanor, to quote the Daily People, an important
socialist organ, “ended her own life, driven to the deed
54 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

through the unhappy and unfortunate ending of her
marriage to Dr. Aveling.”

The case of ex-Rev. George D. Herron is another
very interesting one to both socialists and the unenlight-
ened outside the socialist ranks. We will permit Col.
George Harvey, editor of the North American Review and
Harvey's Weekly, to state the case in his inimitable lan-
guage (Harvey's Weekly, February 15, 1919):

It must be said for George that he practiced what he preached.
In 1883 he courted Miss Mary Everhard, of Ripon, married her
in the regular way, and lived with her for 17 years. Then he
fell in with Mrs. E. D. Rand, a Wisconsin widow, who had
both faith and money. The combination attracted George, but
the impressionable widow was getting along in years too rapidly
to suit his fancy. Fortunately she had a daughter of about the
right age named Carrie, and George’s heart went out to her. How
Carrie felt about it nobody could tell, but the old lady was en-
chanted, and started in forthwith to clear the way for an ideal
relationship.

For some reason or other George regarded his legalized wife
as an obstacle, and for some other reason he did not care per-
sonally to undertake the task of removing it. Whereupon the
widow approached the wife in a businesslike way and offered
to buy George for Carrie. There was some haggling over the
price, no two being able to agree as to what he really was worth,
but finally the widow fixed the upset at $50,000, and the wife
accepted. She was sick and tired of George anyway. So she
got a divorce, and the widow took George and Carrie away some-
where and hired a minister to “announce” that they were man
and wife. It was not according to Hoyle, but neither was George
nor the widow for that matter, and George said he felt just
the same as if he had gone through a regular ceremony. Poor
Carrie didn’t say a word. She stood it as long as she could and
then up and died. :

Meanwhile the widow bought some land down in Metuchen,
N. J., and George started a free-for-all love colony for those
who had money, but recruits had barely begun to arrive when
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 55

the neighboring farmers’ wives handed pitchforks to the hired
men and told them to get busy. George saw them coming and
didn’t stop running till he got to Italy, where, having left the
widow at home, he could develop his socialistic theories in peace
and quiet.

As it happens, there always is to be found an element
intent on taking the joy out of life for some people. So
it was with George and his newly found affinity.

At the time the free-love partnership of George and
Carrie was entered into the male member of such unusual
union was a regularly ordained minister of the Congrega-
tional Church, and as such was amenable to the rules and
regulations of the church. Further, as a minister he was
expected not only to preach the Christian virtues, but as
far as was humanly possible to exemplify them in his own
person.

Instead of which he chose publicly to make an immoral
spectacle of himself, and by so doing injuriously reflected
upon the church of which he was supposed to be a shining
light. There was only one thing for the church to do in
the circumstances, and it wasted little time in doing it.
Our very unreverend friend was charged with “immoral
and un-Christian conduct,” and a committee was appointed
by the First Congregational Church of Grinnell, Iowa,
to consider the charges and take testimony for and against.

The committee met, and on June 4, I901, presented
their findings to the parent body and to the general public.
They found:

First. That “the charge of immoral and un-Christian
conduct is sustained,” based in part on the finding of the
court which granted a divorce to Mary Everhard Herron
on the grounds of “desertion and inhuman treatment.”

Second. That the said George D. Herron was guilty
56 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

of “unfeeling and selfish indifference and—at least since
1896—of studied neglect, culminating in a heartless deser-
tion and the final tragedy of divorce.”

Third. The charge is sustained by the written confes-
sion of Herron submitted by him to the committee. “In
this paper he denies the right of society to sanction or
undo a marriage tie between man and woman and pre-
sents a view of the conjugal relation, of fatherhood, and
the home which is abhorrent to enlightened Christian
sentiment, and which confirms the council in the opinion
that this action of George D. Herron is simply the criminal
desertion of a worthy wife and devoted mother by a man
who has deliberately falsified his marriage vows.”

It was the view of the committee, and so was recom-
mended, that the name of George D. Herron be dropped
from the membership of the Grinnell Association and of
the First Congregational Church of Grinnell, and the
further opinion was expressed that “George D. Herron
has forfeited all right to be known by the churches of our
faith and order as a minister of the gospel, and that he
is by vote of this council deposed from the Christian
ministry.”

Another member of the socialist party with a very
interesting history is Lena Morris Lewis. According ’to
the testimony of W. B. Slusser (letter to E. E. Carr,
published iri the Christian Socialist; quoted in “Socialism:
The Nation of Fatherless Children”) she had stayed at his
house during her professional visits to Lakewood, Ohio,
and “in the course of a few days of her stay she let us
know that she believed in and was an advocate of free
love, as the term is commonly used.” She, it may be said,
was one of those who did not fear to have her socialist
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 57

example square with socialist precept. The letter con-
tinues (p. 318):

She further told us that she had an intimate friend in San
Francisco who ran an assignation house, and that she lived with
her while in that place, and justified not only her friend in the
business but the frequenters of the place.

According to a letter from Los Angeles, Cal., February
8, 1911, to Rev. Dr. Carr, signed by Bertha Wilkins Stark-
weather, an advocate of and worker for socialism, who
presided at a meeting at Los Angeles, Cal., at which Mrs.
Lewis spoke, previous to such meeting she had a con-
versation with Mrs. Lewis, the following, according to
Mrs. Starkweather, being some of the questions and the
answers thereto (Ibid., p. 319):

“What, then, is your position on this sex question—this ques-
tion of the relation of the sexes now—under capitalist conditions?

“In the last analysis it amounts to this,” answered Mrs. Lewis;
“Tf the man ‘makes good’ to the woman, if he leaves her satisfied
with the relation that has existed between them, then there has
been no harm done. It matters not whether that relation was a
simple handshake, a kiss, or the final sex act.

“But suppose a poor girl is much in need of hard cash—is she
not a prostitute if she submits to the last named for pay?

“The woman must be satisfied with the relation—that is the
sex problem in a single statement. Capitalism has established a
lot of ridiculous restrictions upon the personal conduct of indi-
viduals. Socialists are in no way bound to consider these capital-
istic institutions. Anyone who pries into the private affairs of
Socialists is impertinent to the last degree.

“So you are of the opinion that we are in no way bound to
live as celibates, if we happen to be unmarried?

“As such restrictions are a part of the capitalist system and as
they are a contemptible interference with our private conduct, I
insist that we are in no way bound by them

“But do you not feel that the socialists who hold representa-
tive positions in the party or those who draw salaries from the
58 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

party are in a way bound to consider these capitalistic institu-
tions?

“Any one who pries into the private life of socialists is to the
last degree impertinent.”

But in an allied case there happened to be some who
were “to the last degree impertinent,” who considered it
their duty to pry into “the private life of socialists,” if
they happened to be officers of the party. Rev. E. E.
Carr, publisher of the Christian Socialist, was one of the
“impertinent” ones. In his publication, issue of January
I, IQII, appeared the following:

Charges of the most serious character have been made before
the national executive committee of the socialist party against
the national secretary. If these charges are true, he should be
relieved of all official responsibility to the party. If they are
false, he should be cleared of them in a fair and unequivocable
manner. Nothing but a full, fair trial can properly settle this
matter.

The attempt to belittle those who make these charges is ex-
ceedingly unwise. Thomas J. Morgan is one of the most experi-
enced, intelligent, and highly honored of Chicago socialists, who
in spite of bitter opposition manifested against him recently was
chosen by referendum as one of the four comrades to represent
Chicago socialism in the national socialist congress.

“Mother Jones,” the war eagle of the American labor struggle,
who makes serious charges against the national secretary, can not
be condemned with impunity nor successfully ignored. The
deliberate effort to prevent the comrades at large from learning
what is back of “Morgan’s charges” looks rather dark.

To be sure, a socialist branch is not running a holiness class
meeting, and no political party can require perfect characters
of its rank and file; but certainly the vast majority of the com-
rades will desire sober, chaste meh and women for their more
important officials. Those who preach or practice “free love”
should be kept in the rear.

The usual procedure in a case of this kind is to put the
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 59

accused on trial, so as to establish the truth or falsity of
the charges. But socialists, being different, function along
different lines. Instead they put one of the accusers, the
Rev. Dr. Carr, on trial for publishing that which might
injure the party. According to the committee investigat-
ing the matter:

It soon became evident that the motive of Dr. Carr was not
the welfare of the party, but its disruption.

We further charge that the publication of the matter in the
Christian Socialist has been used by enemies of the socialist party

to discourage prospective members from joining the socialist
party and to disrupt the party organization.

In the Socialist Party Official Bulletin, June, 1911, we
have the verdict of the committee:

The socialist party of Cook County, Ill, represented by its
delegate committee at a meeting held June 25, 1911, expelled from

its membership the Rev. Edward Ellis Carr by a vote of 51
for the expulsion and 21 against.

Thus endéd the matter, with all concerned satisfied—the
socialist organization with its whitewashing verdict against
the accused official and the accuser banished from the
party, Rev. Dr. Carr possibly pleased to be rid of an
immoral party, even by the expulsion route.

Our reverend friend finally, possibly, was convinced that

‘he was entirely wrong; the “majority of the comrades,”
in accepting the verdict of the committee, officially going
on record that they did not desire “sober, chaste men and
women for their more important officials ;” that those who
preached or practiced “free love” instead would be chosen
to lead the socialist procession.

With the free-love element thus serving as bull wethers
to the socialist flock, it follows as night the day that the
socialist state, when established, will function in an atmos-
60 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

phere not highly moral, judged by present-day standards.

Possibly cold and impartial history may supply us with
some information regarding this, may plainly indicate
what we may expect in the dread event that socialism is
transferred from the realm of theory to that of fact.

History records that in the “dictatorship of the pro-
letariat” in Francé in the closing years of the eighteenth
century, known to us as the French Revolution, morality
first had to walk the plank. The people, long kept in
restraint by church and state, threw off their moral
shackles and indulged themselves to the limit. Like those
famished and brought within reaching distance of plenty,
the French communards of such period indulged them-
selves to satiety.

A new faith we are informed (“English Socialism of
To-day,” H. O. Arnold-Forster, pp. 146-147), was born—
that of “reason”—and such faith was established “through-
out the length and breadth of French territory, from
Antwerp in the north to Marseilles in the south.” Such
faith fittingly was typified by a common prostitute,
“rouged, decked in an elaborate costume, and a republican
cap, and installing her as the ‘goddess of reason.’ The
goddess was borne into the convention by the leaders of
the socialist party, escorted by a number of their sup-
porters, dressed in grotesque costumes and dancing the
‘carmagnole,’ and most of them disgustingly drunk. The
representatives of the people rose to the occasion; they
each of them in turn bestowed a kiss upon their new
divinity. The goddess was then borne off to the Cathedral
of Notre Dame.”

It is more than possible that with full freedom of
worship each individual was free to indulge himself to
the limit in the new worship and to install in his own
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 61

household his particular divinity, that could be changed
with every change of his sentiments. The marriage laws
were flouted, and it is hardly necessary to state that the
communards regarded “female honor and virgin shame”
more leniently than before.

History fails to record what was done with the children,
the fruits of these free-love unions. If we were to hazard
a guess, we would say that they either were left to shift
for themselves or were thrust upon the maternal parents
as interesting souvenirs of a very interesting experience.

The commune of Paris of 1871, the “one event,” accord-
ing to E. Belfort Bax, “which socialists throughout the
world have agreed with single accord to celebrate,” fur-
nishes us with yet another interesting example of socialist
morality in practice. The laws of God and man early
were thrown into the discard and the “liberated” people
did those things they wanted to do and scrupulously re-
frained from doing that which was distasteful to them. It,
hardly is to be expected that individuals who indulged
in all manner of excesses seriously would consider a moral
code that hampered them at every turn. ‘What is thine
is mine” applied to property, and community of interests
extended to men and women, both single and married.
The French socialists, brought up on the moral diet of
Marx and Engels, the socialist free-love advocates of
their period, proved apt pupils and lost no time in putting
their interesting sex theories to the test as soon as the
revolution opened the way. History records in detail the
excesses of that period, but discreetly is silent, possibly
with good reason, about that particular phase of the ex-
periment.

Free love in theory presupposes love from which re-
straint and coercion of every kind entirely are absent. In
62 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

‘practice that is not always possible. The other party may
have likes and dislikes of her own or, it may be, with
malice aforethought, she is content with and desires to
adhere to laws some few still regard with respect. Some
cases of that kind are on record of the communist period.
According to Rev. Dr. W. S. Kress (“Questions of Social-
ists and their Answers,” p. 166):

On the 29th of April, 1871, the communards took possession of
an orphan asylum, drove out the sisters and kept back in the
neighborhood of a hundred young girls. By the time the nuns
could again secure possession of their charges 5 of the girls
had been deprived of their eyesight, several were lying at the
point of death, 35 were infected with syphilis. For official proof
of these outrages see Maxime de Camp’s “Convulsions of Paris,”

It should be remembered that the work of de Camp
on the commune of 1871, “a logical condemnation of its
folly and ignorance,” according to a biographer, ‘brought
him gratitude from the French Academy and aided his
election to that body in 1880.”

If space permitted, many occurrences similar to that
before set forth could be presented.

So, according to the best and most reliable authorities,
to keep the yawning, ever-hungry hopper of the free-love
mill supplied the mature and developed of the women
were supplemented by young girls still in their teens, these
last the victims of brute force.

Likewise in every state where progressive socialists
secured the upper hand and managed for a time to get
control of the machinery of government the free-love
propensity of the flock soon asserted itself and disported
itself to the limit.

In the free organizations that socialists established from
time to time to a large extent they adopted the free-love
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 63

plan as soon as it was safe to do so. Possibly they adopted
the simple plan of Plato, as set forth in his “Republic,”
that the women selected to continue the race were to be
wives of no one in particular, but of all. Care was to be
taken that when children were born to this or that woman
no one shall be able to say, “This child is mine.” All
the children, according to the great Greek philosopher,
were to belong to all, and thus “separate and exclusive
relations to wives and children, the causes of disunion
in a state, are to be obliterated.” Or the socialists pat-
terned after the examples abundantly set forth in socialist
classics or took the advice of the “Communist Manifesto”
and banished to the limbo of the useless and the outworn
monogamic marriage and morality.

According to those responsible for the Owenite com-
munities, established at various parts of the new and old
world during the twenties of the last century, “private
property, irrational religion, and marriage” were rated
“the awful trinity of man’s oppressors,” and to smash
this trinity into smithereens the various communities were
established. If it were not for the untimely death of
these experiments, it is reasonably certain that at least .
the last two of the trinity would have been lifted from the
backs of the progressive Owenites.

A “conversation between a resident and a reporter” is
set forth in Noyes’s “History of American Socialisms,”
from which we quote the following. This by the resident

(pp. 99-100) :

We are protestants; we are liberals. We believe in the sov-
ereignty of the individual. We protest against all laws which
interfere with individual rights—hence we are protestants. We
believe in perfect liberty of will and action—hence we are liberals.
We have no compacts with each other, save the compact of in-
64 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

dividual happiness; and we hold that every man and every
woman has a perfect and inalienable right to do and perform, all
and singular, just exactly as he or she may choose, now or
hereafter. But, gentlemen, this liberty to act must be exercised
at the entire cost of the individuals so acting. They have no
right to tax the community for the consequences of their deeds.

He was asked by the reporter, “Do you hold to mar-
riage?” and replied (p. 101):

Oh, marriage! Well, folks ask no questions in regard to that
among us. We—or, at least, some of us—do not believe in life
partnerships, when the parties can not live happily. Every per-
son here is supposed to know his or her own interests best.
We don’t interfere; there are no eaves-dropping or prying behind
the curtain. Those are good members of society who are indus-
trious and mind their own business. The individual is sovereign
and independent, and all laws tending to restrict the liberty he
or she should enjoy are founded in error, and should not be
regarded.

Much of the above was italicized and small-capped.
We omit such emphasis, as the quotations in the regular
types fairly shriek to heaven.

It was said of Brook Farm:

They did not seek to interfere with marriage; nay, they guarded
that holy state with reverence; yet the spirit of fraternal associ-
ation was found to weave itself unth infinite subtleties into the
most tender relations of man and woman. Fear came into the
common dwelling.

Could it be more delicately put? Marriage was not
sought to be interfered with, but—the rest is left to the
imagination, one fed to the limit on socialist moral teach-
ings.

According to Stewart Grahame (“Where Socialism
Failed,” wherein is set forth in full detail an interesting
account of the experiments in socialism by William Lane
and his dupes in Paraguay in 1895) :
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 65

The first trouble the communists had to face while on
the ship that was to take them to their “paradise of the
workingmen” was over morals and the full independence
of the sexes. The female members of the party objected
to being cooped up below decks, even in the interest of
morals, and’ (p. 57) “many elected to spend the greater
part of the night on deck discussing the beautiful prin-
ciples of socialism with some kindred spirit under the
open vault of heaven. If that kindred spirit happened
to be of the opposite sex, there could be no logical objec-
tion, since sex equality under socialism implies the per-
missibility of the warmest comradeship between any man
or woman, in spite of the fact that either or both may
be married.”

But Lane, heterodox in all other respects was most
orthodox as to marriage and morals, and made his author-
ity as leader felt during such critical period of the ad-
venture. But the communards also had a will of their
own (p. 58):

Breaking out in open rebellion, they stormed the hatchway and
reminded their leader that they had an equal say with him in the
conduct of affairs, and had as much right to order him to his
cabin as he had to order them.

One indignant young lady, stepping over to the notice board,
tore down William Lane’s notice before his face and danced on
it. Just to assert their rights, some of the married women
openly incited the younger women to disobey, and a number made
a point at once of spending the greater part of the night on deck
in the future to prove their independence.

In the colony later on freedom of intercourse between
the sexes must have been carried on rather openly, not
only between the members of the colony but as well
between the members of the colony and the natives, as
witness the following from a letter that appeared in the
66 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

Sydney Daily Telegraph from Mrs. Mary Jane ee
one of the communards (p. 151):

The Paraguayans and the New Australians live side by side,
equal under the law, and equal socially. The Paraguayan gives
a dance, and the white man attends it. The white man gives one,
and the Paraguayan comes. A wedding is the signal for an all-
around drunk, Paraguayans and Australians drinking out of the
same bottle. Every one grows his own sugar and makes his own
rum. So far, though there are half-caste children, there have
been no marriages with the Paraguayans.

Though the constitution of this “paradise of the work-
ingman” provided “that every child born into the state
would be assured full opportunity to develop its brain
and body as far as possible in our civilization,” no pro-
vision was made, or expected to be made, for the fruits
of free-love unions between the gallant Australians and
the too-susceptible Paraguayan maids. There, as in more
polite society, it happened that the innocent young ones
were either left to shift for themselves or the native
mothers were burdened with them. As in the homeland
they had left, the man got off scot free while the woman
was penalized to the limit.
MODERN SOCIALIST PARADISES

But if we wish to get an insight into socialist morals
at its best or worst, it is necessary to go to Russia after
the revolution that overthrew the Czar, later the some-
what constitutional democracy that Kerensky was sponsor
for, and then installed the “autocracy of the proletariat,”
with the precious Teutonized scamps,* Lenin and Trotsky,
at the head of the government.

According to Rheta Childe Dorr, self-proclaimed social-
ist and feminist, in her most interesting book “Inside the
Russian Revolution” (p. 47):

‘It’s a free country,” say a group of men, stripping off their
clothes before a crowd of women and children and taking a bath
in the-Neva. This occurs frequently on the Admiralty Quay, a
great pleasure resort in Petrograd.

* As evidence that bolshevism is a made-in-Germany product, confession
of Erich von Ludendorf, the chief of Germany’s military dictators during
the war period, may be cited (‘‘Ludendorf’s Own Story,” vol. 2, p. 126):

“By sending Lenin to Russia our government had, moreover, assumed
a great responsibility. From a military point of view his journey was
justified, for Russia had to be laid low. But our government should
have seen to it that we also were not involved in her fall.”

General William Hoffman, official representative of the German gov-
ernment at the Brest-Litovsk conference, also confesses (New York
Times, December 23, 1920):

“As chief of staff of the east army, I directed the propaganda against
the Russian army. The general staff made use of every possible means
to break through the Russian front. One of these means was poison
gas, another was Lenin. The imperial régime dispatched Lenin to Russia
from the Swiss frontier in a sealed car. With our consent, Lenin and
his friends disorganized the Russian army. Von Kihlman (former
German secretary for foreign affairs), Count Czernin (Austro-Hun-
garian foreign minister), and I then closed the Brest-Litovsk treaty, so
that we could throw our army against the west front.”

67
68 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

“They called them Sans Culottes during the French Revolu-
tion,” said a clever woman writer in one of the newspapers. “Our
men will go down to fame as Sans Calecons—the difference, per-
haps, between a political and a social revolution.” The first
French phrase means without trousers. The second carries the
denuding process to its concluding stage.

The too-free actions of the men were bound to exercise
a sinister influence on the women, especially the feminist
group that attained a rank growth in Russia even before
the revolution, as well as on imitating girls of immature
years, and soon we began to read of the caperings of the
radical women of Russia and their imitators, sick almost to
death of the tiresome conventionalities that before had
obtained in the land of the czars.

Under the régime of Kerensky marriage and divorce
laws were “liberalized” as much as it was considered safe
to do; but under the new order a clean sweep was made,
and all laws of church and state that might in any way
hamper the sexual freedom of the individual were swept
out of existence. In the former state, according to re-
liable official information that came from Russia, the people
took full advantage of the altered conditions and diligently
swapped old wives for new, or got rid of the old ones
without entering into other entangling alliances.

But the bolshevik officials and their “liberated” subjects
found such conditions not entirely to their liking. They
therefore conveniently scrapped such laws as were on the
statute books and started all over again.

According to our socialist friends the world long since
had been steeped in economic darkness, and it became the
self-appointed duty of enlightened bolshevik Russia to
bring the light of socialism into these dark places. It also
became necessary to scrap bourgeois laws and morals and
to start the experiment with a clean slate. They had a
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 69

twofold function to perform—to redeem their own house-
hold and to induce the still unregenerate capitalist states
to adopt a like course. In this laudable task example sup-
plemented precept. Unlike most reformers, they did not
say, “Do as we say, not as we do.” ‘They invited the
benighted peoples of all lands to follow their example as
well as their counsels.

We now reasonably are familiar with the Russian so-
cialist theory as applied to the industries, of settling the
age-long war between the “producing” and the “capital-
ist” classes by the very simple expedient of annihilating
the latter class, and with the other measures that were put
into effect soon after the “dictatorship of the proletariat”
became an actuality, among the latter the revolutionary
and revolting plan of nationalizing living men, women,
and children.

Socialization of the industries the world expected; kill-
ing off some few of the resisting upper tendom of Russian
society also was considered inevitable under the chaotic
conditions, though certainly not on such a large scale and
under such incredibly brutal conditions as actually were
employed, but the marital plan sprung on an unsuspecting
world, without anything in the shape of a reason, was
so very different, so extreme, as to make the world fairly
sit up and gasp.

It soon became evident to the apologists of bolshevik
socialism in all lands, whose hands ever were on the
public pulse, that this last move was not in any sense a
popular one; that it must be counteracted if their plans
in other lands was to succeed. Their press soon became
filled with explanations and denials. The report that
bolshevism had instituted nationalization of human beings
was declared utterly untrue, spread by its enemies in
70 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

order to discredit the movement. Again, it was but a
coarse jest of some with a distorted.sense of humor.
Again, while it was admitted that irresponsible communi-
ties may have inaugurated such a scheme, it was in no
sense countenanced or approved by the central government.

Bolshevik apologists are adepts in the great American
game of “passing the buck.” When it finally was estab-
lished that there was some little fire behind the cloud of
smoke, the “buck” was passed along to the anarchists
(it never has been established to reasoning individuals just
what difference there might be between Russian anarchists
and the bolsheviks); these precious individuals lost no
time in passing it back again. It was explained that
anarchists favor a condition of affairs calling for absolute
liberty in all departments of life, therefore curtailing the
choice of the individual in such a vital matter as marriage
is foreign to the nature of true anarchists.

As to whether the charge of nationalization is true
or false, we have the report of the Overman committee,
whose scope was extended to include “German and bol-
shevik propaganda,” published in Senate document 61,
Sixty-sixth Congress, first session. The committee, after
hearing every witness that could give light on the matter,.
caine to this conclusion (p. 36):

Bolshevism accords to the family no such sacred place in
society as modern civilization accords to it. Conflicting reports
have been passing current during the last few months relative to
the nationalization of women by the new Russian government.
Two or three local soviets have, apparently, thus degraded the
womanhood of their particular districts, but the central govern-:
ment has refrained from adopting any such policy in the whole
nation. They have, however, promulgated decrees relating to
marriage and divorce which practically established a state of free
love. Their effect has been to furnish a vehicle for the legaliza-
tion of prostitution by permitting the annulment of the marriage
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 71

bonds at the whim of the parties, recognizing their collusive
purposes as a ground for the severance of the matrimonial state.

The testimony of Roger E. Simmons, trade commis-
sioner, department of commerce, who was in Russia from
July, 1917, to November, 1918, is of interest and value.
He testified to having seen in the Isvestija, official bol-
shevik organ, the following decree issued by the local
government of Vladimir (S. Doc. 62, pp. 354-355):

Every girl who has reached her eighteenth year is guaranteed
by the local commissary of surveillance the full inviolability of
her person.

Any offender against an 18-year-old girl by using insulting lan-
guage or attempting to ravish her is subject to the full rigors of
the revolutionary tribunal.

The injured, dishonored girl is given the right not to marry the
ravisher if she does not so desire.

It is evident by the wholesale ravishing of females of
all ages in Russia during the saturnalia of the reds that
such law generally was not on the statute books of the
bolshevik state, or if in effect was more honored in the
breach than in the observance.

A girl having reached her eighteenth year is to be considered
as the property of the state.

Any girl having reached her eighteenth year and not having
married is obliged, subject to the most severe penalties, to register
at the bureau of free love in the commissariat of surveillance.

Having registered at the bureau of free love, she has the right
to choose from among men between the ages of 19 and 50 a
cohabitant husband.

Remarks: (1) The consent of the man in the said choice is
unnecessary; (2) the man on whom the choice falls has no
right to make any protest whatever against the infringement.

This possibly was to sugar-coat the pill so that the
woman might find little difficulty in swallowing the nause-
ous dose ladled out to her sex.
72 THE RED WAR .ON THE FAMILY

The right to choose from a number of girls who have reached
their eighteenth year is also given to man.

The opportunity to choose a husband or a wife is to be pre-
sented once a month.

The bureau of free love is autonomous.

Men between the ages of 19 and 50 have the right to choose
from among the registered women, even without the consent of
the latter, in the interests of the state.

Children who are the issues of these unions are to become the
property of the state.

The decree stated that it was based on the “excellent ex-
ample” of similar decrees issued at Luga, Kolpin, and
other places in Russia.

A decree issued at Saratov, a city of about 100,000
inhabitants, about March 15, 1918, also is of intense in-
terest (/d., 355-350) :

Some people with their daughters have been excited into leav-
ing the city, although the power is in the hands of the bolsheviki,

and it is very doubtful if the anarchists can succeed in the
enforcement of the proclamation.

DECREE

This decree is proclaimed by the free association of anarchists
in the town of Saratov, in compliance with the decision of -the
soviet of peasant soldiers’ and workmen’s deputies of Kronstadt
regarding the abolition of the private possession of women.

It should be remembered that Kronstadt is the birth-
place of bolshevism, where it first took root, and whence
it spread all over Russia.

Social inequalities and legitimate marriage having been a
condition in the past which served as an instrument in the hands
of the bourgeoisie, thanks to which the best species of all the
beautiful women have been the property of the bourgeoisie, have
prevented the proper continuation of the human race. Such pon-
derous arguments have induced the present organization to edict
the present decree.
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 73

Here we have unanswerable argument. The beautiful
among the females long had been the exclusive possession
of the bourgeoisie; it now was the turn of the under dogs
among the Russians to take their pick of womanhood, to
satisfy their cravings for centuries. It would have been
scant justice for the victorious proletariat to take to them-
selves as legitimate spoils of victory the mansions, lands,
and possessions of their arch enemy, the capitalist class,
and leave to them their most precious possession, its
luscious womanhood.

From March 1 the right to possess woman having reached the
age of 18 to 32 is abolished.

The age of woman shall be determined by birth certificates, of
passports, or by testimony of witnesses, and on failure to pro-
duce documents their age shall be determined by the black com-
mittee, who shall judge them according to appearance.

This decree does not affect woman having five children.

The former owners may obtain the right of using their wives
without their turn.

In case of resistance of the husband he shall forfeit the right
of the former paragraph.

All women according to this decree are exempted from private
ownership and are proclaimed the property of the whole nation.

The remaining paragraphs of this most remarkable de-
cree deal with the distribution of the women concerned,
who are obliged to appear at stated times before the proper
authorities and give desired information. Citizens are
required to report women failing to register and who try to
escape “national service.”

Male citizens have the right to use one woman not oftener than
three times a week for three hours, observing the rules specified
below.

Those eligible for this privilege shall “be a bearer of a
certificate from the factories committee, professional
74 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

union, or workmen’s, soldiers’, and sailors’ council, certi-
fying that he belongs to the working-family class.”

“Every working member is obliged to discount 2 per
cent from his earnings to the fund of general public
action”; it also is provided that “male citizens not belong-
ing to the working class, in order to have the right equally
with the proletariat, are obliged to pay 100 rubles monthly
into the public funds”; all payments go to the “national
generation fund,” from which women proclaimed by this
decree to be the “national property” will receive 238 rubles
a month.

Provision is made for pregnant women; the issue from
these temporary love unions are taken care of by state
institutions and are to be trained and educated by the
officials appointed by the state.

Health examinations are provided for weekly; “those
guilty of spreading venereal diseases will be held respon-
sible and severely punished.” It may be that a measure
of this sort had not been put on the statute books through-
out Russia, or if enacted was regarded as a dead letter,
for reports coming from all sections of bolshevik Russia
are to the effect that venereal diseases had assumed the
proportions of an epidemic, children of tender years
not being exempt from the most loathsome of venereal
diseases. Pensions are also provided for women “having
lost their health.”

It finally is provided that “all those refusing to recog-
nize and support this decree will be proclaimed sabotagers,
enemies of the people, and counter-anarchists, and will be
held to the severest penalties.” Such very interesting
document was signed “Council of the City of Saratov,
Russia.”

It hardly is necessary to mention that the Saratov de-
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 75

cree, whether issued by bona fide anarchists or by bolshe-
vists masquerading as such, received more than ample
space in the American press.

And it is needless to mention that such comment as was
had was unanimously adverse to the bestial bolshevik prop-
osition. Even the socialist and near socialist press, while
they endeavored to explain away what to American social-
ism was a most damaging document, were unwilling pub-
licly to proclaim themselves defenders of such. form of
community of men and women.

Unsparing condemnation, both of the idea and those
individuals responsible therefor, on the other hand was
general in the nonsocialist press. Space will permit of
but one of these adverse comments.

Mr. Arthur Brisbane, generalissimo of the Hearst edi-
torial forces, thus scores the Saratov plan in his charac-
teristic manner:

News comes from Russia that seems strange to those who do
not know of old laws.

Anarchistic revolutionists in charge of the government at Sara-
tov have made marriage illegal. The man who claims his wife
as. his own is guilty of sabotage, and must go to jail.

Is Mr. Brisbane positive that “Anarchistic revolution-
ists” are responsible for the Saratov decree? If so, wha
is responsible for decrees just as odious that were pro-
mulgated in other sections of Russia?

Children are the property of the state, and will be brought up
in groups, like the small chickens you haye seen in the tin
brooders of Madison street shop windows.

Women having “more than five children” are supposed to have
done their duty, and may do as they please. Others, when po-
litely requested, must add to the population, which is multiplying
T. R’s race theories by a million and going very far indeed.
76 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

Babies one month old go to a people’s crib, where they are
raised by the state until 17 years of age.

The mother of twins gets a national gift of 200 rubles, worth
just now about $25 in real money [or in confederate money now].
The revolutions can’t be accused of extravagance.

Workingmen must set aside 2 per cent of their earnings to
help raise the nation’s babies. The prosperous class must pay
in 100 rubles per month, all must be careful about their health
—and the revolution feels that it has made great strides toward
democracy and general happiness.

We are getting civilized, for this announcement from Russia
will cause more rage and disgust than would the news of a
million murders.

Because men have always been murdering each other, for the
last few centuries they have managed to respect women—or, at
least, pretend respect.

War hurts and diminishes our slowly and painfully accumu-
lated store of morality, as it reduces the store of cash.

If war only killed men, it would not matter. But it kills the
sense of right and wrong, sends men galloping back to the meth-
ods of their monkey ancestors—highly proud of themselves.

Mr. Brisbane slightly is in error in this last. War does
not have this effect ; if it does, it is but temporary, and with
peace comes a return to the old conditions. But socialism
has this effect, and as long as socialist conditions exist
the tendency ever is backward instead of forward.

Mr. Brisbane concludes his interesting comment on
Russia with a paragraph or two from Plutarch’s “Lives,”
showing that marital conditions in Sparta in the long ago
were similar in some respects to that established in bolshe-
vist Saratov, Russia.

Hon. David R. Francis, United States minister to
Russia during the last days of the Romanoff Czar,
Nicholas the Last, the full period of the limited democ-
racy of the minimalist socialism of Kerensky, and a part
of the bolshevik autocracy of Lenin and Trotsky, who
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 77

enjoys the respect and confidence of decent and law-
abiding people everywhere, also gave important testimony
before the Overman committee regarding conditions in
Russia. While he absolved the central soviet from respon-
sibility for and participation in the nationalization decrees
of the local soviets of Luga, Kolpin, Vladimir, Saratov,
Hvolinsk, Kronstadt, and other places, he charges such
central soviet with direct responsibility for laws and edicts
that made marriage a mockery and a sham throughout
the bedlam that once was Russia.

Replying to a question whether he favored recognition
of that government, he said emphatically (p. 957 of the
hearings, S. Doc. 62) :

“Why, they do not merit recognition. They do not merit even
business relations, because of their prejudices, They have insti-
tuted a reign of terror. They are killing everybody who wears
a white collar or who is educated and is not a bolshevik. Sev-
eral of their provinces have nationalized women. I have seen
that the decree has been presented to you.”

Senator Nelson. “You know that is true, do you, of your
own observation and knowledge?”

Mr. Francis. “I only know it because I have seen it in the
oficial publications of the soviet government, the central news-
papers. The central soviet has never nationalized women by a
decree, but it has issued a decree, which I saw in Isvestia, the
official publication of their government, making divorce and mar-
riage so easy as to require only a notice to some man by a
married couple that they had agreed to separate; and likewise a
notice that two unmarried people had decided to marry. Now,
there is no limit of time as to how long the marriage shall hold.”

Senator Overman. “Or the cause of the divorce.”

Mr. Francis. “Or the cause of the divorce.”

Regarding the incriminating testimony of Mr, Sim-
mons, Ambassador Francis, and others, we have corrob-
orative testimony from a source especially favorable to
78 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

the bolshevik cause. Mrs. John Reed (or as she prefers
to be called, Louise Bryant), radical socialist, picketing
suffragist, feminist, and advanced woman, wife of one of
the bolshevik officials, herself, as she was compelled to
admit, for some time in the service of the bolshevik gov-
ernment, testified to having seen the official decrees call-
ing for the emancipation of woman from bourgeois moral-
ity in the official soviet publications, but sought to break the
force of her testimony by the gratuitous statement that
such decrees merely were printed as news items, just as
the capitalist newspapers of this country print the pro-
ceedings of socialist and anarchist conventions, without
assuming any responsibility for or concurring in the views
there expressed by explosive radicals.

Mrs. Reed knows, or should know by reason of her
husband’s position in official bolshevik circles, that in
soviet Russia there was in effect an absolute control of
the news and newspapers, that was far more oppressive
and repressive than any put in effect during the czarist
régime. Such being the case, it hardly is possible that
the soviet officials would have permitted the publication
of that which undoubtedly would have given aid and com-
fort to their enemies in other lands and seriously have
undermined their cause, even among those who were
expected to be friendly to the system they established.

She knows, or ought to know, that the soviet newspapers
during the iron reign of the bolshevik dictatorship were in
effect soviet bulletins, in which were printed from time to
time important “‘successes” of the valiant red armies on all
fronts, whether they occurred or not; uprisings of the
downtrodden proletariat in the leading capitalist countries
of the world; the decrees issued ad libitum by the high
and mighty ones of the inner circles at Moscow and Petro-
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 79

grad for the information and guidance and caution of
those unfortunate ones under the iron heel of the bol-
shevik autocracy; and such further information as it was
necessary for them (the few who could read after the
intelligent ones in their territory had wantonly been de-
stroyed) to have. As newspapers—purveyors to the pub-
lic of the news of the day—those permitted to be printed
in those sections unfortunately under soviet domination
for all intents and purposes practically ceased to, exist.

By permitting such decrees to be printed a definite pur-
pose undoubtedly was served ; whatever it was we can but’
hazard a guess. It may be that the bolshevik masses
needed to be informed of the latest styles of matrimony,
so that they could be introduced in their own localities.
In the event that it worked well on a small scale, it could
be extended by a decree of the all-powerful central soviet,
or the masters in supreme control, so as to cover the
entire ‘federated republic.”

According to the supposedly well-informed New Re-
public (March 15, 1919), in sympathy with the ideals
if not with all the aims and purposes of bolshevism, the
decree of Saratov was published by the soviet authorities
in their official publications in order, as the author of an
article in such “progressive” magazine puts it, “to bring
discredit and opprobrium on their most dangerous political
opponents, the anarchists.” Thus Mr. Oliver M. Sayler
says:

One solution, of course, is that which is suggested in the “an-
swer” quoted above. (That until the question was settled by
force, “even in Moscow their (the anarchists) desires and deci-
sions were unquestioned by the bolsheviki, and they were free
to issue their decrees and documents, even if they did not meet

with the full approval of the bolshevik authorities.) It is not
beyond the possibility that the bolsheviki themselves devised and
80 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

posted the original “decree” in the name of the anarchists in
order to bring discredit and opprobrium on their most dangerous
political opponents. Equally plausible to me is the supposition
that a detached group of anarchists in the city of Saratov actu-
ally did advocate and promulgate this “decree,” without possess-
ing the power to carry it out. What authority such a group
imagined they had in the matter from the Kronstadt soviet I
was unable to determine. In the course of six months in Russia
I was unable to find record or other allusion to any such docu-
ment, although it was generally known that the Kronstadt soviet,
a local body, rearranged human affairs periodically and not
always seriotsly, and never with the authority of the central
executive committee of the soviets.

Here we have a gem of radical reasoning. He did not
see the Kronstadt decree, therefore it had no existence;
if there was such a thing, we must not take it seriously,
for the Kronstadt soviet did not amount to much anyway.
The pity of it is that many may be found who read and
accept the logic spread by literary simples in the pages
of the “progressive press” of the type of the New Repub-
lic and the Nation. He continues:

Out of this astounding episode arises one conclusion of su-
preme importance to us in our effort to understand the bolshevik
frame of mind, far overshadowing the obvious and revolting
inferences which result naturally from a hasty consideration of
the decree. In fact, I can think of nothing that would please
the bolshevik leaders more than for us to absorb our minds
and waste our indignation in attributing to them these ideas con-
cerning the socialization of women. If Lenin and Trotsky are
aware of the interpretation which has almost unanimously been
placed on this decree in the United States, they are probably
laughing deeply in their sleeves. To the extent that we are
dissipating our attention on shocking and incidental and misin-
terpreted episodes like this we are playing directly into the hands
of Lenin and Trotsky and the red guard.

A very ingenious theory and conclusion, it is true, but
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 81

one that hardly will hold water. Instead of, as Mr.
Sayler would have us believe, the bolshevik authorities
holding off and permitting us to waste our indignation on
“shocking and incidental and misinterpreted episodes like
this,” the authorities of sovietdom themselves either were
caught in their own net or really were indignant, if inno-
cent of wrongdoing, at such stories being circulated about
their form of government. Those who read the radical
press or articles by radicals in the more conservative
press are aware that the bolshevik advocates did not
intend to let such statements go unchallenged. We are in-
formed that a close connection existed between the rad-
icals here and the soviet government of Russia. If that
is so, the American bolsheviki either misinterpreted plain
orders from their Russian masters or took the bit between
their teeth and helped spoil the interesting game that our
very veracious and extremely logical friend of the New
Republic suggested the red régime of Russia then was
playing to divert attention from other and possibly more
important matters.

Further corroborative testimony as to nationalization of
women is had in a letter to the New York Times of
March 26, 1922, by a woman who claims to know of
what she relates. The letter follows:

New York, March 2, 1922.
To the Editor of the New York Times:

In her recent book, “Marooned in Russia,” Mrs. Marguerite
B. Harrison states that no one in Moscow had ever heard a
word about the project of the soviet government to nationalize
all the women of Russia; that the sole mention of such a thing
was contained in a small newspaper published at Saratov; that
it was regarded as a joke even there.

Permit me to say that I think I can obtain for you, if desired,

a copy of the official soviet circular posted on the walls of
Saratov by way of informing the public as to the promulga-
82 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

tion of a new authoritative decree. It is in the hands of a man
who procured it on the spot at the time, and is now in this city.

From a woman of the “intelligencia” class, who was in the
category of the “nationalized,” I have a statement which proves
that there was nothing either humorous or provincial about it.
The decree- was promulgated also in Petrograd, where my friend
and her husband lived. At a fixed date all women between, the
ages of 16 and 45 (I think) were to be mated, regardless of
their own will in the matter.

The women affected in Petrograd, including my friend, went
to the physicians and demanded poison. Each was furnished by
these sensible physicians with a dose of cyanide of potassium,
which she carried everywhere with her. Five days before the
date fixed for the execution of the decree a new decree abrogated
it. The most interesting and perhaps the most hopeful cause for
the promulgation of that second decree was that the peasants
had risen in wrath and declared that no such nationalization
should take place.

Ble ad» IsapeL F. Hapcoop.*

But even if we were to throw aside as unfounded
rumor or worse all the tales that were printed about
nationalization of women by this or that community of
Russia we have sufficient information from possibly more
trustworthy sources to prove that determined efforts had
been made utterly to destroy the institution of marriage
as it had existed from time immemorial.

In the New York Call of February 13, 1920, an article
was published “on the emancipation of Women in Russia,
which previously appeared in Le Populaire (Paris) of
January 10, from a brochure by Lenin, entitled ‘The
Great Beginning,’ a study of the organization of work in

*The author of the letter, one who is not accustomed to making rash
and unprovable statements, was communicated with, and stated that the man
referred to was a Y. M. C. A. representative, who was at Saratov at the
time, and that the woman, after a short visit to the United States, returned
to Russia and was there at the time the letter was sent.
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 83

soviet Russia.” It will be admitted that it makes “mighty
interesting reading.” In part it is as follows:

It is a fact that in the course of the past ten years not a single
democratic party in the world, not one among the leaders of the
bourgeois republics, has undertaken for the emancipation of wo-
men the hundredth part of what has been realized by Russia in
one year,

Then follows the achievement of Russia:

All the humiliating laws prejudicial to the rights of women
have been abolished; for example, those which made divorce
dificult, the repugnant rules for inquiring into paternity, and other
regulations relating to “illegitimate” children. Such laws are in
force in all ctvilized states, to the shame of the bourgeoisie and
of capitalism. We are justly proud of our progress in this field.
But as soon as we have destroyed the foundations of bourgeois
laws and institutions we arrived at a clear conception of the
preparatory nature of our work, destined solely to prepare the
ground for the edifice which was to be built. We have not yet
come to the construction of the building.

So according to the soviet Moses, Lenin himself, such
laws or decrees published by the soviet authorities, that
making divorce easy, the “repugnant rules” for inquir-
ing into paternity, and regulations relating to illegitimacy
abolished, are merely preparatory measures for the real
social structure they hoped to build, not only in their
own but in all civilized countries. We can but imagine
what type of structure bolshevik plans call for if we
fortify ourselves with the delectable literary outpourings
of Bebel and Engels and the other inspired prophets of
the socialist order set forth in another chapter. Further:

Woman remains, after all, the slave of the home. The eman-
cipatory laws make no difference, for she is still subject to all
the little household tasks which chain her to the kitchen and the
84 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

nursery and make her arduous and unproductive activity a bond-
age of petty torments, oppressive and degrading.

A true emancipation of women, a real communism, will be
achieved only when the proletariat, taking the reins in its hands,
shall organize the fight against domestic slavery—or, to put it
better, when society shall be entirely reconstructed with a view to
a general and socialistic organization of housekeeping.

This is in no sense a new departure; it had been set
forth, to mention but one source, in the very interesting
volume by Bebel, “Woman.” The inspired article by
Lenin closes with this promise, or, possibly, threat:

We have for the most part taken these institutions in hand,
and they are beginning to lose their old character. We do not
shout it in the streets, although the bourgeois understands very
well how to sing the praises of his institutions. In contrast to
the bourgeois press, with its large circulation, which extols bour-
geois enterprises as worthy to exalt the national pride, our papers
do not pass their time celebrating the merits of the community
kitchens,

There is a particular reason for this, aside from over-
modesty on the part of the Russian communards, and
that reason is that the community kitchens and dining
rooms, from which so much was expected, had not func-
tioned nearly as well as the friends of communism had
expected.

It is none the less true that they are based on these principles:
Economize work, be saving of materials, improve sanitary con-
ditions, and free women from slavery.

Freeing woman from the “slavery” of the kitchen and
the nursery and the tasks allotted to the sex by the
unemancipated civilization of the past is supposed to have
one definite and glorious result, and that is with more time
at her disposal she will be free, entirely so, to devote
herself to free and unrestrained love—in the newer and
emancipated sense.
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 85

Aside from the communal kitchens we have in the
new and emancipated state an official “breaker of mar-
riages’” (possibly known by a more euphonious title) ; and
we are informed by reliable authorities that he, or she or
they are the officials more sought after than any of the
others.

The net results of these practices, that were to bring
about the emancipation of women, according to reliable
reports that have come out of darkest soviet Russia, were
such as not especially to hearten their friends in other
countries. Women certainly were degraded, families de-
moralized, the children, the men and women of the mor-
row, almost hopelessly were spoiled—all in all, society dis-
tinctly was the loser and not the gainer by the new ven-
ture.

We have something in the nature of reliable informa-
tion that this is a fact and not the fancy of overwrought
opponents of socialism.

Thus we have a very interesting and instructive letter
from Grand Duchess Marie, Princess Pontiantine, to a
friend in New York, reprinted in the New York Times
Magazine of February 1, 1920, that may be quoted in
part, as it deals with bolshevism’s malevolent and bestial
assault on what should be pure and innocent childhood
and gives us something explicit and definite on the mooted
question of nationalization of women. Thus she says:

Oh, if I could tell every woman of the whole world—every
mother, every daughter, every sister, every wife—what these
last two years have been for us Russian women! What terrible
humiliations we have been subjected to and how everything that
is sacred to a woman’s heart has been trampled upon and torn
down. Honor, family, home, and all has the Russian woman
been robbed of, and I pray to God that my words may be
heard and listened to. * * *
86 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

My country is at present the victim of the most appalling op-
pression and tyranny, the most horrible agony, the most heart-
rending degradation that the world has ever known. Families
have been separated and scattered, ruined and robbed of their
worldly goods, from the most powerful and richest in the land
to the poor, hard-working peasant—all are ruthlessly despoiled of
the fruits of their care and labors, of all their earthly posses-
sions, * * *

As to socialization of women, emphatically denied in
some respectable quarters, the writer of the letter has this
to say:

You have heard of the socialization of women and girls. These
are some of the facts: In Ekaterinodar in the spring of I919
over 60 girls were socialized on mandates given out by red
commissioners and red army chiefs. “Drives” were organized
in the towns to capture the victims, after which they were
delivered to the lust of the commissioners, soldiers and sailors
of the reds. When they had done with them they killed their
victims and threw their bodies into the river. And these atroci-
ties have been committed by wretched, uneducated Russian people
under the influence of a few leaders. These are the same Rus-
sian soldiers who during the war were known for their gener-
osity and kindness toward women, children, and even the fallen
foe.

The letter closes with this earnest plea:

The peasants are crying out for order, but being terrorized they
remain passive for the time being.

I think I have told you enough to make the women of America
respond to this appeal, addressed to the mothers, wives, daughters,
and sisters of America. May they put themselves in imagination
for one moment in the place of the tormented and distracted
Russian women and try to imagine the feelings of a Russian
mother whose child has been torn from her, whose daughters
have been violated, whose husband has been tortured to death.

Full corroboration of every statement made by the
grand duchess is had in the following official Russian docu-
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 87

ment issued by a special commission attached to the staff
of the commander in chief of the armed forces of the
south of Russia, dated June 25, 1919 (Current History
Magazine, October, 1920) :

Act of investigation concerning socialization of girls and women
in the city of Ekaterinodar on permits issued by
the soviet authority.

In the spring of 1918 the bolsheviki issued in the city of Ekat-
erinodar a decree, which was published in the soviet press and
pasted on street posts, according to which young women from
16 to 25 years of age were subject to “socialization.” Those
who wished to avail themselves of this decree were to apply
to the revolutionary institutions concerned therewith. The in-
itiator of this “socialization” was the commissary of the interior,
a man named Bronstein. He also was the one who issued
“permits” for the “socialization.” Identical permits were also
issued by his subordinate, the commander of a bolshevist cavalry
detachment, Kobzyrev, by the commander in chief, Ivashchev, and
also by other soviet authorities. The permits were provided
with the official seal of the staff of the “Revolutionary Troops
of the North Caucasian Soviet Republic.” Permits were issued
both to red army soldiers and to soviet chiefs, as, for instance, to
Karaseiev, the commandant of the palace where Bronstein re-
sided. This permit (given below) granted the Tight of “socializa-
tion” of Io young women:

 

PERMIT
The bearer, Comrade Karaseiev, is entitled to socialize in
the city of Ekaterinodar 10 young women from 16 to 20
years of age, whomsoever Comrade Karaseiev may point
out.
(Official seal.) (Signed) IvasHcHEv,
Commander in Chief.

 

 

 

On the strength of such permits red army soldiers seized more
than 60 girls, young and pretty ones, chiefly from among the
88 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

bourgeois and the pupils of local educational institutions. Some
of them were seized during a raid made by the red army sol-
diers on the city park, and four of the girls were raped on the
spot in one of the booths. Others, numbering about 25, were
taken to the palace of the Cassack Ataman, to Bronstein, and the
rest to the Old Commercial Hotel, to Kobzyrev, and to Hotel
Bristol, to the sailors, where they were raped. Several of the
prisoners were afterwards freed, so, for instance, a girl who
had been raped by the chief of the bolshevist “criminal detective
force,” Prokofiev. Others, however, were carried off by de-
parting red army detachments, and their fate remains unknown.
Finally, several, after various cruel tortures, were killed and
cast into the Kuban and Karasun rivers. So, for instance, a pupil
of the fifth class of one of the high schools of Ekaterinodar was
subjected to violation for 12 days by a whole gang of red army
soldiers; then the bolsheviki tied her to a tree, burned her with
fire, and at last shot her dead.

The names of the victims are not published for obvious rea-
sons.

The present facts have been obtained by the special commission
under observance of the provisions of the statute of criminal
law procedure.

Drawn up on the 25th of June, 1919, in the city of Ekater-
inodar.

(Official seal.)

With the article was reproduced a facsimile of one of
the permits.

In a very interesting though decidedly depressing article
in the Current History Magazine for March, 1920, on
“Bolshevist Horrors in Odessa,” dealing with conditions
in such unfortunate city during its first occupancy by the
bolsheviki, Rev. R. Courtier-Forster, an eye witness of
what he describes, tells of the particularly bestial type
of communization ef women that there prevailed:

Week by week the newspapers published articles for and

against the nationalization of women. In South Russia the pro-
posal did not become a legal measure, but in Odessa bands of
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 89

bolsheviki seized women and girls arid carried them off to the
port, to the timber yards, and the Alexandrovsky Park for their
Own purposes. Women used in this way were found in the
morning either dead or mad or in a dying condition. Those
found still alive were shot. One of the most awful of my own per-
sonal experiences of the new civilization was hearing at night
from my bedroom windows the frantic shrieks of women being
raped to death in the park opposite—screams of shrill terror and
despair repeated at intervals, until they became the death calls of
a dying animal. This happened not once or twice, but many
times. Never to the day of my death shall I forget the horror of
those dreadful shrieks of tortured women and one’s own power-
lessness to aid the victims or punish the bolshevik devils in their
bestial orgies.

There is a unanimity about these letters and articles
from widely separated sources absolutely to preclude the
possibility of entire error. If we admit that due to the
overwrought mental condition of those testifying the pic-
ture may somewhat be overdrawn, yet making all allow-
ances for error and for exaggeration sufficient remains
of the horrible picture fairly to astound those honestly
seeking the truth, that hardly can be removed by inter-
ested propagandists for socialism here and elsewhere pro-
claiming and declaiming that all is lovely in the topsy-
turvy “federated republic” of Russia.

It was reported that the replica of the bolshevik gov-
ernment that was established in Hungary under the dic-
tatorship of Bela Kun not only had adopted the economic
program of Lenin as fast as it conveniently could, but
seriously had considered putting into effect the delectable
policy of nationalization of women. Reports in the public
press were to the effect that the women who counted in
the new régime, those of the official households, had been
apprised of the proposed scheme in ample time, found that
it would apply to them as well as to those further down
go THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

in the social order, and wasted no time in throwing a
sizable monkey wrench into the well-oiled nationalization
machinery. So according to what is said to be a reliable
report, such interesting scheme “died a-borning.”

At that marriage laws were “liberalized” in soviet
Hungary, and the women whose sad fate it was to have
their being in such country at that time were granted all
the benefits that supposedly accrue from “full emancipa-
tion.” Divorce practically was had for the asking, and
the marriage relation lost to an extent its permanent
character and became, as in soviet Russia, more of a
transient affair, to be dissolved when the union became in
the least degree irksome to either one of the contracting
parties.

According to information that came out of Buda-Pesth,
the system of Bela Kun as to marriage and divorce worked
as follows:

With mutual consent divorce is granted almost automatically,
and since the letter and spirit of the law alike ordains it, without
any investigation on the part of the judges. An application for
divorce by one of the parties, even though there is opposition
by the other party, ts almost invariably granted.

Most of the petitioners are middle-aged or elderly men. The
explanation is simple and unpleasant. The Hungarian husband
sees in the new divorce law an easy, legal way to break off the
contract with the wearied and elderly woman who, as the case
may be, for the past 20 or 30 years has been his partner and
to form another union with one younger and more attractive.
Hungarian women age rapidly, and whatever physical attraction
there was in the marriage soon passes, and in the absence of any
deeper and nobler feeling the men now flock to the divorce court
to get release from their vows.

Another and equally potent motive explains the eagerness of
Hungarian men to get divorces. In Hungary, as elsewhere on
the continent, marriage is rather a commercial transaction than
a romance. Even the beautiful woman, were she poor, found
the doors to matrimony closed, and men married mainly not be-
THE: RED.WAR ON THE FAMILY gI

cause they loved women but because they wanted their money.
A dowry was the one thing essential for marriage, and an as-
sured private income on the part of the wife was the safest
guaranty of the husband’s unfailing loyalty and devotion. The
introduction of communism and the confiscation of all private
Property caused the foundations of most of such “common
marriages” to collapse.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the women of Hungary
are most violently opposed to the new marriage and divorce
laws. The ideal aimed at by the communist framers of the law
may be high and theoretically sound, but, in the main, as else-
where in the movement, no account of men’s frailty is taken.
That vast change in the spirit which must precede great social
revolutions is still a long way off. ‘

It is theoretically possible for a man or a woman to get married
and divorced six times a week. Marriage could be performed
each weekday morning, and if the petition was a mutual one
divorce could be obtained each weekday afternoon. On Sundays
the courts do not sit.

Space, we regretfully are compelled to admit, is not
available for further testimony (of which sufficient is
on hand to fill several good-sized volumes) regarding
socialist theory and practice in the moral field. At that
sufficient has been published in this volume, we hope, to
prove that our socialist friends no more are to be trusted
with the morals of a community or state than with the
political or economic machinery. In the one field disor-
ganization and senseless destruction has been the inevi-
table result. In the other and far more vital field irrep-
arable damage has resulted to such unfortunate countries
that were brought under socialist domination. Tampering
with the political and economic machinery by the clumsy
theorists of socialism may possibly be repaired within a
comparatively short period of time, but the Lord alone
knows what the ultimate effect of socialist experiment
in the moral field may be or how many generations of
92 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

people must pass away before the poison of socialist
radicalism entirely can be eliminated from the social
structure.

On what before has been presented the enlightened
peoples of the world, constituted as an impartial jury, are
in position to render a just decision, one based on the
facts, that socialist teachings are subversive of morality;
that socialist practice in those lands so unfortunate for a
time to have their being under a socialist régime has had
the effect of degrading womanhood and childhood and has
corrupted human character—all in all, that socialism has
been a force for evil, from which little of good has
come or possibly can come.
A VERITABLE “SLAUGHTER OF THE INNO-
CENTS”

WE have shown in the preceding chapter that socialism
is destructive of morality, that pure womanhood no more
can endure under socialism than can decency in an en-
vironment of bestiality and obscenity. Let us now devote
some space to the position of childhood in the socialist
state, and see whether the growing youth fares better
than the matured in mind and body.

Socialism for ages has taught that childhood has no
proper chance in the capitalist state, that character and
originality effectively are blotted out by capitalism, and
that only those in more fortunate circumstances, those
belonging to what has been denominated the “master
class,” may show the mettle of which they are made.

Let us, therefore, examine, not into the theory of
socialism but the historical facts, to learn just how what
should be innocent childhood is affected by the bestial
socialist environment.

In the pocket editions of socialism that had been tried
in this and other countries in the last hundred years social-
ism, it can not and will not be denied, had entirely failed
to live up to its roseate promises in bringing about a
happier and more worthy childhood than that which it
ever decried in civilized capitalistic states. Socialist theory
was that the parents being in a measure freed from en-
slaving labor, their future taken in hand by a most pater-
nalistic state, they would be in better position to take

93
94 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

care of their offspring than they now can. Or, better still,
the state could take the young entirely in hand and bring
them up, as they should be, to stalwart manhood and
glorious womanhood.

It may be claimed that in the various. socialist experi-
ments that had been tried so many difficulties presented
themselves during the brief periods during which the
experiments sought to function that childhood in a
measure was neglected and certain necessary features con-
cerning the formative years could not be reached before
the entire socialist structure collapsed. But such excuse
will not avail as to Russia, where the “dictatorship of the
proletariat” firmly was established, where the socialist state
and those in absolute control had every opportunity to
put their very interesting theories into practice.

With woman fully emancipated, freed from the “tie
that binds” as well as the duties assigned to the tender
sex by immemorial custom, many asked, ‘What about the
children born to Russians in the unemancipated, capital-
istic days of the long ago?” The children, according to re-.
liable reports that have come from such much-harrassed
country, also fully were emancipated—from home, from
parental love and influence, from all that should surround
them in their formative years—and bodily thrown into
the vortex of the great experiment regnant socialism then
was conducting on the all but dead body of Russia.

According to a special dispatch to the New York Times
dated Geneva, Switzerland, June 11, 1919, by a Swiss
woman school teacher, after an II-year residence in
Moscow:

The most diabolical of all measures conceived by the bolshevik
rulers of Russia to perpetuate their dominion is the systematic
corruption of coming generations to undermine and destroy family
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 95

life. To estrange children from their parents by encouraging
them in unlimited indulgence of idleness and pleasure, to incul-
cate brutal and materialistic principles in the receptive minds of
young boys and girls, is the surest method, the bolshevik dic-
tators think, to assure the duration of bolshevism.

Then follows a comparison between the alleged bolshe-
vik ideals and the bald facts:

Like all branches of the soviet administration, the department
of public instruction in Moscow has two faces to the outer
world. It presents a placid aspect of progressive socialism and
modern pedagogic ideals calculated to impress foreign intellectuals
favorably for Russia; it is a political machine driven by and
engendering tyranny, cruelty, and corruption. Lunacharsky, com-
missary for public instruction, is a consummate comedian. Trad-
ing on his former reputation as an exiled idealist and man of
letters, he issues decrees instituting a system of education based
on Tolstoy’s principles, and publishes articles in the soviet press
expounding elevated theories and exhibiting a most tender solici-
tude for Russia’s youth. All this to hoodwink unsuspecting peda-
gogues and win the sympathies of simple-minded enthusiasts in
foreign countries,

Anyone reading Lunacharsky’s decrees and articles would sup-
pose that Russia had been transformed into a children’s para-
dise. But the truth is altogether different. There exists but
one type of school in Russia to-day. This is officially the com-
mon school. It has three preparatory and four higher classes.
The highest, the eighth class of the old school, has been abolished.
In each class there is an equal number of boys and girls, for
coeducation is one of Lunacharsky’s fundamental principles.

There are no longer any school books, not because the bol-
sheviks are opposed to their use, but for the simple reason that
the old school books are considered counterrevolutionary and
the department of public instruction has been too busy issuing
decrees and instructions to teachers to issue new ones. The
teachers are forbidden to give the children tasks to prepare at
home and even to question them during the lessons. All schools
are under the supervision of the educational department of the
local soviets, which keep close watch over the political tenden-
96 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

cies of the teachers. Most of the old school teachers have been
replaced by youths and young girls still in their teens, who them-
selves have barely graduated from the highest class. In some
cases extremely illiterate supporters of the bolshevik régime have
been appointed instructors.

It is stated that the lot of some of the former teachers,
who loyally remained at their posts, is an unenviable one.
They are continually spied upon and subjected to such
forms of humiliation that enthroned bigoted ignorance can
conceive. The report continues:

There being no schedule of lessons, the scholars in the four
higher classes decide themselves every day what they shall be
taught. All educational questions are decided by school councils,
whose meetings are, to say the least, extremely original. Side
by side with the teachers sit delegates of the scholars’ committee,
children from the age of 12 and upward, and the decisions of
the latter are obligatory for the teachers.

Religious instruction, of course, is strictly forbidden, and even
conversations upon philosophical and moral subjects are regarded
by the soviet authorities as counterrevolutionary and prohibited.
This prohibition is particularly fiendish because coeducation in
“absolute liberty” as instituted by Lunacharsky must inevitably
lead in a primitive country like Russia to revolting conditions
if moral guidance is completely lacking. But it is a deliberate
part of the bolshevik plan to corrupt and deprave the children
in order to obtain a lasting hold over them and to train them as
future propagandists of Lenin’s materialistic and criminal doc-
trines.

To this satanic system of depravation belong “children’s balls,”
which are arranged frequently in the schools by order of Luna-
charsky. The parents are forced to send their children to these
dances, which last until the early hours of the morning. Last
winter, in the streets of Moscow and Petrograd, it was painful
to see the miserable mothers waiting all night in the snow out-
side of brilliantly illuminated school buildings, where their boys
and girls were dancing the tango and foxtrot. The teachers assist
at these balls, but are not allowed to exercise any authority over
the children.
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 97

With tears in their eyes the mothers of Russia will tell you,
“There are no longer any children in Russia to-day, only vicious
little brutes, whose talk is of money and pleasure.”

The atmosphere of the bolshevik schools is impregnated with
precocious criminal instincts and bestial jealousy. All of the
children’s time is taken up with flirtation and dancing lessons.
In the state boarding school boys and girls are quartered in the
same dormitory.

This last may serve the purpose of adequately training
the coming generation for the réle they are to play in the
bolshevik state when they have arrived at full maturity.
Teaching the young idea how to shoot straight at the mark
of full equality of the sexes is expected well to serve
them in the days to come when their apprenticeship period
in bolshevism is over. This more than interesting article
concludes with this:

The unfortunate children of Russia must be delivered from
their bolshevik oppressors and seducers before it is too late,
otherwise, though Lenin may be finally overthrown, there will
remain in Russia thousands of boys and girls morally corrupted,
victims of the bolshevik schools, who will be a future menace
not only to Russia but to the entire civilized world.

According to the letter of Grand Duchess Marie,
Princess Pontiantine, reprinted in part in the preceding

paragraph:

In soviet Russia the central executive committee has decreed
the socialization of children for the purpose of bringing them
up in the “spirit of communism.” They are taken from their
parents before they can speak and placed in so-called “children’s
palaces.” Thus in Tulsa 7,000 children under the age of 10
were recently taken from their families. The parents who pro-
tested against such aggression were arrested. Many of the unfor-
tunate mothers became insane, others committed suicide. Owing
to underfeeding and to the absence of proper care the death rate
among these socialized children is extremely high.
98 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

These children are systematically taught to despise parental
authority, to indulge in loathsome immorality, to spy on their
parents, to denounce them to the soviet authorities, and to blas-
pheme their Maker.

Something in the nature of official confirmation of what
before has been published is found in a report issued to
the American public (New York Times, February 16,
1920). by the American Central Committee for Russian
Relief. As stated by Lieut. Klieforth, former assistant
military attaché in Russia, connected with the committee:

I was in Petrograd when Lenin came into power.

His first strategic move in the domestic policy was to begin
the complete obliteration of the family as a social unit. Under
soviet domination permits are necessary to travel from city
to city. If you live in Petrograd and your mother is dying in
Moscow, it is possible to go to her bedside only by getting a per-
mit from the Petrograd soviet.

You say, “I want to visit my mother, who is dying in Moscow.”
The invariable reply is, “That is no excuse. Your mother has
no more relation to you than any other woman citizen of the
soviet republic.”

If you want to visit your children—that is to say, those who
were once your children—who have been removed to the com-
munal schools, you will not get a permit, because the children are
not really yours at all, but have become wards of the state. All
the children have been deported from their homes to these
schools. The younger generation in Petrograd is systematically
herded into freight cars and sent away from 800 to 1,000 miles
to completely isolated institutions, where they are trained in
the principles of communism.

Deportation, however, is but the first step. Parents have a
habit of loving their children, even if Lenin says they shouldn't,
and by whatever influence or bribes they are able to bring to
bear seek to discover and rejoin them. Therefore the soviet
carefully destroys all records of births and relationships, leaving
nothing undone to completely isolate every child in Russia from
all human ties, except those relations advocated by bolshevism. In

-

ae
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 99

spite of these measures, congregated in the village about each
of these communal schools are hundreds of parents waiting to
claim their children when bolshevism shall be overthrown.

Teachers for these schools are produced by an entirely new
system of education known as “prolecult.”’ To the prolecult
school any student is admitted. The majority of them are illit-
erate red guards or peasant workmen.

Lieut. Klieforth testified that in one school he visited all
the girls were required to change their dresses with each
other at regular intervals in order to root out the idea
of personal property. The system is reinforced in the
adult population by regulations which forbid the carry-
ing of private property from one place to another. Thus
if you are moving from Petrograd to Moscow you may
take only one change of clothing.

Still further testimony about nationalization of children
may be adduced from testimony in publications by Rus-
sians, in which full information is had in all its disgust-
ing details. In the Volta Rossti, of February 16, 1921,
an article was published by Prof. Boris Sokoloff, leading
member of the party of Socialists-Revolutionists and
member of the first all-Russian constituent assembly. A
Dr. Horn, we are informed, speaking at the Pirogoff
medical congress in August, 1920, said:

I am prepared to forgive the bolsheviki a great many things,
almost everything. * * * But one thing there is which I can-
not and will not forgive them, namely those experiments, posi-
tively criminal and worthy of the most savage tribes of the
African jungle, which the bolsheviki have been making all this
time with our young generation, with our children. This crime
knows no parallel throughout the history of the world. They
have destroyed, morally as well as physically, a whole Russian
generation; they have destroyed it irretrievably ‘and, alas, beyond
remedy.

At the conference on public education held in 1918, the
100 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

bolshevik commissary Lilina is reported to have said
(official journal of the commissariat of public education,
“Narodnoye Prosvieschenie,” No. 4):

We have to create out of the young generation a generation
of communists. We must make good, real communists of the
children, for they, like wax, are easily molded. And when we
have grown tired and step aside our places will be taken by them
—our new communists, who will have been brought up from
childhood in the ideas of communism. Therefore, we must at
once, without procrastination, commence the training of the chil-
dren. This, however, requires first of all that we sweep from
the schools and institutions, as with a broom, all this bourgeois
tuft-hunting crowd, all these pedagogues and teachers who are
thoroughly permeated with the poison of the bourgeois philosophy
of life.

Then, warming up to her subject, she continued:

We must remove the children from the pernicious influence of
the family. We must register the children, or, let us speak
plainly, nationalize them. Thus they will from the very start re-
main under the beneficial influence of communist kindergartens
and schools. Here they will absorb the alphabet of communism.
Here they will grow up to be real communists. To compel the
mother to surrender her child to us, to the soviet state, that is
the practical task before us.

2

“In accordance with this ‘idea fixe,’” says Prof.
Sokoloff, the bolshevist power “set out in 1918 to inaugu-
rate its ‘childhood measures’ ”’:

These were definite, drastic measures, devoid of all foresight,
and, of course, bringing altogether unexpected results for the
bolsheviki. The persecution of the teachers and educators by the
bolshevist authorities forced the most efficient and ideal elements
among the pedagogical staffs to abandon their class-rooms and
to seek other employment. Their places were taken by com-
munists lacking not only experience but total strangers in the
field of pedagogy and—this was the worst of all—openly hostile
to it.
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 101

These policies, as will appear, had a destructive effect
on the physical, mental, and moral welfare of the inno-
cents brought under the control of the soviet state. Thus
as to the physical well-being of children we have the fol-
lowing from the official report of the soviet inspection
for February, 1920, referring to the institutions for child

care to which parents were expected to deliver their
children:

The thoroughgoing inspection of 16 children’s nurseries in the
city of Petrograd has revealed a criminal and disgraceful treat-
ment of the young generation at the hands of the responsible
persons. So we found the Rozdestvenskia Nursery, where more
than 100 children, ranging in age from 1 to 4 yeats, were main-
tained (and most of them children of workers) in a condition
which demanded its immetiate closing. The children, left to
their own devices, under the supervision of inexperienced and
rough-spoken nurses, with filthy clothing, pale from lack of
sufficient nourishment, made a painful impression. The place
itself, unventilated and poorly heated, fostered all manner of
diseases and contributed to the exceedingly high rate of mortality
among the children. In the course of three months the child
population of that institution renewed itself to the extent of 90
per cent. In other words, nearly all of them were sent to the
hospital, or, having failed to reach the hospital, they perished
while still at the nursery.

At the other nurseries the same awful conditions were
met, in the provincial towns as well as in the former
capital. Thus we read in the report of the congress on
kindergarten training, held in July, 1920:

The joint inspection committee of the people’s commissariats of
education and public health has demanded the immediate clos-
ing of nurseries in five provincial capitals along the Volga owing
to the abominable manner in which the children’s training is
carried on there and also because of the disproportionately large
number of cases of illness.
102 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

Private nurseries largely are outlawed. The President,
Dr. Kishkin, of the Children’s Defense League, an organ-
ization working to save the childhood of Russia, was
compelled to make this complaint: 7

In spite of the fact that the children’s problem is very critical
and notwithstanding that our league, the only remaining inde-
pendent organization of its kind in Russia, renders a great
amount of help to the government in this work, we are still
treated as outcasts. We have been forced during these two
years to spend more strength and energy on our self-preserva-
tion than, alas, on serving the cause of the children. The bolshe-
viki tolerate nothing which is not of the soviet, even though it‘be
a beneficial and necessary thing for the Russian people.

But there are some of the soviet state with a touch of
fiendish comedy in their make-up, for we are informed by
Prof. Sokoloff, that in 1920 the few remaining private
nurseries that managed miraculously to survive the vari-
ous forms of bolshevist oppression suddenly became the
objects of special attention on the part of officials of the
Russian state:

But this solicitude of the soviet government turned out to
have a sinister motive behind it. These private nurseries (Les-
shaft, Dietskoie, and Solodovnikoff Nurseries), notwithstanding
that they have been left in the hands of private individuals,
have been called by the bolshevik authorities “Soviet Model Nur-
series,” and are now being shown to all foreign visitors and
delegates as such.

The position of mothers in Russia, continues Prof.
Sokoloff, is an unenviable one, and it is indeed astonish-
ing that they are able to bear the strain:

A Russian mother is now living through a deep tragedy, indeed.
Just look at the women you pass in the street; you will at once
be able to point out a mother of an infant among them. She is

the one with the pale, wan, careworn face.. You can imagine what
it means, the soviet government insistently demanding that the
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 103

mother turn over her little children to the official nurseries,
when you have seen for yourself what a horror they are. And
they are such horrors because they have been entrusted to people
who do not love that work and are perfect strangers in it. As
a matter of fact, the death rate among the nursery children is
appalling, and to send your child there is almost certain death.
So Russian mothers, even the most desperately poor and most
unfortunate, do not care to surrender their children to the soviet
nurseries. But here comes a new tragedy. The earnings of the
husband are so triflingly small in soviet Russia that it compels
the wife, especially the workingman’s wife, to seek outside em-
ployment by all means.

This is the reason why mothers are compelled to leave at home,
without any attendance, their 1-year-old, and frequently even
younger infants. But that is only one side of the tragedy. On
the other side, the soviet government, anxious to drive every
child into its official nurseries, only reluctantly and very meagerly
allows food on child’s ration tickets. Very seldom it furnishes
milk and very irregularly other foodstuffs.

Thus there stands again before the Russian mother the specter
of death threatening her little one. For free commerce is sup-
pressed and there is no place where she can buy milk.

All these conditions explain why it is that, according
to the same authority, Russian mothers dread childbear-
ing:

Assistants at the Gynecological Institute at Petrograd told
me that women are terrified at the thought of bearing a child,
knowing perfectly well that if born alive it will in all probability
shortly die.

The results of the criminal policy of the Russians in
authority began to show already in 1919. The city children
born within the period from 1917 to 1920 have shown
themselves entirely unfit to survive, especially those held
in the soviet nurseries, or, as they are called in Petrograd,
“Morilki” (starvation houses). They have furnished an
appalling rate of mortality, and those who survive are
104 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

said to be sickly and to bear the marks of physical degen-
eracy. Thus according to the Children’s Defense League
at the Pirogoff Medical Congress:

The soviet government has done practically nothing to allevi-
ate the condition of the children. On the contrary, it has with
its stupid measures frequently prevented private initiative from
saving the newly born citizens of soviet Russia. By driving out
experienced pedagogues and turning the work over to com-
munists, who although they may be idealists, understand nothing
about the raising of children, the soviet government has from
the very first steps in the development of the children contributed

.an element of disintegration and degeneration.

The same thing practically is said by the Society of
Child Specialists :

To us it is plain that so high a mortality rate among the
children and such a marked decline in the birth rate is directly
connected with the measures taken by the government, which
is doing everything in its power to destroy the family and to
nationalize the children, beginning with the 1-year-old infants.
We have to note with sorrow that the young generation of this
period does not exist for Russia.

What the society particularly has reference to are certain
official figures published in the official bolshevist public
health organ, Isvestia Zdravookhranenia, No. 11, in which
are cited the following figures for the city of Moscow.
These are considered of especial significance because the
population of Moscow is said to have remained prac-
tically stationary:

Marriages in—

TOMA. % vadieisecacaw esemsaweae ss 12,000
TOIG ss sncdeeeressssacavndete se 7,500
TOUZ 1s Fe a Vddesawick ane kavecatias 9,900
TQLO: sceisieisigiaicieeivsiicie selves x's 18,780
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 105

The doubling of the figures for marriage during the
period of bolshevik domination is attributed to the fact
that divorce and remarriage now are more in evidence
than before and to the further fact that marriage in soviet
Russia carries with it so few responsibilities that men
formerly marriage shy feel that now they can take a
chance in the marital pool. Of more significance are the
figures for births. Thus:

Births in—
IQTS vcweae exes pawcanerns sess s 54,000
TOUS. wisdom hess ea-sniteslenaa does aces 49,700
TOIGs sidaelcs-. Sb ae Rav ERS Oe 57,375
IQIS ’ jaseaweres ay waeiewade 3 eloe's 31,500
IOI! wodewals es sa aasnenee reas ads 26,676
1020. wevawa ves vusvawagede s¥ ees 23,000

The figures above bear out the statement elsewhere
made that women in soviet Russia fear to take a chance
on bringing more children into the world, first because
in their enfeebled condition it may mean death to them
and, further, if the child is born alive the chances are
against its ability to survive conditions as they are. We
have, further, the mortality of children from birth to
16 years per 10,000 of population, as follows:

MOUS care sicsehecedibieisss xb aearauatenaen ese 81
LOLS. ; Cac aiadwawuteatetemeccsy 78
LOIS <x sinciarnlatenes y wary aiekawcetnemer es’ ate.s 100
IQIO: 244 devewcaxs sean senses eens 372
TO200 6d aeindaieis seeds sree Bier d has 400

Remember that figures deal with ages up to 16. Elim-
inating the first five years, that is the most favorable period
of life. If the period from birth to 1 year were dealt
with, it would present a mortality rate positively appalling,
one far greater than for any country on earth, even those
106 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

living under the most primitive conditions as to sanita-
tion and health requirements. Of a fact, we have in
soviet Russia a veritable “slaughter of the innocents.”

But such state of affairs, as indicated by the three
tables we present herewith, appalling as it is, is not the
worst feature at that of soviet domination. We now
have it on reliable authority that the most horrible types
of immorality boldly stalk through what formerly was
the land of the czars, bringing with it an inevitable crop
of the most destructive social diseases.

We are informed that while the soviet government

abolished open prostitution and the public brothels, the
evil has but assumed a different form; that “there are
more prostitutes than before, although Petrograd doctors
do not report any increase in venereal disease.” This last
condition may be due to the fact that disease now is so
common in soviet Russia, especially in doubly unfor-
tunate Petrograd, that one more type of disease, even
though of a serious nature, is borne without public com-
plaint by the fatalist Russian.
“ We before had heard of the extension of venereal dis-
eases among those of tender years; we now have some-
thing in the nature of circumstantial evidence that such
is the sad fact. At one prominent hospital, we are in-
formed by Prof. Boris Sokoloff (“Medicine in Soviet
Russia,” Lancet (London), April 23, 1921), where the
number of children suffering from venereal diseases were
never more than 15 per cent, now the percentage stands
at 60 compared to 40 per cent for adults. Lack of control
of parents over their children, added to the diabolical
teachings of socialist visionaries, is thus seen to have most
deplorable results.
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 107

Conditions being as stated, Prof. Sokoloff fully is
justified when he says:

The actual destruction wrought by the revolution is nothing to
the appalling moral degeneracy and criminality among children,
which now stands out as the foremost evil in Russia.

In the New York Times of July 17, 1921, Sir Paul
Dukes, who spent some time in Russia during the bol-
shevik domination of things, and who, we have been in-
formed, speaks Russian like a native, and so gets his
information direct and not at second hand through a more
or less reliable interpreter, gives us some information
about the criminality and immorality among the young.
In such article he said:

Few people yet grasp the fact that the central tragedy of the
bolshevist régime in Russia is an organized effort to subvert and
corrupt the minds of the children. With official channels of in-
formation monopolized by the communist government, most sur-
prising rumors are afloat as to the bolshevist attitude toward
the growing children, while the difficulty of comprehending the
situation is complicated by the literal accuracy of the bald state-
ment that “the bolsheviki are doing all they can for children.”
The question which so few proceed to investigate is however, this:
What is it the bolsheviki are trying so hard to do for Russian
children?

It was after the communists had been in the saddle for about
a year that their fears that this genéraTion would not see com-
munism established led them to turn their minds to the conversion
of the children. As is well known, it has always been a bolshevist
principle to fight the institution of the family. Mme. Kolontay’s
writings can leave no doubt on that score even in the minds of the
skeptical. The idea is to remove children at an early age from
parental care and bring them up in colonies where they will be
free from the evil influence of all non-bolshevist currents of
thought.

Hopes for the future are founded on an institution known as
the Union of Youthful Communists, which all school childrez
108 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

join. The juvenile members are denied access to any but bol-
shevist literature, are exempt from all moral training, allowed
unbridled license, and so encouraged in a spirit of rebellion
against parental authority and the influence of former preceptors
that they are becoming completely demoralized. Moral training
was ever one of the weakest sides of Russian life, and the elimi-
nation of whatever moral instruction there was is bound to have
disastrous effects. This pernicious system is combated by
the church and by parents as far as they can and dare, but open
protest is impossible.

His statements as to the brand of bolshevik instruction
but bears out what had been said by others. Thus:

To communize the teaching profession the soviet government
resorted to abolition of all standards of education for teachers.
The first qualification for appointment, especially to posts in
elementary schools, became not an adequate education nor any
moral qualifications but the possession of a ticket of membership
in the communist party. The teachers, of course, protested, but
were denounced as “counterrevolutionary.” Pronounced opposi-
tion also was shown by them to the abolition of examinations and
rewards for diligence, a measure which enabled the idlest to leave
school on the same footing as the most assiduous.

The evils resulting from the system of compulsory mixed
living in boarding schools, suddenly introduced in a land of
weak morals, brought education in some cases completely to a
standstill. The desirability or undesirability of the suppression of
religion in Russian schools may be open to discussion, but there
is nothing now to replace it, for the teachers are deliberately
hampered in any attempt to exert moral influence over their
pupils lest their admonitions should have a “counterrevolu-
tionary” tendency. The figure of Lunacharsky, people’s commis-
sar for education and art, is one of the least unsympathetic—
perhaps one should say one of the most pathetic—of the revolu-
tion, but such measures as the above have completely nullified
whatever good intentions he ever had.

The primary object, therefore, of the bolshevist educational
system, while conferring the benefits of elementary literacy, is
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 109

so to benumb the juvenile mind as to render it impervious in
its later stages of development to every influence that leads to
spontaneous initiative, independence of thought, or, above all,
moral uplift. The attitude of the communist party toward the
Russian church is that of a snarling dog. As a Russian work-
man whom I met in White Russia last November observed to
me: “There is only one man in all Russia whom bolsheviki
fear from the bottom of their hearts, and that is the Patriarch
Tikon.”

Every variety of persecution having failed, the communists
have retreated to their present attitude of malicious tolerance,
contenting themselves with employing the monopolized press to
defame, abuse, and vilify Christianity on every conceivable occa-
sion, but seeking especially to protect children from what they
call “demoralizing religious influence.” * * *

At the close of 1920 the League for the Protection of Chil-
dren prepared a report on the condition of children in Russian
cities, portions of which, with other frank admissions, were pub-
lished in the official bolshevist press early this year. The sta-
tistics presented form a tragic contrast to the propagandist
concoctions designed for consumption abroad.

Says the District Pedagogic Report for Petrograd, De-
cember, 1920, quoted in Volia Rosii:

“We are powerless in face of a condition of things formerly
unnoticeable in Russia, namely, the increase of juvenile immor-
ality and prostitution. The former is the result of universal
demoralization and experiments of the soviet government (such
as combining boys’ and girls’ boarding schools), the latter is con-
sequent upon the privations of present economic conditions. Im-
morality has become so prevalent in our schools that drastic
measures will be needed to combat it. Yet we do not see how
this is possible in view of the suppression of public philanthropy
in matters concerning the care of children.”

Says Izvestia of March 3, 1921:

“Tt is essential once again to point out the ever-increasing lack
of care of children, with consequent infantile trading, theft,
deceit, and more serious vices. * * * There have been cases
110 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

when in a brothel on the Hiltrov. Market Place as many as
so children have been seized in a single day. * * * The
number of children now leading street life is colossal.”

Under the caption “A Social Calamity” Trud of Febru-
ary, 1921, said:

“Children in the big cities dragged into the maelstrom of street
speculation are becoming a social calamity. In the majority of
cases they are the children of workers. They support themselves
and earn for the family an additional income.”

In view of what before had been printed we are left in
no doubt as to the type of employment the children of the
new Russia, especially the female element, so industrially
apply themselves to. According to Sir Paul Dukes:

A special conference on children held in 1920 revealed the fact
that juvenile prostitution has increased tenfold, or 1,000 per
cent, since 1917. The interpellation of 5,300 girls of or about
I5 years of age showed that no fewer than 4,100—that is, 88
per cent—indulge in prostitution. Sailors, red soldiers, and the
vast class of profiteering speculators to which the bolshevist
régime has given birth provide the custom for these girls’
earnings.

He cites also the discouraging fact that according to
the official figures from some of the hospitals children
furnish by far the greater number of cases of social dis-
eases. And he comes to the conclusion, as do all those who
have studied the question, that if the coming generation’
is not speedily delivered from the “pale of all-vitiating
bolshevist influence” we well may despair of the Russia of
the future.

We have further testimony to the same effect, this
time from a very friendly source, from H. G. Wells,
inveterate friend of and chief apologizer for the criminal
soviet conspiracy that masquerades as the Russian govern-
ment. In his book “Russia in the Shadows,” which we
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY iii
are informed by its publishers is “the first authoritative

account of Russia as it is to-day,” we find this admission
(pp. 122-124):

They (the schools) are open to all, and there is an attempt to
make education compulsory. Of course, Russia has its peculiar
difficulties. Many of the schools are understaffed, and it is
difficult to secure the attendance of unwilling pupils. Numbers
of children prefer to keep out of the schools and trade upon the
streets. A large part of the illicit trading is done by bands of
children. They are harder to catch than adults, and the spirit
of Russian communism is against punishing them. And the Rus-
sian child is, for a northern child, remarkably precocious.

The common practice of coeducating youngsters up to 15 or 16
in a country as demoralized as Russia is now has brought pe-
culiar evils in its train. My attention was called to this by the
visit of Bokaiev, the former head of the Petersburg extraordi-
nary commission, and his colleague Zalutsky to Gorky to consult
him in the matter. They discussed their business in front of
me quite frankly, and the whole conversation was translated
to me as it went on. The bolshevik authorities have collected
and published very startling, very shocking figures of the moral
condition of young people in Petersburg, which I have seen.
* * * Nor can I speculate how far these phenomena in Russia
are the mechanical consequence of privation and overcrowding
in a home atmosphere bordering on despair. But there can be
no doubt that in the Russian towns, concurrently with increased
educational effort and an enhanced intellectual stimulation of the
young [we have more reliable information than can be fur-
nished by the veracious and not too logical Wells of the type
of such “intellectual stimulation,” as before set forth] there is
also an increased lawlessness on their part, especially in sexual
matters, and that this is going on in a phase of unexampled
sobriety and harsh puritanical decorum so far as adult life is
concerned. This hectic moral fever of the young is the dark
side of the educational spectacle. I think it is to be regarded
mainly as an aspect of the general social collapse; every Euro-
pean country has noted a parallel moral relaxation of the young
under the war strain; but the revolution itself, in sweeping a
112 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

number of the old experienced teachers out of the schools and
in making every moral standard a subject of debate, has no
doubt contributed also to an as yet incalculable amount in the
excessive disorder of these matters in present-day Russia.

This from the chief apologist for red Russia in English-
speaking countries is information indeed. It will be re-
membered that Mr. Wells is one of the few who were
permitted to visit Russia while under bolshevik control,
and because of his services as a propagandist for the red
terror met with every consideration at the hands of
Russia’s masters.

We have what may be regarded as official confirma-
tion of all that has been said by Prof. Sokoloff, Sir Paul
Dukes, H. G. Wells, and the others from whose utter-
ances we have quoted, from none other than A. Lun-
acharsky, bolshevist minister or commissar of education,
into whose tender hands had been entrusted the young of
soviet Russia. Lunacharsky, it may be said, is pretty
close to the soviet throne of administration, and has been
from the time the Teuton agents Lenin and Trotsky had
been let loose upon defenseless Russia by their German
masters to conduct at will their ruinous experiments in
applied socialism, so because of that and of his official
position he, of all men, can speak with authority.

In an article under his signature published in the official
Tzvestia of February 24, 1921, we find the following:

The children of the republic are in need of powerful and
extraordinary protection. Any revolutionist understands that
the revolution is made for the children. Imagine for one instant
a revolution without the perspective of a future, without the
perspective of history, and it loses at once its meaning.

So far so good. In what he says in the paragraph
quoted Lunacharsky lines up with those who take a sane
view of things. But did they, the children, get even a
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 113

reasonable amount of protection? He answers that in
this wise:

The appalling poverty and chaos, inevitable companions of all
revolutions, and the crisis from which the revolution will emerge
victorious and ultimately lead the country to prosperity, could
not help affecting the needs of these delicate human sprouts.

But in addition to this—partly legitimately and partly through
the carelessness which is natural in harsh, tempestuous war times
—we had to snatch away from the children their legitimate share
of comforts in food, clothing, means of instruction, and housing
accommodations.

We are not so familiar with the situation among the children
living with their parents, but we do know the condition of the
children cared for by the state, children whose fate depends
solely upon the organs of the soviet power, the inmates of our
children’s homes of all types.

Their condition is unspeakably bad. These children are
crowded into unsuitable buildings, sleeping four on one bed, shiv-
ering in the cold, without a change of underwear, eaten by
vermin, starved, and deprived of the opportunity to learn.

To be sure, this appalling picture does not extend in an un-
broken, black pall over the whole republic. In the course of my
trip through the provinces—and I have already been in 18 of them
—I came also across some brighter pictures, at times some well-
managed children’s homes, oasislike, rendering their surroundings
only the darker by contrast, serving to show what we might
have accomplished under tolerably favorable conditions. Never-
theless the somber colors predominate.

He neglected to state, as he might if he were inclined
to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth,” that the oases in the children’s purgatory or hell
were not in any sense soviet institutions, but were, as we
have shown, the few private institutions that were per-
mitted for some reason to exist. He continues:

The people’s commissariat of education therefore decided to

create a special children’s defense council. I was unspeakably
glad to learn that F. Dzerzhinsky, with his indomitable energy
114 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

and heart of gold, has agreed to assume the general manage-
ment of such an organization. And now the all-Russian central
executive committee has created a fully empowered commission
headed by this authoritative administrator for aiding the people’s
commissariats of education and public health in their struggle in
behalf of the children.

And who do you think is this man of “indomitable
energy and heart of gold”? None other than the head
of the notorious and ruthless extraordinary commission of
the soviet state, the chief executioner of those parts of
Russia where bolshevistic socialism held sway. And even
our genial friend, Lunacharsky, has his doubts of the new
head and those associated with him, for we read further:

We must only come to a precise agreement as to the direction
to be given to the work of this commission. A very prominent
part will be played there by the all-Russian extraordinary com-
mission, whose chief administrator is also the chief administra-
tor of our commission, while his substitute is a prominent
member of the extraordinary commission. The organs of the
latter, with their military precision in action, with their more
perfect liaison organization as compared with any other, will un-
doubtedly become the most active apparatus of our commission.
This is lovely. Even from a standpoint of revolutionary ethics
we can not help welcoming it.

And, really, the work of the all-Russian extraordinary com-
mission is grim, punitive work, and all of us are glad to think
that now the sentinels of the revolution, having half finished
their task and finding time to spare, are going to bestow their
care on the children; that they are becoming imbued with the
desire, first of all, to guard the children, those same children
who only by their existence make worth while the revolution they
have been defending.

However, the extraordinary commission has its peculiar habits
of working; it is an investigating and punitive organization. And
in some of the orders issued in connection with the creation of
our commission a tone like the following has crept in, too often
the teacher, pedagogue, and worker of the department of public
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 115

education is out of his proper element, being either a recent or
present sabateur (obstructionist) ; these must be watched, guilty
ones must be punished, and persons who have been charged with
the care of children and have obviously failed to do their
duty must be shaken up.

To allay the fears that can not help coming to the
teachers when they hear that the blood-soaked extraordi-
nary commission is to have supervisionary powers over
both them and the children committed to their care, he
continues :

I, however, would say to the teacher: “Teacher, the all-Russian
central executive committee is coming to your aid.”

The condition of the teachers and pedagogues in schools and
children’s homes is horrible. Practically all of them are starving,
destitute of clothing, and left without their salaries for months.
Notwithstanding the decision adopted by the all-Russian central
executive committee, we have been trying these two months in
vain to make it understand that children and the people who
cater to their needs constitute the most important element of a
state, which it is inadmissible to restrict and pare down for the
benefit of other requirements.

When I contemplate the nightmare that is the fate of our
teachers, when I remember those heart-rending letters, facts, and
meetings, I really have to ask myself, How is it possible that in
spite of all this an army of nearly a million teachers remains
loyal to the flag of the commissariat of education?

What have we given to the teacher? We have ruined him
completely, and he is now living under incomparably worse con-
ditions than those under which the elementary school teacher
used to live prior to the revolution, terrible enough though
they were.

Having considered all this, I must say most emphatically and
positively that what we need is not at all sume new Egyptian
plague upon the teacher’s head, to put him under extraordinary
control, to drag him to the lock-up for mistakes or even delin-
quencies to which he is often driven by his. terrible condition
alone, but that we should offer him material assistance.

The organs of the all-Russian extraordinary commission are
116 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

absolutely inexperienced in pedagogical matters, and this * * *
can only lead to most undesirable consequences.

The first impression which some pedagogues gained from our
commission was apparently unfavorable. The fear was expressed
that the commission was liable to interpret its duties chiefly as
an investigating and punitive part.

How very like the bungling, criminal soviet state.
Having ruined the rising generation by methods they
alone are responsible for putting into play, they seek to
repair what they themselves are compelled to admit are
destructive blunders by the appointment as a wrecking
crew of an organization that least has the respect and con-
fidence of those who were compelled to reside after the
revolution in the soviet inferno—the extraordinary com-
mission.

All in all their methods deserve full condemnation, and
impartial history will not hesitate to place the blame for
all the harm done to the generation that is and is to be.
The squirmings and twistings of the “consummate com-
edian” Lunacharsky and the others in control of the
children of soviet Russia will not avail to hide the hideous
facts nor to prevent the blame from being fixed on those
responsible, either directly or indirectly.

From what we before have presented in this chapter it
will be seen that the blighting influence of soviet socialism
has extended well into the domain of what should have
been innocent, care-free, and happy childhood, effectively
polluting and drying up the stream that is to supply the
men and women of Russia of to-morrow. We have seen
what socialism unrestrained and uncontrolled is capable
of doing to the matured of a nation so criminally foolish
as to adopt such atavistic political, economic, and social
system. We now see that those of tender years especially
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 117

are sensitive to the destructive virus of socialism, and
confronted with this fact those who have the well-being
of society at heart, who labor for the continued advance-
ment of man toward our most cherished ideals, who wish
to see those who are to succeed the men and women of
to-day of a higher and better grade, ought because of
what socialism has shown itself to be to gird themselves
anew for continued and most determined warfare on what,
without a possible exception, is the most destructive phil-
osophy preached by thinking men.
SOCIALIST SUCCESS MEANS THE DESTRUC-
TION OF CIVILIZATION

Ir never seems to have occurred to some of those
advanced individuals who so glibly prate of radical re-
form in the marriage relation as now constituted that
their so-called “progressive” ideas, if spread broadcast
among the young and immature, or among those naturally
inclined to immortality, may have deplorable results.

Monogamic marriage, with divorce granted only for
good and sufficient reasons and not because one or both of
the parties directly concerned tire of the union and desire
a change, is the sheet anchor of our civilization, and any-
one who seeks to injure or destroy such time-honored and
respected institution must be regarded and treated as a
foe to civilization.

The marital plan now in effect is not in any sense a
perfect one, and no one with but a slight knowledge of
the subject so will designate it. But it is the very best
that so far we have been able to secure, for both the indi-
vidual and for society, and the best plan immediately in
prospect.

But some there are aside from unthinking socialists,
not especially strong in numbers, who view this important
matter from an entirely different angle. These claim that
marriage is but a personal matter; that society is not
concerned, or should not be, and should keep its hands off
until called in by the parties directly interested. They

also have decreed that what we now have in the marriage
118
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 119

relation is hopelesssly out of date and wholly bad; that
an entire change is necessary, for the salvation both of
the individual and of society.

They claim that marriage as it is at present is but a
part, and a strong part, of the plan for keeping women
in subjection to the stronger sex, and have come out
openly against such institution because of such claimed
fact.

In the “Declaration of Sentiments” adopted by the
first woman’s rights convention, held at Seneca, N. Y., in
1848—the year of widespread agitation and revolution—
the very first count in the 18 indictments against man
was:

The history of mankind is the history of repeated injuries and
usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct
object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.

The force of this particular indictment, and of others
as well, somewhat is softened by the declaration of Eliza-
beth Cady Stanton, the moving spirit of the convention,
when she naively stated:

We know that women must have many more wrongs than
men, but the difficulty was to state them properly, especially as
we ourselves were all very well circumstanced.

The liberals among the women, it is seen from the fore-
going, are in some respects similar to the dyed-in-the-wool
socialists, they must lash themselves into a perfect rage
over wrongs or pretended wrongs before setting out on
their sacred mission to secure full liberty for their down-
trodden sisters, for emancipation from the unjust burdens
women uncomplainingly have borne through the centuries.

And the appeals for relief from the burdens that dis-
turb their day and night dreams, it is intimated, have
struck a responsive chord in the breasts of the more im-
120 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

pressionable and ebullient ones of society, who have taken
up the appeal of their enslaved sisters and have made it
their very own.

What further liberties, we may ask, are demanded by
and for women? What burdens are there that so oppres-
sively bear down on the female sex? To answer the last
question first, for the burdens, if any there be, God or
nature alone is responsible, and not man, as has been
claimed. Those especially referred to by those who claim
to speak for women from which women ask to be re-
lieved—or some of them—are the bearing and rearing of
children, the duties that pertain to the wife and mother,
and those other women cheerfully should assume if society
is to live.

These natural burdens against which some few mem-
bers of the female sex are up in arms against were not
put on women, as some few would have us believe, because
of the desire of man to dominate the race, and necessarily
to keep his sisters in a subordinate position. The laws
against which the feminist rebels have had a very slow
growth and have come to us as a result of bitter experi-
ence. And they must prevail in the numberless centuries
yet to come because it is necessary for the good and wel-
fare of man that they shall prevail.

The siren’s song that is heard in the land, like that
supposed to have been sung on the waterways in the fabled
age of yesterday, that lured the susceptible mariner and
his craft to destruction, if heeded by the women to whom
addressed will have the result of luring them from sacred
home duties to destruction and chaos.

“Liberty” is a term to conjure with, and has been
juggled with ad nauseam by those reckless ones who be-
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 121

lieve they have a message to struggling men and women.
Ibsen, Hauptmann, Mary Wollstoncraft, Ellen Key,
George Bernard Shaw, Mrs. Beatrice Forbes Robertson
Hale, Mrs. Elsie Clews Parsons, and others of the new
and erotic school of literature, each have made their sepa-
rate plea for liberty, and their influence has not been as
negligible as some fatuous ones may believe.

_ We have space only for two short quotations from the
pen of two of the leading radicals in the conjugal field, the
irrepressible George Bernard Shaw, who seemingly never
is as happy as when emitting that which startles and
stuns society, and the acknowledged high priestess of
marital radicalism, Ellen Key. This will give one an
idea of the kind of stuff ladled out to and swallowed whole
by an element of society that considers itself superintelli-
gent.

According to the former, the present marital scheme is
all wrong. Read and ponder on this choice bit of gratuit-
ous advice by one of our modern self-appointed mentors
(preface to “Getting Married,” pp. 173-174) :

Monogamy has a sentimental basis which is quite distinct from
the political one of equal numbers of the sexes. Equal numbers
in the sexes are quite compatible with a change of partners every
day or every hour. Physically there is nothing to distinguish
human society from the farmyard except that children are more
troublesome and costly than chickens and calves and that men
and women are not so completely enslaved as farm stock. Ac-
cordingly, the people whose conception of marriage is a farm-
yard or slave-quarter conception are always more or less in a
panic lest the slightest relaxation of the marriage laws should
utterly demoralize society, whilst those to whom marriage is a
matter of more highly evolved sentiments and needs (sometimes
said to be distinctly human, though birds and animals in a
state of freedom evince them quite as touchingly as we) are
much more liberal, knowing as they do that monogamy will
122 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

take care of itself provided the parties are free enough, and
that promiscuity is a product of slavery and not of liberty.

And with characteristic Shavian abandon Shaw defi-
nitely disposes of the principal of the now accepted causes
for divorce (Id., pp. 178-179) :

Adultery, far from being the first and only ground for divorce,
might reasonably be made the last or wholly excluded. * * *
The fact for us to seize is that in the eye of the law adultery
without consequences is merely a sentimental grievance, whereas
the planting on one man of another’s offspring is a substantial
one.

The last may be obviated by following the up-to-the-
minute plan of the new school and have the state take care
of all the offspring (if the state clinics for the prevention
of conception fail properly to function), the illegitimate
and the legitimate—pardon, it is decreed in the new order
that there shall be no illegitimacy.

In her plea for “free divorce” Ellen Key sets forth her
very temperate views of marriage as it is at present (“Love
and Marriage,” p. 20):

Whatever abuses free divorce may involve, they can not often
be worse than those which marriage has produced and still pro-
duces—marriage, which is degraded to the coarsest sexual habits,
the most shameless traffic, the most agonizing soul murders, the
most inhuman cruelties, and the grossest infringements of liberty
that any department of modern life can show.

This statement is so extreme, so very intemperate, so
utterly untrue, as to carry its own refutation. It merely
is presented to show the intellectual and moral fiber of
those who regard themselves as sex progressives, would-
be uplifters, and thus to reduce whatever output in the
shape of remedy they may be responsible for to its proper
value. Commenting on the above quotation, one of Miss
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 123

Key’s critics, Horace J. Bridges (“Criticisms of Life”),
very logically says (p. 180) :

Whereupon one can only express a mild wonder that the re-
volted conscience of mankind has not long since risen and anni-
hilated the abominable thing. But, again, we must keep our
balance—we must remember the 11 couples out of 12 who are
free to dissolve their bonds as the one couple in 12 that does so.
How comes it that no glimmer of the ineffable spiritual refine-
ment of Mr. Shaw and Miss Key has broken through the darkness
of their souls? The truth is that this modern attack on marriage,
in its one-sideness and its failure either to remember the
exceptionalness of the exceptional or to grasp the good points
of what it attacks, is almost grotesque.

It not only is grotesque; it evidently, to be charitable,
has its origin in hysteria, in a deranged nervous system,
from which so many of these reformers suffer, and pref-
erably should be viewed in that light.

Our distinguished feminist friends, who write so glibly
on reform in the moral field and marriage relation, uncon-
sciously, evidently, but take a leaf out of the erotic socialist
literature. After all, their output resolves itself to the
formula of Marx and Engels of a “more lenient public
opinion regarding virgin honor and female shame,” with
“free unions” instead of the present hallowed monogamic
relation, and a dash of Margaret Sanger’s birth-control
logic to make the nauseous dose more palatable to those
who might be unable to swallow the mixture straight.

Many other pronouncements of like import to that
quoted, from socialists and from those who are feminists
first and socialists next, if at all, might be quoted if space
permitted, but it hardly is necessary in order to convince
anyone aware of what is going on that a determined
attack is being made by some few misguided ones on the
marriage relation.
124 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

Some of the eminent sex propagandists we have men-
tioned, notably George Bernard Shaw, are socialists of
a kind and to some extent in accord with the economic
program of present-day socialism; some few others con-
sider the sex problem the one of paramount importance.
Socialists have a decided advantage in their onslaught on
the home and the family over the feminists, in that they
supplement theory with organized effort, while the others
patiently wait for an entire change of opinion on the part
of the public in the matter, when those who feel thus dis-
posed safely may put their interesting sex theories into
practice.

So that in the event that socialists succeed in establish-
ing their co-operative commonwealth, with its accompany-
ing onslaught on the tenderest and holiest of human rela-
tionships, they will find some progressive ones in the
camp of the enemy—that was the case in Russia and in
Hungary—who may be willing, nay eager, to help them
destroy the family, regarded by socialists as one of the
main pillars of capitalism.

These supposed new and advanced theories on mar-
riage, it may be asserted, are neither new nor advanced.
They have been put forth by Plato, among others, twenty
centuries and more ago, and by numerous sages and
philosophers and reformers before his time and _ since.
In the present age they remain but theories, except in
isolated cases, as with Gorky with Mme. Andreyeff, Prof.
Herron and Carrie Rand, Dr. Aveling and Eleanor Marx,
and certain other cases that occasionally project them-
selves into the public print for the entertainment of the
salacious minded. But in other days and in other lands
loose unions were the vogue, had more than a fair trial,
and were accounted entire failures. We would be justified
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 125

in saying they had more than failed, for the states that
sanctified such free unions tottered and irretrievably fell.

History is replete with many of such failures due in
the main to such cause, and we would be untrue both to
ourselves and to those who are to come after us if we fail
to heed the lessons writ so plain on history’s page.

I know that one projected into the limelight by reason
of his millions made in “flivvers,” who was not at all
averse to being referred to as an “ignorant idealist,” in
a public utterance not so long ago characterized history
as “mere bunk”; that is to say, employing more refined
language, that the experience of other people in the long
ago can be of no especial concern to those of this day and
age.

From this sage declaration we would most respectfully
dissent. History is of some little importance to us. The
struggles of other peoples in the dim and distant past is, or
should be, of decided interest to forward-looking individ-
uals of to-day, and may possibly help us in arriving at
a satisfactory solution of many of the baffling problems
that to-day confront us.

If the truth were but known, those of even 5,000 years
ago were not so very different from the individuals who
have their being in the present century. They in a measure
were similarly constituted and had like elements of
strength and weakness; their ideals and ambitions were
not so very dissimilar; they were governed by the same
natural laws, were as susceptible to adverse conditions and
reacted to favorable influences—all in all, they were just
like the humans of this day and age.

In some few instances they underwent similar experi-
ences and were confronted by the same problems—
economic, political, religious, and social—some immature
126 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

and uninformed ones consider peculiar to us and our
times.

They, too, had their marital troubles. They also had
their reformers, those whose mission, it seems, was to
go into the highways and byways with their queer mes-
sages of liberty to the bound and shackled victims of the
marriage customs of their time. And, be it remembered,
their remedies when tried had the same effect like remedies
would have had to-day if tried by the foolish ones who
tire of convention and who ever seek the new and the
unconventional.

In other words, they not only failed to cure the social
disease to which their remedies were applied, but had the
effect, like some modern medical remedies, of spreading
the very disease they aimed at eradicating.

The peoples of Rome, Greece, Egypt, and of other of
the ancient countries also fretted and chafed under the
restraints upon their passions imposed by laws of church
and state, and demanded and in some measure secured
material modification of what to them were onerous laws.
With what result? At terrible cost to themselves as in-
dividuals and to the state of which they were a part.

Those countries, it can not be denied, went down to
irretrievable degradation and ruin because of alleged re-
forms instituted in the marriage relation by the alleged
liberals of their period. Men and women were emanci-
pated from conjugal ties, were in a measure freed from
shackling bonds wisely ordained during the flood time of
their nations’ careers, and physical and moral enervation
and degeneration resulted. All historians worth quoting
agree that sex underwent a radical change, and not at all
for the better. Men became more effeminate and women
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 127

more masculine—that is, to the extent of acquiring the
vices and not the virtues of the other sex.

Briefly to mention Rome, Gibbons, Lecky, Seely, and
other of the reliable historians to whose genius we owe
what knowledge we have of imperial Rome, all point to
the fact that the outstanding cause of the decay of the
greatest of the ancient states was a moral and not a
physical one; that yielding to the blandishments of the
sex reformers of such period started the state on its de-
cline and fall.

Lecky (“History of European Morals’) tells us that
the women of Rome, having acquired the independence
and dignity for which some few alleged progressive ones
in this country are fighting, marriage became so “intoler-
ably disagreeable” that men shunned it as they would the
plague. And it is to this he attributes, more than any
other single cause, the undermining and eventual disap-
pearance of the greatest of the ancient states. He said
(p. 128, ed. Watts & Co.):

There had arisen, too, partly through vicious causes, and
partly, I suppose, through the unfavorable influence which the
attraction of the public institutions exercised on domestic life,
a great and general indisposition toward marriage, which Augus-
tus attempted in vain to arrest by his laws against celibacy and
by conferring many privileges on the fathers of three children.
A singularly curious speech is preserved, which is said to have
been delivered on this subject shortly before the close of the
republic by Metellus Numidicus, in order, he said, to overcome
this indisposition. “If, Romans,” he said, “we could live without
wives, we should all keep from that source of trouble; but since
nature has ordained that men can neither live sufficiently agree-
able with wives nor at all without them, let us consider the
perpetual endurance of our race than our own brief enjoyment.”

In the midst of this torrent of corruption a great change was
passing over the legal position of Roman women. They had at
128 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

first been in a condition of absolute subjection of subordination
to their relations. They arrived during the empire at a point of
freedom and dignity, which they subsequently lost and have never
altogether regained,

These conditions, we are informed by the same author-
ity (Jd., pp. 129-130) produced as its inevitable results
a veritable avalanche of corruption and moral depravity :

‘There can be no question that the moral tone of the sex was
extremely low—lower, probably, than in France under the re-
gency or in England under the restoration—and it is also cer-
tain that the frightful excesses of unnatural passion, to which
the most corrupt of modern courts present no parallel, were
perpetuated, with but little concealment, on the Palatine.

And he, as do all the others, points out that woman
was the chief loser by the altered conditions. ‘Women,
with all her short-lived independence, dignity, and glory,
soon sank beneath the ruins of the empire. She tasted the
forbidden fruit, and it proved fatal to the glory for which
God had intended her.”

So with all the other ancient states that were, that also
vanished from the ken of men primarily because of insti-
tuted “reforms” in the relations between the sexes, these
inevitably bringing with them lechery and debauchery to
the freed nationals and as a result the decay of the state.

We have like testimony regarding modern states, some
of whom, if they but knew it, face the same perils that
undermined and destroyed the states of other days.

And it is this destructive marital plan, that was respon-
sible for the destruction of Rome and other of the ancient
states and of the degradation of present-day bolshevist
Russia, that our socialist and feminist friends would have
us pattern after.

As to such alleged progressive plan, our very genial
friend Bebel assures us “socialism will create nothing
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 129

new ; it will merely reinstate on a higher level of civiliza-
tion and under a different social form what generally pre-
vailed before private property dominated society.” The
socialist improvement on the Roman order, according to
this very reliable socialist authority, consists of a “private
agreement, without the aid of a functionary”; the dissoln-
tion of this convenient union when disappointment, in-
compatibility, or revulsion sets in, the two parties to the
agreement then being free to enter into other “private
agreements”; the free gratification of the sexual impulse,
without asking the permission of anyone but the other
party ; state care of the offspring of these transient unions,
if state-endowed miscegenation slips a cog; and “more
lenient opinion regarding virgin honor and female shame.”

Judged by what had gone before in other civilizations
that had adopted a like moral standard, a civilization
builded on such bestial plan would soon perish from the
earth because of its own vileness.

We have before us the example of imperial Rome, to
mention but one great nation that went down to utter
ruin because of a lax moral policy, and it will be our
fault, and ours alone, if with eyes wide open we adopt
a like plan.

It might be well to remind those short-sighted indi-
viduals who so glibly prate of more freedom for women
in the matter of love that what they term love is respon-
sible more than anything else for those very evils they con-
tinually inveigh against.

Such overenthusiastic individuals possibly are ignorant
of the fact that our foundling asylums are filled with the
living fruits of “sex love” and “sexual impulse,” synonyms
for love in the minds of our sexually progressive friends.
It might also be well to mention that the many mulattoes
130 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

and other mongrels one can not help but meet, who bear
on their faces for all the world to see the badge of their
illegitimacy, ever advertise to the world the unholy, the
carnal love that brought them into existence.

Dive and brothel, it may be said, contain the pitiable
victims of their own weakness in yielding without thought
of the inevitable consequences to the embraces of the
“beloved man,” while along the highways and byways of
our cities and towns brazenly stroll those moral perverts,
men and women, who have brought themselves under the:
condemnation of the fellows because of their unwilling-
ness or inability to stifle or control the carnal “love” that
was in them and that ever cried for expression.

Those foolish women who ever hearken to the siren
voices of the preachers of sex liberty, who would that
men and women should have the widest range of sexual
liberty, would do well to heed the fact that the laws of
society they ever decry are made to protect women more
than men—yes; even from themselves and the conse-
quences of yielding to their unholy desires.

Sexual promiscuity, the goal such sex progressives ever
strive to reach, invariably visits its punishment on the
women and leaves the men practically unscathed. Man
loves, then rides away, leaving the woman to find solace
for misplaced love as best she can.

The women who expect to gain a pronounced advantage
from the order promised by socialists and feminists may
awake to find, just as their sisters of Rome and the other
states did centuries ago, that they had exchanged a favor-
able for a decidedly unfavorable condition.

At present women are protected by the strong arm of
the law from injustice at the hands of the other sex, from
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 131

predatory men, from those who are utterly selfish, and
pay little heed to the wreckage they may leave behind.
With equality woman sacrifices needed protection and
is forced to accommodate herself to the new and, if she
but knew it, decidedly unfavorable order.

Women are radically different from men, not only in
external appearance but temperamentally and psychically.
Women’s mind runs in a different channel, her impulses
are different, her affections take an entirely different turn
from men. One of our philosophers asserted that “man
has sex; woman is sex.” We see the truth of this asser-
tion on every side, else we hopelessly are blind.

Man generally is inconstant, woman usually constant.
Man’s affections undergo too-frequent changes; woman,
once her affections are centered on a male, generally re-
mains steadfast.

Max Nordau, following the assertion that marriage was
instituted primarily for the woman and child, that it is a
“protective social institution for the benefit of the weaker
part,” states:

Man has not yet conquered and humanized his polygamous
animal instincts to the same extent as woman. It would, for the
most part, be quite agreeable to him to exchange the woman
he possesses for a new one.

Men may dissent, but it can not be said that Mr. Nor-
dau is wholly wrong in his statement. He may have over-
stated somewhat, but taking away all possible exaggera-
tions a residum of truth remains.

Tt has well and truly been said, by Byron: “Man’s love
is of man a thing apart; ’tis woman’s whole existence.”
Because of this fact, because of the difference of the
sexes, recognized by all but those blinded by false sex
teachings, for anyone to as much as attempt to disturb
132 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

those wise safeguards erected by society for those who
most need protection is certain to invite disaster.

Rather should all with the best interests of society at
heart stand by our present moral code, strengthen it in
all ways, if we can, and not throw the whole code over-
board as outworn and useless to gratify the whims and
caprices of those blatant individuals who so very modestly
consider themselves the pilots ordained by God Almighty
to lead us into the paths we should follow.

The many enrolled in the socialist movement—the
women especially—who may consider themselves unduly
restricted by the strict marriage regulations enforced by
present-day society, would do well to consider the case of
Eleanor Marx, before fully set forth, before they embark
on the same course.

Turn from the very convenient “private agreement”
socialists and the other would-be emancipated ones believe
eventually will supplant the present monogamic marriage
state to the more ideal form sung of by our poets, that
which the better element of society seeks to attain. Rather
than the loose union Eleanor Marx and Dr. Aveling en-
tered into, some few still are to be found in this too-
prosaic age who believe in that form of marriage tie for
their sons and daughters, disapproved of by Bebel, Engels,
and the other saints of socialism, and that to endure for
life, if that is at all possible; some few sufficiently old-
fashioned to appreciate to the full and to hope for its re-
alization the sentiments contained in those oft-quoted lines
from Moore’s “Lalla Rookh”:

There’s a bliss beyond all that the minstrel has told,
When two that are link’d in one heavenly tie,

With heart never changing and brow never cold,
Love on through all ills, and love on till they die.
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 133

The family—the monogamous family—as at present
constituted, generally is recognized as the keystone of the
social arch. Therefore any weakening of the marriage
tie must have an injurious effect on the whole social
structure. That being admitted, it becomes our imperative
duty to banish from our councils those reckless ones who
spread afar their destructive philosophy calling for revolu-
tion in social and moral conditions.

There can be no question in the minds of all reasonable
human beings that it is most risky at this late day to
experiment with the so-called “progressive” plans for
marriage and morals. Such plans had been put to a more
than fair test in the centuries that had gone before and
absolutely had failed, and their failure proved most de-
structive to the then social structure. Rather should we
adopt rational policies, those experience has proved tend
to conserve and strengthen the family, and thus make so-
ciety at large stronger and better in all possible respects.

The proposition of the modern socialist philosopher and
prophet, Morris Hillquit, that “a union based on love can
only endure so long as love continues,” seems a reasonable
one to other than shallow-pated individuals until they begin
to figure just where society would land if such became the
general practice. If we throw aside the safeguards that
to-day surround the marriage relation, we will find only
too soon that love under such conditions will be a very
evanescent thing, ready to take flight after the first “tiff.”
As for there being any gain for morals under such condi-
tion of affairs, we would too soon find that morality prac-
tically would disappear. Prof. Flint, Dr. Schaffle, and
the other eminent ones who have dealt with this phase
of socialism have taken this position, and their arguments
never have successfully been answered.
134 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

In his very valuable “Socialism” Prof. Flint unre-
servedly condemns the loose union socialists contend for
and comes to the wise conclusion that marriage should.
have some degree of stability. He says (p. 287):

To replace marriage by mere association between man and
woman, terminable at the will of either, would not, as Morris
and Bax imagine, be a “great gain in morality and sentiment,”
but an incalculable and irreparable loss. As long as the moral
sense was so deadened and the better feelings of human nature
so perverted as to tolerate the change, sexual promiscuity and
hetairism would prevail. So-called free love is untrue and de-
grading love, love from which all the pure, permanent, and ele-
vating elements are absent, love reduced to animal passions and
‘imaginative illusions, the love which is powerful to destroy
families but powerless to sustain and organize them.

The following sage remarks from Dr. Schaffle’s “Im-
possibility of Social Democracy” are said by Dr. Flint to

“supplement the preceding remarks as to the family” (pp.
147-151):

It is true, we are told, that things would remain for the most
part as they are and marriage unions would still for the most
part remain constant; free love would only be called into play for
the loosening of unhappy marriages. Then why not let the stable
marriage be the rule, with separation allowed in cases where the
marriage union has become morally and physically impossible?
Why not have at least the existing marriage law, as among
Protestants? But the whole statement, even if made in good
faith, will not stand examination.

What, then, is an “unhappy” or relatively “happy” marriage?
No one is perfect, and, therefore, not a single marriage can ever
hope to be entirely “happy.” First love must always yield to
sober reality, after the cunning of nature has secured its end for
the preservation of the species. In the indissoluble life union of
marriage, with the daily and hourly contact between the inevitable
imperfections of both parties, there necessarily arise frictions and
discords, which if severance is free will only too easily give rise
to the most ill-considered separations from the effect of momen-
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 135

tary passions, all the more readily if the one party had begun to
grow tedious to the other or pleasant to a third party. The very
essential of the stable marriage tie is just this, that it secures the
peaceable adjustment of numberless unavoidable disagreements ;
that it prevents the many sparrings and jarrings of private life
from reaching the public eye; that it allows of openness on both
sides and avoids the possibility of pretense; that jt induces self-
denial for the sake of others; that it insures a greater propor-
tion of mutuality in both spiritual and physical cares for the gen-
eral run of wedded couples—in short, that for the majority of
cases a relative possibility of wedded happiness is obtainable.
Therefore the indissoluble marriage tie must remain the rule and
separation the exception, confined to cases where its persistence
becomes a moral impossibility. But it is clear that if once the
emancipation of woman is made general for her to step out of
the house into public life, and if once the bond of common love
and common care for the offspring were loosened, or even weak-
ened, frequent marriage changes would easily become the rule
and permanent unions only the exceptions. The training in self-
conquest, in gentleness, in consideration for others, in fairness,
and in patience which the present family and wedded relations en-
tail would also be lost in entrance of all into public life outside
the home. The gain to separate individuals in point of sensual
gratification through fugitive unions would be very far from out-
weighing the loss of the ideal good obtainable by man, and by
man only, through the channels of marriage. * * * Existing mar-
riage rights and married life are susceptible of further improve-
ment, but this is not to say that the problem of their personal,
moral, and social amelioration will be solved by facilitating for
everyone the breaking of the marriage tie; we may rather look to
solving it by restoring, perfecting, and generalizing the external
and moral conditions of the highest possible happiness in binding
unions. This can be done without social democracy and can not
be done with it. The new hetairism of free love reduces man toa
refined animal, society to a refined herd, a superior race to dogs
and apes, even though all should become productive laborers and
spend a few hours in manual labor.

As both Prof. Flint and Dr. Schaffle so clearly and con-
vincingly have pointed out, little gain for morality is to
136 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

be expected from putting into effect the socialist scheme
of “private agreements” and “free monogamy” in place
of the existing marriage tie.

Of course, as has been pointed out, the present mar-
riage system is not at all perfect. The mere fact that it is
regarded as an established system does not free it from
criticism and beneficent change. But any change, that
possibly may be suggested must be constructive rather
than destructive, directed toward strengthening and build-
ing up rather than weakening and tearing down.

In some few cases divorce undoubtedly would be for
the benefit of one or both parties to the union, possibly to
society as well. Therefore a way out as well as a way
into marriage will have to be provided for the exceptions
who have found in marriage nothing but disappointment
and sorrow. But we should not go to the length of en-
tirely letting down the bars, removing all obstacles,
permitting those so disposed to enter into “private agree-
ments” and “free unions,” so alluring to the sex progres-
sives, permit the dissolution of such agreements when
they become irksome to one or both of the parties con-
cerned, without calling on the machinery of the state, and
permit such procedure to continue indefinitely.

If such condition were permitted, public morals surely
would have a serious setback, to such an extent that many
years necessarily elapse before we could get back to where
we are to-day.

It might further be said that the marital plan socialists
and feminists ever are striving for, and the propaganda
toward such end at this time, is bound to have a particu-
larly detrimental effect on the morals of all, particularly
those of tender years and those who have not as well as
those who never will arrive at the age of discretion.
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 137

Our young, as is well known, are apt pupils—entirely
too apt by far—and if they see all around them these loose
unions, it can have no other effect than hopelessly to
debauch their morals. Moral teachings they may receive
in well-regulated homes will avail but little if they see
such teachings continually set at naught in neighboring
homes, publicly flouted at all times in the press and by
those they are taught to look up to as public examples.

One bad apple in a barrel of perfectly sound ones will
in time result in the loss of the entire lot. A few good
apples in a barrel of bad ones will show the same result,
but the decaying process will be much more rapid. As
with apples, so with human beings. A girl of good moral
upbringing put into dive or brothel may remain pure and
undefiled, but the chances are against such result. It also
will be admitted that a boy or girl of loose morals, if per-
mitted freely to mingle with youths of good morals, will
have a detrimental effect on the latter’s morals. Some few
of the good may be expected to fall by the wayside under
such conditions. Much is learned in the home, but we
must not lose sight of the fact that possibly more, for good
or evil, is learned in the highways and byways of life.

For that reason, if for no other, we should see to it
not only to inculcate the proper moral attitude in our
growing boys and girls through lessons taught in the
home, but we should, as far as possible, surround them in
public with those influences that tend to promote rather
than impair the moral teachings of the home, the school,
and the church.

Our vision must be widened. We must not only do
our full duty to those we love and cherish within the
circumscribed limits of the home, but we should see that
our influence reaches into the great world outside. We
138 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

must not only be insensible to the siren’s song of the
socialist and the feminist, but it is our duty, which we
must not shirk, to those who are to take our places to
expose on every occasion the false teachings of these
proved enemies of our civilization and ever hold up such
individuals and the evils for which they are responsible
to the well-deserved contempt and scorn of honest and
decent men and women.
APPENDIX
SOVIET RUSSIA’S CODE OF LAWS

THE people of this country and of the British Isles,
those who are determined to hold on to that which is good
and noble in our social structure, are indebted to the
wide-awake publishers of the Contemporary Review for
the publication in the March and April, 1920, issues of
their very valuable magazine of the text of the laws en-
acted.in the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic
relating to marriage, divorce, the family, and related
matters.*

The laws referred to are there published, practically
without embellishment in the way of editorial comment,
just as originally they were published by the People’s
Commissariat of Justice. They stand alone, stark naked,
in all their hideous suggestiveness, with but a short intro-
ductory paragraph by the editor.

Presentation is made in two parts, the first part being
a translation of an explanatory preface to the laws by

* Publication also was had as a soviet document (‘Soviet Russia
Pamphiets, No. 2, The Marriage Laws of Soviet Russia,” published by
the Russian Soviet Government Bureau, New York City). As this last
evidently was published for propaganda purposes, it was deemed ad-
visable to omit therefrom the very frank and incriminating preface of
A. G. Hoichbarg, thus invalidating the entire document.

It had logically been stated that a lie consists not only of a misstate-
ment of facts but as well any statement of a truth, especially of a half
truth, issued with intention to deceive. Thus judged, the interesting
though misleading pamphlet issued by the American branch of the
Russian soviet government is branded at its birth with the stamp of
Ananias.

139
140 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

Alexander Hoichbarg, who styles himself chief editor of
the Law Bureau, ordinary member of the Soviet Academy
of Socialist Sciences. The second part deals with the
laws proper relating to marriage and the family.

In this chapter we have made a careful selection of
the salient features of these interesting documents, reject-
ing the chaff, that portion of no particular value, mere
verbiage, literary bulk and dressing, of no particular
interest to the average individual. And we have taken
the liberty here and there of commenting on certain por-
tions that, we believe, call for such treatment.

After a short statement calling attention to the coming
first anniversary of the “proletarian revolution of Oc-
tober” and the necessity for the new state to “exert all
her strength to repel unexampled attacks of the utmost
fury from within and without,’ Mr. Hoichbarg says:

Nevertheless, while sustaining this fierce defensive struggle .
against a whole world of enemies, the Russian proletariat has
also found enough strength for the work of creative construc-
tion in the direction of the realization of socialism. During this
short period so much has been done, far more than other classes
have succeeded in doing under far more favorable conditions in
the course of years and years. One has only to glance through
the “Collection of Laws of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Govern-
ment” in order to convince oneself of this with astonishment and
joy.

The expected feeling of “‘astonishment and joy” that
is to come to the individual after wading through these
remarkable documents will be confined to very few, those
who label themselves progressives and radicals, and to none
others. The average individual will be wholly unmoved,
just as much so as when apprised of the economic, political
and social reforms instituted by the bungling bolshevik
mercenaries in what formerly was the land of the czars.
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 141

We learn first that there is to be no particular stability
to these laws; that they are, after all, but temporary
measures to cover the “transition” period from the blood-
less bolshevik revolution to such time when the socialist
paradise firmly will be established: As to that we have
this testimony from our omniscient friend :

The proletarian government constructs its codes, like all its
laws, in a logical fashion; it constructs them in such a manner
that every day of their existence diminishes the necessity for
their existence as state laws; it proposes as the object of its laws
the rendering useless of laws, like the philosopher Fichte, who
set up as the aim of every government the rendering useless of
government. Thus, for instance, the constitution of the soviets,
established on the principles of the unity of political power, the
dictatorship of the proletariat, is so established that every day
of its existence, every day of its application, by breaking the re-
sistance and the organization of the former oppressing classes
and by unifying the former oppressed class, by organizing eco-
nomic life in accordance with socialist principles, lessens the need
for the unified, coercive power of the proletariat, and for politi-
cal power in general. In precisely the same way all other prole-
tarian laws and codes of law must be so constructed that every
day of their existence diminishes the period of transition from
the old order to the socialist order, and that in this way every
day of their existence vigorously eats away their existence.

The government can not, therefore, desire that their codes and
collections of codes should have the same character, should be
marked by the same rocklike fixity which distinguished ancient
collections of codes. * * *

The proletarian authorities are distinctly aware that their codes
ought not to be eternal, that they have been created only for a
transition period of short duration, which they passionately de-
sire to shorten by all possible means. But this transition period
is inevitable; it is impossible to dispense with it; one may try
to shorten it by certain measures, but it is impossible to leap
over it.

If reasonably plain words have any meaning at all, the
142 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

above-quoted paragraphs can mean nothing else but that
the ultimate aim and purpose of bolshevik socialism is
the utter abolition of all coercive agencies, especially laws
and governments. Thus it appears that in this laudable
aim they are not far removed from anarchists,.who in
some measure reasonably will indorse the further propo-
sition stated by our bolshevik friend that the principles
of socialist organization as it is worked out in Russia
will in time “transform themselves into habits acting
instinctively, unconsciously, and automatically, or else
become unnecessary, thanks to that universal plenty in
all spheres of human life which socialist society will
create.”

The promise of universal plenty hardly is for the near
future, for it is evident to all who have eyes to see the
plain situation that instead of plenty the deluded Rus-
sians have dire want and famine; instead of a perfect
industrial machine, functioning for all the people, as the
dupes of the bolshevik generously were promised, they
have demoralization, disintegration, and imminent destruc-
tion of the productive and distributive processes seized
by the socialists after the revolution that put them in
supreme power in their unhappy country.

Bureaus, we are informed, are provided for the regis- .
tration of births, marriages, and deaths, also “continuous
statistics of all the living population of the socialist state.”
Our socialist friends hope, however, to dispense with
some of these shortly, for we are informed:

Perhaps in the near future it will be possible to abolish part
of these registers; for instance, that of the registry of marriages,
of absent persons, of changes in family names, if more rational,
more intelligent methods of distinguishing people are established
in place of family names.
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 143

It will be seen from this last that our revolutionary
friends, not content with abolishing the family, so far as
lies in their power, also seek eventually to abolish family
names, and industriously are engaged in a search for
“more rational, more intelligent methods of distinguish-
ing people.”

A revolutionary change also is proposed in the matter
of guardianship. We learn that:

Guardianship in this code is wholly within the province of the
Bureau of Social Welfare. Guardianship under our old system
was a feudal institution belonging to the Middle Ages, a class
institution. Each class—the nobility, the bourgeoisie, the priests,
the peasants—had its own rules for the guardianship of wards
and its guardians proper to its class.

In the socialist state they order things better, for we
read:

So long as the individual family exists, children in the care
of their relatives are not as a general rule placed under public
guardianship (with the exception of compulsory education and
other provisions of the same kind). But, on the other hand, all
children who are deprived of the care of their family, without re-
gard to their possession or nonpossession of property, to their
wealth or poverty, are placed under guardianship, under the care
of the public state institutions, the Bureau of Social Welfare.
These institutions exercise such guardianship, and take all the
measures pertaining to guardianship, preferably without the in-
tervention of agents, and may, only in special cases, entrust their
duties to individual persons, appointing them guardians, whether
of single wards or of whole groups of wards. Consequently,
guardianship is so organized and established that it can be pre-
served, even in a definitely established socialist society, on a
broader basis; that it so say, functioning for the benefit, not of
some but of all persons who need the care of the social commu-
nity. Further, the institution of guardianship ought in the actual
period of transition to play the part of educator, model, example;
it should show the parents that the care of society lavished upon
children gives far better results than the private, individual, un-
144 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

scientific, and irrational care of particular parents, “loving” but
ignorant, lacking the resources, the means, the methods which
society has at its disposal; this institution should thus break the
parents of the habit of that narrow and unintelligent love for
their children which finds its outward expression in the tendency
to keep the children near themselves, not to let them leave the
narrow circle of the family, to make their outlook narrow, and
to bring them up not as members of the great society called hu-
manity, but as beings selfish as themselves, individualists, who
place thetr personal interests in the foreground, to the serious
injury of the interests of society. Guardianship so instituted is
revolutionary, for it breaks abruptly with the previous system,
and it is socialistic, for it prepares and facilitates the measures
which must be taken in the socialist society.

Two things militate against the present institution of
guardianship, according to our very practical and far-
seeing socialist friends, one the foolish tendency of parents
to love their children, to the lasting harm of those so
loved, and the other, that the children are left after the
death of parents to the care of relatives, who, we are
informed by the same reliable authority, “do not feel
paternal or maternal love fof their wards, though they
constantly have a direct interest, as heir, not in preserving
the life but in the speedy death of the children, or those
of unsound mind, for whom it is their duty to care.”

To be loved or not to be loved, according to our socialist
logician, has its perils for innocent childhood; with par-
ents or without, under the old and, according to him,
vanishing order the child is certain to suffer. The social-
ist state solves the problem by its Bureau of Social Wel-
fare, which is guaranteed not to spoil the child or other
dependent by ignorant, irrational love, but will give just
the requisite amount of care called for in each individual
case, so as to preserve him or her for the perfect society
they expect shortly to establish,
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 145

That portion of the socialist preface that relates to
marriage will of a certainty unpleasantly surprise those
fatuous ones within the socialist ranks or those just out-
side who ever have insisted that socialism, when estab-
lished, will not disturb the existing monogamic marital
relation. It starts with an apology, seemingly for its
moderation :

Certain other principles of this first code, for instance, those of
the marriage law, may at first sight not appear socialistic in the
sense we have just described. Especially lively criticism has
been leveled during the discussion of the code at the institution
of the registration of marriage by the civil, lay authorities (the
soviets). Registration of marriage, official marriage—what kind
of socialism is that? people cried. No registration is necessary.
Indeed, in a socialist society, to use the expression of Kautsky
(see his book, “Reproduction and Development in Nature and in
Society,” German edition, p. 255), the legal fettering of husband
and wife becomes useless.

Ye official apologist for the code, however, seeks to
allay the fears of all true socialists, who thought that
Russian bolshevik socialism had strayed far from the
beaten socialist path by its registration of marriage.

But that is the case in a firmly established socialist society.
And we live in a period of transition. And it is just here that it
becomes plain, as we have said above, that the desire to take a di-
rect leap into the future, which at first sight seems to be a radical
step, proves itself to be a marking time on the same spot or a
leap backward.

We have only to remember that we live in a period of transi-
tion; we have also to remember that the Russian proletariat be-
gan to take action when the bourgeoisie, being afraid of them,
ceased to be a revolutionary class when they were ready to ac-
cept all that survived of the feudal Middle Ages; that for this
reason the proletariat has to make a whole series of revolution-
ary changes which the bourgeoisie ought to have made; that the
proletariat has to wage a fierce war, not only against the bour-
146 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

geoisie but also, in place of it, against what remains (with us a
great deal) of the prebourgeois régime. In Russia the prole-
tariat has had to be the first to deprive the church and religion of
their importance in the state. And what socialist will dispute
that to deliver the people from the domination of the clergy, of
religion, and of the church is not only a revolutionary aim but
also a socialist aim? For it helps them to grasp the ideas of
socialism, ideas which can not be reconciled with the supernatural
and the beyond, but drive out the supernatural, the divine, and
the beyond from all the recesses where they conceal themselves—
from philosophy, from history, etc. And what is proposed in
the place of civil registration by the proletarian authorities? No
registration of the state is necessary, it is said, but the observance
of religious practices and ceremonies must be allowed when the
two contracting parties wish it. In other words, it is proposed in-
stead of maintaining the struggle against religious marriage (the
divine mystery) to leave everything as it was before, to leave in
existence only one kind of marriage—religious marriage at
church. This is how a proposal which is radical on paper proves
itself reactionary in fact.

If this deluge of words and phrases means anything
at all, the Russians under bolshevik domination had come
to such a pass in their onward progress toward the millen-
nial society where a proposal for “religious marriage at
church” is referred to as a radical proposal.

But the marriage law is not only a means of counteracting
clerical-religious influences upon the people. That law is revolu-
tionary and socialistic. It not only breaks abruptly with the old
régime of our prebourgeois matrimonial relations. It sweeps
away all the patriarchal and feudal hindrances to marriage—dif-
ferences of religion between man and woman, religious prohibi-
tion to the contraction of marriage, etc. It establishes complete
equality between man and woman, in so far as this depends upon
the provisions of the marriage law. It liberates the woman in
so far as her liberation is possible in the transition period before
the definite establishment of the socialist order, and by so doing
leads the woman better to assimilate the ideas of socialism, which
will liberate her finally. It does not make the aim of marriage to

|
a
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 147

be the birth of children. The family is based, not upon marriage,
as at was formerly, but upon actual parentage. Not only the
law of guardianship but also the law of the family is separated
from the law of marriage. It establishes complete freedom of
divorce, thus refraining from making marriage a life-long insti-
tution. In a word, every day of the existence of these marriage
laws is an assault, so far as a law can be that in general, upon
the individualistic view of marriage, “the legal fettering of hus-
band and wife.”

In the province of family law our first code rejects all fic-
tions, places in the foreground the true state of affairs, actual
parentage, accustoms people to truth telling, frees them from su-
perstition, not in words but in fact, places all children on an
equal footing as regards their rights, without distinction of birth,
and enables them easily to make use of this equality.

Kautsky says in the passage referred to above:

“So long as the exchange of goods continues the legal ties of
the man to the family will always provide better conditions for
the education of the children than an irregular sexual connection,
which may be severed at any moment at the will of either party,
which imposes upon the father no obligation, or else imposes a
minimum of obligation. This state of affairs will change only
when communal production is established and when paternal care
of the children shall be replaced by the care of the community.
Simultaneously the legal fetiering of the man and the woman will
become useless. It is true that capitalist society has been able to
make this fettering unbearable and in many cases inapplicable but
not useless.”

We live in a time when capitalist society is passing into so-
cialist society. And the code for the transition period prepares
the conditions, in so far as these depend upon law, under which
the fettering of the husband and wife will become wholly useless.
On the one hand it renders extremely easy the rupture of the tie
of affection at any moment in accordance with the wish of one of
the parties, even when it has been officially registered. But on
the other hand, equal duties, certainly not light ones, are imposed
upon the father toward the children in the case of such a connec-
tion and in the case of an irregular connection.
148 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

The complete equality of rights between all the children, with-
out distinction of parentage, is moreover a measure of social psy-
chology, preparing the way for applying the care of the commu-
nity to all children, preparing the socialist régime in this sphere,
removing the last foundation of bourgeois marriage, with its
privileges, tts narrow family interests, its isolation, and its
patriarchal limitations.

Commenting on this last paragraph, which it wrongly
attributes to Kautsky, the Current History Magazine, in
its issue of June, 1920, says:

This frank avowal of the intent to destroy the family and
the home indicates the extent and nature of the revolution which
the Moscow international is trying to force on the rest of the
world.

The rest of the official preface is taken up with the
socialist procedure toward inheritances. In view of the
fact that the socialist régime of Russia had so dealt with
industries and wealth that inheritances were of slight
value even before the formulation of a definite code of
laws, the code in this respect can have but an academic
interest for the average individual. The last days of
the parent during the bolshevik administration of affairs
were almost certainly spent in want and penury, in poverty
that well beggars description, with everything of value
that could be hidden from the thieving bolshevik officials
going for scraps of food in order that the spark of life
might be kept in the bodies of the parents and those dear
ones who managed to survive the criminal maladminis-
tration of affairs that organized socialism perpetrated on
unfortunate Russia, so practically nothing of value could
be bequeathed to dear ones.

Nothing that the bolshevik supermen have done since
the coup d'état that projected them into leadership of
Russian affairs would lead one to believe that conditions
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 149

in this respect will materially improve in the future. Dire
want and distress, a veritable plague of epidemic disease
(article in Lancet (London) of April, 1921, by Dr. Boris
Sokoloff mentions 31,789,230 cases, with from 5 to 7 per
cent of deaths), has been the customary portion of the
denizens of the bolshevik state from the very beginning.
And in 1921 and 1922, due primarily to official incom-
petence, Russia had the unenviable distinction of staging
possibly the most widespread and hopeless famine of
modern times, and this in a land formerly regarded as the
“granary of Europe.”

The situation getting entirely beyond their control, the
banditry in control of soviet affairs were compelled to
swallow their pride and to call on those same capitalist
states they ever were plotting to destroy, especially the
United States, to save the tens of millions of their na-
tionals from death from starvation. And America gen-
erously responded with food and medicines from both
government and private sources to the value of $60,000,-
000, saving both the millions from starvation and epidemic
disease and the government directly responsible for all the
horrors heaped in generous measure on Russia.

The Russian Manufacturers, Merchants, and Bankers
Association, then sheltered in Paris, representing 80 per
cent of Russia’s industrial and financial interests, issued
this appeal to the nations of the world (Bulletin, Russian
Information Bureau, August 20, 1921:

A terrible calamity has overtaken the long-suffering Russian
people. Famine has stricken Russia’s most fertile provinces.
Already death by starvation is mowing down hundreds of thou-
sands of victims. Cholera and spotted typhus, these faithful
allies of hunger, are growing to terrible proportions. The popu-
lace of the famine-stricken regions has abandoned its homes and
is fleeing, seeking bread, and strewing its path with corpses. Hor-
150 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

ror and death now reign in Russia. It is hard to imagine the
picture of the fearful sufferings of the Russian people in the ap-
proaching long, cold winter. Russia’s misfortune is the mis-
fortune of the entire world. Not alone the Russian people but
all the nations and all the governments of the world can not help
responding to the appeal for help, seeing that a whole nation is
perishing.

We, representatives of the Russian business and industrial
classes, appeal to the nations and governments of the world, to
all humanitarian organizations, and to all those in whose breasts
the feeling of humanity is alive to help save the great Russian
people from perdition.

This famine is the inevitable result of communist misrule and
the unfailing companion of the bolshevist power.

In Russia there have been destroyed to the very roots all foun-
dations of civilized life and economic activity; private property
has been abolished, individual initiative has disappeared, working
efficiency has been killed, former surpluses are exhausted, the
tools of production are scattered and destroyed, transportation
has perished, and savage lawlessness is reigning supreme. * * *

The soviet government, instead of helping to the limit,
actually hindered relief by transparent schemes to secure
political capital out of the nationwide misery they them-
selves were responsible for.

Such being the admitted conditions, it hardly is possible
that inheritances will have sufficient value to be the sub-
ject even of academic discussion.

The government parasites, on the other hand, who of
a certainty will feather their nests while they have the
opportunity, will manage, it goes without saying, to have
their wealth in convertible form, in such shape that it may
conveniently be carried here and there, out of soviet
bounds if conditions become too warm for these precious
scoundrels, so the laws of inheritance can hardly have
practical application to them.

And yet we can not wholly ignore certain significant
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 151

paragraphs, with the plainly indicated purpose that in-
heritances are wholly to be destroyed to bring about the
new social order. After fully considering the matter the
bolsheviks arrived at this conclusion:

The proletariat, having attained power, the proletarian authori-
ties, who are certainly not afraid of causing the downfall of
thrones and upsetting the bourgeois régime, develop to its logical
conclusion the tendency implied in the points indicated above and
abolish altogether the right of private inheritance, whether by law
or by will. This is just what is done in the decree of the central
executive committee of April 27, 1918, which abolishes the right
of inheritances.

The decree deals a mortal blow at the institution of private
property. It ceases to be something ethical in inception, passing
from one family to another, according to the principle of indi-
vidual right. Private property is transformed at most into a
life interest; the property remains attached to a particular per-
son at most for his lifetime and no longer. But after the death
of each individual owner it becomes the property not of the in-
dividual but of a community—of the proletarian state. B'y means
of this abolition of the right of private inheritance we suspend
a sword of Damocles over the institution of private property, giv-
img it a short duration and an importance only relative. That is
why this abolition of the right of inheritance should have an ex-
ceedingly important social and psychological educational influence
on socialist labors; it should contribute very largely to destroy
the instincts of individual ownership. That is why the proletarian
authorities, who have not yet decreed the general nationalization
of all undertakings, have decreed the abolition of the transmission
of private property by inheritance without exception.

It must be remembered that since the promulgation of the law
decreeing the abolition of inheritances, nothing has remained of
the institution of private inheritance; the institution has not sur-
vived in any form, in any manner, in any of its parts; the prop-
erty of deceased persons in totality and of all kinds becomes the
property of the Russian Socialist Federal Republic of Soviets.
Nor is there any exception to this rule established among us.

Patrimonies of small value (up to 1,000 rubles) are
152 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

exempt from the operation of the law, because the burdens
such course would entail upon the state if these were
included would hardly make it worth while.

This latter scheme, we are informed, fits into the so-
cialist plan of abolishing the family, for according to
Marx, Kautsky, and all the other socialist authorities,
private property is the keystone of the family arch, the
removal of which will cause the entire structure to fall.

Following this most interesting and significant preface
that we have been dealing with we have the code proper.
That is divided into various articles, each one dealing
with some particular phase of the new family conditions.
Some of these are of sufficient importance to be set forth
more or less fully, while those of no especial importance
are entirely disregarded.

Under the head “Formalities relating to marriage” we
have this:

52. Only civil (lay) marriage, entered on the official registers,
shall create the rights and obligations of married people, as enu-
merated in this section.

A marriage solemnized according to the religious rites and
with the assistance of ministers of any sect shall create no rights
or obligations for the contracting parties unless it shall have been
registered in due form.

53. Marriage shall be contracted in the local registry offices,
or in the notary offices attached to the local soviets.

Marriages contracted abroad by Russian nationals must
be registered with the central bureau for the registration
of marriages by the soviet representatives abroad.

57. Marriages shall be contracted on fixed days and at fixed
hours, previously determined and published by the public official

whose duty it is to supervise the solemnization of marriage.
* * * * * * *

62. The marriage shall be held to be concluded as soon as the
record of it is inscribed on the register of marriages.
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 153

63. If any person shall declare before the record of the mar-
riage is inscribed on the register that a legal impediment exists to
the conclusion of the marriage, the public official shall be re-
quired to postpone the inscription until the case shall have been
judged by the local tribunal. If objection is raised which is
clearly without proper foundation, it may be rejected by the pub-
lic officials without further formalities.

Note.—The local tribunal shall judge cases of objection raised
to marriage summarily and within three days. The judgments
of the local tribunal in such matters shall not be subject to appeal.

64. Persons found guilty of having knowingly made false state-
ments for the purpose of preventing the solemnization of a mar-
riage shall be punished for bearing false witness and sentenced
to pay damages.

The above fails to mention whether damages these
individuals are to pay are to be in real money or in the
worthless currency circulated ad libitum by the bolshevik
government in the sections under their control.

66. Those who contract a marriage shall have attained the age
proper for marriage. The age proper for marriage shall be 16
years for women and 18 years for men.

Then it is provided that the contracting parties, or
either of them, must be of sound mind—as if a sound mind
can be found in soviet Russia, especially in government
circles—must not have contracted a previous marriage,
and must not be “ascendants or descendants in a direct
line, and collaterally between brothers and sisters, whether
german or having one parent in common.” This applies
as well to the issue of illegitimate (or “natural,” as they
term them) relations between men and women.

Violation of any of the provisions of the foregoing
sections may cause the marriage to be declared invalid
by the proper reviewing authorities.

82. Marriages contracted at church and by religious forms
shall be valid if entered into before the 20th of December, 1917,
154 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

in contravention of the regulations laid down in articles 3, 5, 12,
28, 30, and 31 of the former civil laws (Code of Laws, vol. X, pt.
I, 1914 edition).

These particular articles are not specified, so we are
left in the dark as to what they really are.

That would indicate that “marriages contracted at
church” after the date mentioned are illegal and without
the sanction of the soviet officials, and those who foolishly
contract such marriages are held to be in an illegitimate
relationship.

It is also provided that “marriages contracted at
church” before the date mentioned shall be declared valid
if the contracting parties are not ascendants or descend-
ants as before provided.

As before officially set forth, regulations covering
marriage are only to cover the transition period, and
probably entirely will be dispensed with when the socialist
state firmly is established. Russian socialists are adjured
to have patience, to bear with the evils and annoyances
of registered marriage and legal forms until such happy
day arrives, which confidently is expected within the very
near future.

Concerning the dissolution of marriage, or divorce,
some interesting sections are discovered in the code.

85. Marriage is dissolved by the death of the partners to the
marriage and by the judicial declaration of death.

So the married man and woman, in the event of death
of judicial declaration of death, is freed from his or her
spouse, without applying to the legal authorities. That
certainly is a valuable concession to liberalism, for which
all ought to be thankful.

86. Marriage may be dissolved during the lifetime of the part-
ners by means of divorce.
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 185

Note.—All the provisions of the present law concerning divorce
are equally applicable to legal marriages celebrated in church and
by religious ceremony, and contracted before December 20, 1917.

Marriage at church after that fateful date, having no
legal status, evidently need not be terminated by divorce.

87. The grounds for divorce may be either the mutual consent
of the parties or the desire of one of them.

88. The demand for a dissolution of marriage may be made
either in writing or verbally, and in the latter case it shall be
reduced to writing.

The local judge, who “shall announce at least one sit-
ting a week at a fixed hour,” is to be the judge whether
the application of divorce shall be granted. If the domicile
of the parties is unknown or in case of mutual consent
of both parties, the chief of the bureau for the registration
of births, marriages, and deaths shall assume the respon-
sibility for the provisions of the above sections.

Appeals from the decision of the local judge may be
made to the supreme court.

To get the full significance of these rather tame sections
dealing with divorce they must be read with the official
statements before set forth by the chief editor of the
Russian Law Bureau, especially where he makes the
damaging admissions that their laws “establish the com-
plete freedom of divorce, thus refraining from making
marriage a lifelong institution. In a word, every day of
the existence of these marriage laws is an assault, so far
as a law can be that in general, upon the individualistic
view of marriage, ‘the’ legal fettering of husband and
wife’”’; also the statement that the laws “render ex-
tremely easy the rupture of the tie of affection at any
moment in accordance with the wish of one of the parties,
even when it has been officially tegistered.”

From this we may well conclude that the laws are far
156 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

more “liberal” than they appear or that the officials, local
and national, selected by the powers in control to enforce
the laws bring to their chosen tasks minds so exceedingly
liberal that they may be expected fully to please all but
the most captious of the free-love population of the soviet
“republic.”

But the soviet officials have not stopped with rights
and privileges. The citizen and the sojourner in bol-
shevik Russia, if he be married, also is saddled with certain
duties and obligations. Thus we learn:

too. Persons united in marriage shall bear a family name (the
conjugal family name). At the time of the solemnization of the
marriage the married persons have the right to declare what name
they will bear—the family name of the husband (the bride-
groom), or of the wife (the bride), or the joint family name.

1oI. The partners to the marriage shall retain the family name
for the whole period of the duration of the marriage and after
the dissolution of marriage by death, or the judicial declaration
of death, of one of them.

* * * * * * *

104. Change of domicile by one partner to a marriage shall not
oblige the other party to follow.

105. Marriage shall not involve community of possessions be-
tween the partners to the marriage.

106. Partners to a marriage shall be at liberty to enter into any
mutual obligations which the law permits. Contracts between the
partners to a marriage having the intent of infringing the rights
of ownership of the wife or the husband shall be void, and shall
be in no way binding upon third parties or upon the partners
to the marriage, who shall always retain the right to refuse per-
formance of the said contracts.

In these last three sections we have the retention of
full independence that some few advocates of progress in
the marriage relation had been contending for for years.
Freedom to live or not to live with the partner of one’s
joys and sorrows; full control of one’s possessions, even
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 157

if married; these rights buttressed by the declaration that
the partners may not contract between themselves or with
outside parties to infringe any of these rights—what more
can radicalism and progressivism ask for? But there
happens to be a good-sized fly in the ointment. In the
very next section we have this:

107. If one partner to a marriage is necessitous (that is to say,
if he lacks the minimum necessities of life) and infirm, he shall
have the right to demand maintenance from the other partner, if
the latter is in a position to render him assistance.

108. If one of the partners to a marriage refuses to maintain
the necessitous and infirm partner, the latter shall have the right
to apply to the Bureau of Social Welfare attached to the soviet

of the district where the defendant partner is resident for main-
tenance by the other partner.

In such case the bureau is empowered to summon the
interested parties to appear before it and to have the
matters in dispute adjudicated. The decision of the board
“shall be binding upon all persons and all institutions,
and shall have the force of a judgment, and shall be
carried out in accordance with the usual procedure.”
Appeal may, however, be made to the local tribunal from
the decision of the bureau.

Note.—Minors and men who have attained the age of 55 years
and women who have attained the age of 50 years shall be rec-
ognized as incapable of work without special proof.

130. The right of a partner in marriage who is necessitous and
incapable of work to maintenance by the other partner in mar-
riage shall continue even after the dissolution of the marriage

by divorce until such time as the conditions shall be changed
which serve as the basis for the receipt of maintenance (art.

107).

The man who marries late in life in bolshevik Russia
has an advantage over his brother in less civilized and
advanced countries. After attaining the age of 55 years,
158 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

in the event that his spouse had not then arrived at the
half-century mark, he may legally claim maintenance
from the other, and divorce does not in any sense invali-
date such right. Verily in Russia under the new dispensa-
tion what appears to be full equality between the sexes
has been achieved.

There are some “mighty interesting” sections in the
chapter dealing with the family, especially that portion
which deals with parentage.

133. The basis of the family shall be actual parentage; no dis-
tinction shall be established between natural parentage and legiti-
mate parentage.

The term “natural parentage” thus officially takes the
place of “illegitimate parentage,” another step toward
onward progress.

Observation 1. Children not born in matrimony shall have the
same rights as children born to persons whose marriage has been
registered.

Observation 2, The regulation contained in this article shall
apply equally to illegitimate children born before the publication
of the decree concerning civil marriage (of Dec. 20, 1917).

134. The persons entered in the register as father and mother
shall be held as the father and mother of the child.

135. Failing the registration of the father and mother, or in
the case of a false entry in the registry, or an entry lacking suffi-
cient detail, the interested persons shall have the right to prove
paternity and maternity by judicial means.

Observation. Questions of parentage shall be within the com-
petence of the local popular tribunal.

136. The right of proving the actual parentage of a child shall
belong to the interested persons, and to the mother among them;
and those persons shall be registered as father and mother of
the child who at the time of its conception or of its birth are
united in registered marriage or in a marriage which has the
validity of a registered marriage.

137. If during an inquiry into the matter, the tribunal shall
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 159

Prove that the entry in the register is false and based upon the
false evidence of the persons who have passed themselves off as
the father and mother, the persons guilty of false evidence shall
be prosecuted under the criminal law, and the entry in the reg-
ister shall be declared void.

138. Within three days of the passing of the sentence the tri-
bunal shall advise the registry office where the birth is regis-
tered of the declaration of nullity of the entry, and of the proof
of actual parentage of the child, after having made the appro-
priate alterations in the entry.

139. In cases where the child is not acknowledged by the
father, paternity shall be proved in accordance with the forms
prescribed in articles 140-145.

Solomon gained an enduring reputation for uncommon
wisdom by proving maternity in an interesting case
brought before him. The soviet solons are in position to
throw the biblical exploit entirely “in the shade” by prov-
ing paternity, a matter, it will be admitted, somewhat
more difficult.

140. An unmarried pregnant woman shall make a declaration
at the registry office not later than three months before the birth
of the child indicating the date of conception, the name and domi-
cile of the child’s father.

Observation. A married woman may make a like declaration
if the father of the child conceived ts not her registered husband.

Morality must indeed be at a low ebb in soviet Russia,
or is expected to sink very low, under the new order if
such last section is considered necessary.

141. The register shall advise the person named in the declara-
tion as the father of that declaration (art. 140), and the said per-
son shall have the right, within two weeks of the day upon
which he receives the notice, to initiate an action for the nullifica-
tion of the mother’s declaration. Failure to dispute the declara-
tion within the stated period shall be equivalent to the recogni-
tion of the child as his.
160 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

If the man happens to be out of town or city at the time
the declaration is made, or fails to receive the official
notice, or is unable to read or to understand the notice
that is sent to him, or if at the time he happens to be
physically or mentally incapacitated, or for other good
and sufficient reasons he is unable to make suitable reply
within the brief time limit to the charge of the woman,
he is, in the words of the man in the street, “out of luck,”
and will be compelled publicly to acknowledge and provide
for some child that is not his, or not entirely so.

142. Questions of the establishment of paternity shall be exam-
ined in accordance with the usual forms, but the parties shall be
required to speak the truth [an unnecessary requirement, for the
Russian is noted for his passion always to speak the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth], and if they do not fulfill
this duty they shall be held responsible as for giving false evi-
dence.

143. If it shall be established that the connection of the per-
sons mentioned in article 141 with the mother of the child
was such that in the natural course of things that person would
be the father of the child, the tribunal shall pronounce judgment,
recognizing that person as the father, and at the same time shall
decree that he shall bear a share of all expenditure caused by
pregnancy, confinement, birth, and maintenance of the child.

144. If during an inquiry into the matter the tribunal shall es-
tablish that at the time of the conception of the child the person
mentioned in article 141 had intimate relations with the mother of
the child, but at the same time as other persons, the tribunal shall
order them all to be summoned as defendants, and shall charge
them with a share of the expenses provided in article 143.

How very interesting! A trial along the lines of the
sections before mentioned must prove more than interest-
ing, and should furnish even more thrills to the prurient-
minded and the sex perverts of Russia than our highly
delectable divorce and murder cases, and the testimony
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 161

that would be adduced in the course of one of these trials
would of a certainty make “mighty interesting reading.”

Under the head “Concerning the rights and obligations
of children and parents” some quotable sections are found:

145. Children whose parents are not united in registered mar-
riage may bear the name of their father, of their mother, and
their united names. The names of such children shall be estab-
lished by agreement between the parents, and, failing such agree-
ment, by the tribunal.

146. In case of the dissolution of marriage by divorce, or by
the nullity of the marriage, the parents shall have the right to
decide which of the three names indicated in article 100 the
children shall bear. Failing agreement between the parents, the
judge alone shall decide, and in case his decision is disputed by
the parties, the local tribunal with several judges.

* * * * * * *

149. Parents shall exercise their rights as parents toward male
children until the age of’ 18 years and toward female children
until the age of 16 years.

* * * * * * *

153. The rights of parents shall be exercised sol-'y in the inter-
ests of the children, and where they are exercised in an unjusti-
fiable manner the tribunal shall have the right to deprive the
parents of their rights.

This is rather a stout club for the recalcitrant ones
among the supporters of the old order. If nothing else
will bring them into line, or if at the time they show a
tendency to wander from the bolshevik reservation, they
can be charged, if they have children, with exercising their
rights as parents in an “unjustifiable manner,” and the
all-powerful local tribunal may be relied upon to do the
rest.

159. In cases where parents have been deprived of their rights
the tribunal shall allow the parents meeting with their children,

unless it should be proved that such meetings have a harmful and
injurious effect upon the children.
162 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

160. Children shall have no rights to the property of the
parents; similarly the parents shall have no right to the property
of their children.

It further is provided that parents must furnish “main-
tenance and support to children who are under age, dis-
abled, and necessitous”; likewise children “shall be re-
quired to supply maintenance for their disabled and
necessitous parents,” unless the latter are in receipt of a
state pension. These rights survive the death of one of
the parents, or divorce, or the annulment of the marriage.

168. In judging cases concerning the maintenance of children
the tribunal shall take into consideration the means of the two
parents and their capacity for work, and in the case of a mother
capable of work the impossibility for her to earn on account of
the care she must devote to her children or on account of preg-
nancy.

169. Deprivation of the rights of parents shall not excuse them
from furnishing the cost of maintenance of their children.

Under the head “Rights and duties of persons who
are related” the bolshevik lawmakers have in some of their
enactments wandered far from the beaten bourgeois order.

172, Ascendants and descendants, brothers and sisters german
and of half blood, shall have the right to receive maintenance
from the well-to-do relatives if they are necessitous and disabled.

Observation. No distinction shall be drawn between legitimate
and illegitimate relationships.

Just at present, according to reliable reports that have
filtered out from distracted Russia, the well-to-do are
just over the border line of the starving, the cold, and
shelterless, without sufficient rags to cover their naked-
ness and protect them from the pitiless elements, unless
they happen to be in the fortunate governmental inner
clique, in which case the sections regarding maintenance
of a certainty will not apply.

175. Persons sharing the duty of maintenance shall be held re-
sponsible for equal amounts, unless the tribunal shall ascertain
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 163

any difference in the economic positions of the parents under obli-
gation or unless absence or some other serious cause shall inter-
vene, and the tribunal shall prescribe some other proportion be-
tween the shares.

176. The tribunal shall also be empowered, in cases where it is
impossible to claim maintenance immediately for the persons
from whom it is directly due, to place the same obligation upon
persons who occupy a more remote position in the line of persons
under obligation for maintenance, reserving to them the right of
appeal against those persons who are under obligation to furnish
maintenance.

In the superstate the very intelligent and more than
civilized Russians had established on the ruins of the
capitalist state of the czars the prudent, the able, the
intelligent, the energetic, and the ambitious—if such qual-
ities are able to survive the deadening influence of bol-
shevism—are compelled to furnish maintenance and
support to the chronic out-of-works, the shiftless, the
lazy, the ne’er-do-wells of society who may claim near
relationship, even illegitimate, or, as set forth in section
176, from those “who occupy a more remote position”
in the family line.

177. Payments for maintenance may be guaranteed by the
award of the tribunal from the property of the persons from
whom they are due. Measures may also be taken for the purpose
of guaranty before final judgment has been passed upon the claim
for maintenance.

After dealing with the matter of death of a parent, or
judicial declaration of his death or absence—in free Rus-
sia those absent without the permission of the high and
mighty ones of the state have the status of the dead and
buried—it is provided that “if property left is not suffi-
cient to furnish maintenance to all the rightful claimants,
satisfaction shall be given in the first instance to the most
necessitous.”
1644 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

The wishes of those who long may have slaved for the
property left behind are not at all to be considered. The
needs of those, in a direct or indirect line, who have little
or nothing at all alone is to be considered. As the most
necessitous in the majority of instances are the least
worthy, it goes without saying that injustice rather than
justice inevitably must follow the carrying out of such
rather remarkable plan.

The rest of the published code furnishes nothing par-
ticularly startling or especially out of accord with estab-
lished laws and customs, so need not be considered.
Sufficient has been published, it will be admitted, to give
one a line on the mental processes of those mighty ones
responsible for the new socialist paradise established in
Russia, especially as concerns their attitude toward the
family.

It may and possibly will be claimed that the bolshevik
revolutionists had not gone so very far, judged by their
code, toward real socialism; that registration of marriage,
divorce granted by legal bodies of officials of the state
after hearing, care and custody of children by parents or
guardians, maintenance and support of one citizen by
another, private ownership of property, limited inherit-
ances—all these do not quite square with socialist teach-
ings, that had sought for years to impress upon the im-
pressionable that marriage and divorce concerned only
the two parties in interest, in which the state should not
and as a matter of right could not interfere; that children
are the property of the whole community and not of their
parents, and the community should see to their mainte-
nance and education; that in the matter of production and
distribution the good old socialist rule would prevail,
“from each according to his ability, to each according to
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 165

his needs”; that private ownership of property—private
theft from the community, as many socialists have claimed
—would cease and community of goods take its place and
therefore there would be nothing to inherit or to be-
queath,

These will claim that the old bourgeois or capitalist
order is but modified and not destroyed, as had been
promised when the socialists sought to secure the upper
hand in Russia.

These few doubting ones are requested to have pa-
tience, to wait until the proletarian state firmly will be
established, when the laws that some few red ones com-
plain of, and possibly justly so, will pass and the necessity
for them as well. We can but repeat what had been
stated in their preface:

The proletarian government constructs its codes, like all its
laws, in a logical fashion; it constructs them in such manner
that every day of their existence diminishes the necessity for their
existence as state laws; it proposes as the object of its laws the
rendering useless of all laws.

These laws, we are informed, cover merely the transi-
tion period between the passing out of the old and decadent
and the incoming of the new and progressive. Thus they
will last only until the cooperative commonwealth that so
many visionaries have dreamed of in the dread days of
the past becomes an accomplished fact. In that event the
free citizen of the socialist state will do the right and
proper thing by his fellows and by the state without
coercive laws and enactments. Until such blessed time
comes laws are a necessity, and will dutifully be observed
by all who claim a part in the socialist state of Russia and
patiently will be regarded by the socialist comrades in
the other lands.
MME. KOLLONTAY* ON PROSTITUTION AND
MARRIAGE

SocIauism in practice (bolshevik Russia) is responsible
for yet another official document, that may be studied
with advantage by those few benighted and nonprogressive
individuals who believe in the existing monogamic mar-
riage system and the present relations between the sexes.

According to Soviet Russia, the organ of bolshevism
published in New York City by the Russian soviet forces,
the women sections of the communist party of Russia
were at the third congress addressed by Alexandra Kol-
lontay, chief of the Russian bureau of public welfare
and “long the head of the Russian women’s movement,”
on “The fight against prostitution.” And we further
were informed by the same very reliable authority on

* Mme. Alexandra Kollontay (War Information Series, No. 20, October,
1918, issued by the U. S. Committee on Public Information) was in a
sense in the employ of the imperial German government, and with the
other trusted bolshevik agents was relied on to effect Russia’s withdrawal
from the Great War. “She was sent abroad (to Germany’s enemies)
for foreign propaganda in February (1918), but did not get beyond
Scandinavia, and later returned to Russia.” ;

Document 7 of the series, dated January 12, 1918, addressed to the
Commissar of Foreign Affairs (indorsed “Deliver te Comrade Zinov-
ieff and to Secret Department”), and signed ‘‘Agfar,’’ identified as
Maj. Luberts, head of the German Bureau, is as follows:

“By order of the local department of the German General Staff the
intelligence department has reported the names and characteristics of
the main candidates for the reelection of the Central Executive Com-
mittee. The General Staff orders us to insist on the election of the
following persons.” ‘

Then follow the names of 25 individuals, among which were Trotsky,
Lenin, Zinovieff, Lunarcharsky, Kollontay (the only woman on the list),
Peters (the “executioner”), and others it is not necessary to mention
here. Obedient to ‘his master’s voice,” those in control of Russia’s
affairs at the time reelected the entire lot.

166
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 167

things bolshevik that the soviet government evidently
considered such address of sufficient importance to have
40,000 copies printed for general circulation.

Publication is had complete in two issues of Soviet
Russia (August and September, 1921), from which the
following illuminating paragraphs quoted in this para-
graph have been taken.

Admission is made at the outset of the address that
the question of prostitution is not as simple a one as we
had been led to believe by socialist visionaries. We learn
also that such evil has the unpleasant habit of cropping
up even within the sacred precincts of the socialist state;
that it even is “assuming large and intolerably extensive
proportions.” After the statement that socialism has
proven impotent to abolish this evil Mme. Kollontay makes
the unpleasant confession :

In our workers’ republic there has hitherto been a lack not only
of laws aimed at an eradication of this evil, but also of a clear
expression of our attitude toward prostitution as an evil harmful
to the general good. We know that prostitution is an evil; we
even understand that now, in this extremely difficult transition
period, prostitution is assuming large and intolerably extensive
proportions, but we simply wave it aside, we are silent on this
phenomenon, partly through a remnant of hypocrisy that is still
with us as the heritage of the bourgeois view of life, partly
through inability to properly grasp and become conscious of the
damage which a widely developed prostitution is inflicting upon
the working society. To this is to be ascribed the neglect of the
question of prostitution and of the ways of combating it which
has been manifest hitherto in our legislation.

Up to the present time the collection of our laws has been
lacking in any kind of legislation touching upon prostitution as a
dangerous social phenomenon. When the old tsarist laws were
annulled by the council of people’s commissars all the legislation
on prostitution was abolished together with them. But there were
not introduced as a substitution for the abolished measures any
168 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

new laws in the interest of the workers’ society. This is be-
cause of the unnaturally motley nature of our measures, of the
contradiction that characterizes the policy of the soviet power in
various places on the subject of prostitution and the prostitutes
themselves. In certain places there have been carried out regular
hunts for prostitutes, conducted “in the old style’ with the aid
of militia. In other places the disorderly houses exist openly (in
the interdepartmental commission for combating prostitution
actual data on this subject are available). In other places still
the prostitutes were declared to have the same status as crimi-
nals, and were interned in hard labor camps. All this shows that
the absence of a clearly formulated legislation creates an ex-
tremely confused relation between the local powers and this com-
plicated social phenomenon, producing a number of varied and
harmful deviations from our principles of legislation and
morality.

It is necessary, therefore, not only to approach the question of
prostitution directly, but also to seek a solution of it that would
be in accordance with the fundamental principles and postulates
of the social and national economic program of the communist
party.

At this point it occurs to our learned friend to pro-
pound the query that should have been had at the begin-
ning of her address, “What is prostitution?” And her
answer thereto enlightens us not only on that but as well
on the “fundamental principles and postulates of the so-
cial * * * program of the communist party”:

It is first of all necessary precisely to define what is prostitu-
tion. Prostitution is a phenomenon closely bound up with an
income not earned by labor, and it therefore flourished in the
epoch of the rule of capitalism and private property.

This is but a restatement of the proposition of Bax
that the prostitute is immoral because she takes ad-
vantage “of a monopoly which costs her no labor for the
sake of extorting money from the man.” Mme. Kollontay
continues :
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 169

Prostitutes from our standpoint are all women who sell their
caresses, their bodies, for temporary or extended periods for the
advantage of men, in return for material compensation, for fine
food, clothes, trinkets, or adornments, and for the right obtained
by selling themselves to men, not to undertake any labor, not to
subject themselves to work of any kind.

Prostitution in our soviet republic of workers is an outright
inheritance of the bourgeois capitalist past, in which only an in-
significant number of women were occupied with productive
labor in the national economy, while an enormous number, more
than half of the entire female population, lived from the labor
of their husbands or their fathers—their “meal tickets.”

Further along in her address our friend is honest
enough to inform her hearers that in the eyes of socialist
officialdom the married woman who goes about her house-
hold duties is of a class with the prostitute; that the only
way in which she can be redeemed is to let the private
household go hang and busy herself in productive labor
for the socialized state. We believe we are justified in
this conception by the following:

All women who desert their labor, who take no part in the
obligatory work, and who are not performing any work for
small children at home are placed on an equal footing with the
prostitute—they must be forced to work. And we can not make
any distinction here between the prostitute and the most lawful
wife who lives on her husband’s sustenance, whoever her hus-
band may be, even though he be a “commissar.”

And when called on to fight this evil the same degree
of frankness is shown. It is clearly indicated that the
fight is not on immorality per se, but only that form .
which withdraws woman from productive labor for the
state:

But when we consider the prostitutes and fight them as a
nonproductive element of society we are not placing them in a
special category. For us, for the republic of the workers, it is
absolutely a matter of indifference whether a woman sells her-
170 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

self to one man or to many, whether she is a professional pros-
titute living by some other source than her own useful labor or
by the sale of her caresses to a legal husband or to an occa-
sional purchaser of female flesh, whose identity may vary from
day to day. * * *

In other words, we are going to renetlaee equal treatment for
all deserters from labor. From the standpoint of the workers’
collective a woman is to be condemned, not for selling her body
but for the fact that, just like a legally married woman, she does
no useful work for the collective. This new, absolutely new,
procedure with prostitution is dictated by the interest of the
workers’ collective.

There is another reason why war is to be made on this
form of immorality, and that is for the practical one of
protecting the public health:

Soviet Russia is interested in preventing the disorganization
and lowering of the working powers of the population, as well
as their capacity for work, by sickness and indispositions.

We have the admission that the red army is a potent
factor in the spread of venereal diseases. Thus:

Besides, in our extremely agitated transition period, as far as
moral views are concerned, owing to the constant gathering and
uninterrupted transfer of the army from one place to another,
venereal diseases are spread to a remarkable extent, quite inde-
pendently of the agency of commercial prostitution. For instance,
in the southern fruitful provinces civil war has been in progress.
The male cossack population has been scattered, driven out, has
gone off with the whites, or been scattered to the winds. In the
settlements there remain only the women. They had enough of
everything, but there were no men. Red armies advance and take
the town, they are billeted out, and remain in the city for weeks
at a time. As a result there are mutual attractions, free al-
liances, having no similarity whatever with prostitution, since the
women in this case voluntarily associate with the men, as a re-
sult of inclination and without any calculation of material gain
on their side.
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 171

For examples of these “free alliances” the reader re-
spectfully is directed to read again the official proclama-
tion of the forces that drove out the reds from Ekaterino-
dar, or statements from impartial non-Russian observers
at Odessa and other points.

It is not the red army man who feeds the woman, but the
reverse; it is she who takes care of him, mends his clothes, shel-
ters him as long as the army is quartered in the settlement. But
the army departs, and as a consequence the settlement has be-
come infected with venereal diseases. The same thing has
been repeated with cities and villages which are taken by the
whites.

A general contamination is constantly going on. The diseases
are spread, increased and threaten to wipe out the entire unborn
generation. In the joint session of the Motherhood Protection
Society and the Provincial Women’s Sections Prof. Koltsov spoke
on hygiene, the science of healing and perfecting mankind.
Closely related with this task is the question of the struggle
against prostitution, which is one of the most active causes of
infection from person to person.

There still is another reason than that before set forth
why the “workers’ republic” is asked unceaselessly and
relentlessly to make war on prostitutes and prostitution.
With true socialist logic Mme. Kollontay continues in the
following strain:

The third reason why prostitution is inadmissible in a soviet
workers’ republic is that it prevents the development and solidifi-
cation of the fundamental class qualities of the proletariat, of its
new morality. What is the fundamental property of the working
class, the most powerful moral weapon in its struggle? The feel-
ing of comradeship, of solidarity. Solidarity is the foundation of
communism. Without this strongly established feeling among the
mankind of the workers it is inconceivable that we shall erect a
new truly communist society. Of course, it is self-evident that
conscious communists must with all their powers aid in the de-
velopment of this feeling, and, conversely, must with all their
172 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

might struggle with those forces that would hinder this develop-
ment and prevent the solidification of such qualities and charac-
teristics of the working class of the toiling population.

What is it that follows in the wake of prostitution? A debase-
ment of the feeling of equality, of solidarity, and comradeship
between the sexes; in other words, between the two halves of
the working class. The man who purchases the caresses of
women begins to look upon women as a commodity. He regards
women as dependent upon himself; in other words, as creatures
of a lower order, not entitled to equal rights, not of equal value
to the workers’ government. His contemptuous attitude to the
prostitute whose attentions he has purchased for her material gain
he transfers to all women. Instead of a growth of the feeling of
comradeship, equality, and solidarity we shall have, if prostitution
should further develop, a strengthening of the conditions of in-
equality between the sexes, of the feeling of the superiority of
man, the dependence of woman on him—in other words, a de-
crease in the solidarity of the whole working class.

To achieve this “feeling of comradeship, equality, and
solidarity” prostitution (hire) must give way to the com-
munity (free gift) of women to those who zealously
follow in the footsteps of a Lenin and a Trotsky. The
red comrade is expected to have the proper communistic
feeling toward his helpless comrade of the other sex
delivered to his lust, as were tens of thousands in the
sections where the bolshevik blight had fallen.

Mme. Kollontay, as a Marxian socialist, harbors, of
course, the current “scientific” socialist obsession that the
monogamic marriage (“legal sale” of the female to the
male) is inextricably linked with prostitution (“hire” of
one by the other). Both, to them, are evils, and both
most go and will of a certainty go when socialism really
finds itself.

First, according to her, prostitution must be eliminated
in all its forms; then it is expected that the communist
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 173

authorities will adequately deal with the “kept woman,”
she who is wife to the man and mistress of his household.
: Prostitution as practiced in other civilizations, we are
informed, is “very little developed among us and is of
very slight extent.” It has assumed this new form:

The second form of prostitution, although it is highly devel-
oped and extremely extensive in bourgeois capitalistic countries,
- * * also assumes a great variety of forms in our country. Pros-
titution is practiced by the soviet office employees, in order to ob-
tain by the sale of their caresses boots that go up to the knee;
prostitution is resorted to by mothers of families, working
women, peasant women, who are out after flour for their chil-
dren, and sell their bodies to the manager of the rations division
in order to obtain from him a full bag of the precious flour.
Sometimes the girls in the offices associate with their male supe-
riors not for manifestly material gains—for rations, shoes, etc.
—but in the hope of advancement in office. And there is an ad-
ditional form of prostitution—‘“careerist prostitution”—which is
also based, in the last analysis, however, on material calculations.

Our very voluble friend next takes up the proposition
of prevention and punishment:

How shall we fight these conditions? There was proposed to
the interdepartmental commission the question of a punishment
of prostitution by law. Many of the representatives in the inter-
departmental commission were inclined to favor the method of
subjecting the prostitute to legal prosecution, by reason of the
fact that the professional prostitute is a rank deserter from work.
A recognition of the culpability of the prostitute logically led to
an admission of the legality of the hunts for prostitutes, of their
interment in concentration camps, etc.:

The central organ came out clearly and resolutely against this
conception of the matter. If it is proper to permit hunts for
prostitutes, it follows that similar hunts should be made for such
lawful wives as are existing on the means of their husbands and
are of no use to the state. The latter are just as much deserters
from work as are the prostitutes. It is proper and logical to put
174 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

prostitutes into concentration camps only in cases where lawful
wives, not occupied with productive labor, are also interned for
similar reasons.

Such was the standpoint of the central organ, which was sup- -
ported by the representatives of the people's commissariat of jus-
tice. If we take the factor of desertion from labor as the defin-
ing element of the crime, we shall have no outlet; all the forms
of desertion from labor will be rendered equal by the punishment.

The factor of conjugal relations, of a relation between the
sexes, is eliminated. That factor can not serve as the defining
element of a crime in the workers’ republic.

With logic typical of the dyed-in-the-wool socialist,
Mme. Kollontay would have her hearers believe that the
particular crime of the prostitute in the bourgeois state
was not because of the “informality of her conjugal rela-
tionship,” but “for the shortness of its duration.” The
legality of the marriage relation, it naturally follows, was
because of its permanent or semi-permanent form—“until
death do us part,” or the courts. This brings this chunk
of philosophic wisdom:

Can the short duration, the informality, the freedom of the re-
lation between the sexes be regarded, from the standpoint of
working humanity, as a crime, as an act that should be subject to
punishment? Of course not. The freedom of relations between
the sexes does not contradict the ideology of communism. The
interests of the commonwealth of the workers are not in any
way disturbed by the fact that marriage is of a short or pro-
longed duration, whether its basis is love, passion, or even a
transitory physical attraction.

The only thing that is harmful to the workers’ collective, and
therefore inadmissible, is the element of material calculation be-
tween the sexes, whether it be in the form of prostitution, im the
form of legal marriage—the substitution of a crassly materialistic
calculation of gain for a free association of the sexes on the
basis of mutual attraction.

This factor is harmful, is inadmissible, will cut a breach in the
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 175

feeling of equality and solidarity between the sexes. And from
this standpoint we must condemn prostitution, as a trade, in all
its shapes and forms, even that of the legal “wives,;’ who main-
tain their sad part, so intolerable in the workers’ republic.

Though the question of punishment of the “women who
have labor books, but who still engage in prostitution as
an underground trade, as well as all the women who are
supported by their husbands,” was ruled out by the inter-
departmental commission, backed up by the commissariat
of justice and the other worth-while sections of the com-
munist state, it was not to be supposed that other weapons
would not be employed:

But much can be done and much must be done.

The women’s sections in the provinces also must enter into
contact with the national educators, i order to push into the
foreground the question of proper provision for sexual enlight-
enment in the schools. In addition a number of conversations
and lessons must be introduced of social-scientific or scientific-
hygienic character as to questions of marriage, the family, the
history of the form of the relationship between the sexes, the
dependence of these forms and of sexual morality itself on purely
economic, material causes.

It is time to introduce clearness into the question of the rela-
tionship between the sexes. It is time to preach with merciless
and rigidly scientific criticism.

With the youth of the socialist state well grounded in
the “new morality” through lessons taught in such schools
as they have, it is expected that socialist moral teachings
will have greater stability than they would have if the
matured only were the pupils.

The old psychology, we are informed, fast is crumbling
away and is all but outlawed in the socialist state. A new
psychology has been proclaimed, and ruthlessly must be
defended, not only in the sacrosanct socialist state but

wherever socialism has any force, any vitality.
176 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

Our task is to reeducate the psychology of the working com-
monwealth, to bring it into correspondence with the economic
tasks of the working class. We must without reservation dis-
card our old outlawed conceptions, to which we are attached as
to a bad habit. Economics have now defined our ideology. Look
about you and behold the foundations of the former economic
institutions crumbling. With them there go down also the foun-
dations of the earlier form of marriage. And yet we are chained
to the.early marriage system, to the bourgeois form of the fam-
ily, We are ready to renounce all the accustomed forms of life,
ready to hail the revolution in every field, and yet are afraid to
touch the family! Only do not touch the marriage system!
Even conscious communists are afraid to look the truth in the
face and wave aside those fundamentals which bear witness to
the fact that the former family ties are breaking, as the new
economic forms dictate also new forms of association between
the sexes. This results in outright abnormalities.

The soviet power has recognized woman as a working unit,
valued by national economy, has placed her, as a working, toil-
ing force, on the same footing with man, but in the actual condi-
tions of life we are still maintaining the “old régime” and are
ready to acknowledge the normality of marriages based on the
material dependence of women on men. But if we wage a
struggle against prostitution we should also introduce clearness
into these conjugal relations that are still built on the old prin-
ciple of “purchase and sale.’ We must learn to be ruthless, to
fear no sentimental outcries as to the fact that “by our criti-
cism, our preaching of scientific truths, we violate the sanctity
of family ties.”

Replying to her own query, “Is the family doomed?”
Mme. Kollontay frankly says:

It is necessary to declare the truth outright, the old form of
the family is passing away; the communist society has no use for
it. The bourgeois world celebrated the isolation, the cutting off
of the married pair from the collective weal; in the scattered and
disjointed individual bourgeois society, full of struggle and
destruction, the family was the sole anchor of hope in the storms
of life, the peaceful haven in the ocean of hostilities and competi-
THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY 177

tions between persons, The family represented an independent
class in the collective unit. There can and must be no such thing
in the communist Society. For communist society as a whole
represents such a fortress of the collective life, precluding any
Possibility of the existence of an isolated class of family bodies,
existing by itself, with its ties of birth, with its female egoism,
its love of family honor, its absolute segregation.

Already ties of blood, of birth, and even of the relationship of
conjugal love, are weakening in our eyes; in their turn there are
growing, spreading, and deepening new ties, ties of the working
family, the profound feeling of comradeship of solidarity, of
community of interests, the creation of a collective responsibility,
of a belief in the collective welfare as the highest moral-legisla-
tive good.

What marriage is to become in the future or, more properly,
what are to be the forms of relationship between the sexes in the
future it would be difficult to foretell. But one thing is beyond
doubt ; that is, that under communism there will be lacking in the
conjugal relationship not only all material calculation, all eco-
nomic dependence of woman on man, but also all the other con-
siderations of “convenience” which frequently characterize pres-
ent-day marriage. * * *

Prostitution under communism is passing into the domain of
the forgotten past, together with the morbid forms of the pres-
ent-day family. In its place there are growing healthy, joyful,
and free relations between the sexes. A new generation is grow-
ing up to replace the old, with more developed social feelings,
with greater mutual independence, with more freedom, health,
and courage, a generation for whom the welfare of the whole
will stand higher than anything else. * * *

Comrades! Our task is to destroy the roots that nourish pros-
titution. Our task is to wage relentless warfare on the vestiges
of individualism, which has hitherto been the moral basis of mar-
riage. Our task is to revolutionize thought in the field of mar-
riage relations and to clear the way for a new, healthy conju-
gal morality that shall correspond with the interests of the
workers’ commonwealth. After it has outlived the morality and
conjugal forms of the present day the communist commonwealth
will have disposed also of prostitution.
178 THE RED WAR ON THE FAMILY

We must all put our shoulders to the wheel, comrades! In th
place of the family which is passing away, the family of the pas
there is already arising, solidifying, and spreading the new famil
—the great workers’ family of the victorious world proletariai

Taken in connection with the “Marriage laws of sovie
Russia,” especially its official explanatory preface by Mr
Hoichbarg, Mme. Kollontay’s address as a valued officia
of the soviet state to a recognized section of the thir
communist congress, must be regarded as an indorsemen
of the position of antisocialists that the success of social
ism inevitably will bring about the destruction of th
present-day family and the substitution of the “fre
union” of the sexes, sung of by Bebel, Engels, and thi
other anointed ones of socialism in those blessed day:
when socialism was but a theory instead of, as in bank
_Tupt Russia, a sad fact.