LABOR AND THE WAR 
 
 «!^«^ 
 
 American Federation of Labor 
 and the Labor Movements of 
 Europe and Latin America 
 
 PRICE, 50 CENTS 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE 
 
 AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR 
 
 AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR BUILDING, WASHINGTON. D. C. 
 
 DECEMBER. 1918 
 
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Radical's Progress 
 
 A Record of Courage 
 
 Reprinted from the Atlantic Monthly 
 by permission 
 
 Copyright, 1916, by the Atlantic Monthly Company 
 
 THE WOMAN'S PEACE PARTY 
 
 116 South Michigan Avenue 
 Chicago, Illinois 
 

 EDITORS' NOTE 
 
 [The narrative which follows is 
 made up of letters written by an offi- 
 cer of the British merchant marine 
 to an American friend in close sym- 
 pathy with the creed they formulate. 
 These letters cover a correspondence 
 of many years, the earlier dating 
 from the South African War, where 
 the writer distinguished himself by 
 his courage in action, and some of 
 the later from the Dardanelles cam- 
 paign, which found him serving as 
 chief officer of one of his Britannic 
 Majesty's transports. The order in 
 which the letters are printed has 
 been designed by the person who re- 
 
 ceived and arranged them to throw 
 into relief the writer's Progressive 
 views toward Socialism ; but no lib- 
 erties have been taken with the text. 
 To an individualist, it is interesting 
 to note that the degree of tense so- 
 cial control now exerted by the state 
 in Great Britain may drive a Social- 
 ist into the kind of revolt usually 
 associated with individualistic doc- 
 trine. We may add that the writer 
 has been known to the editor of the 
 Atlantic for many years through 
 much correspondence and many 
 talks. We can vouch for the genu- 
 ineness of the letters. — TheEditors.] 
 
 \ fiAi«3FERaED FROM 
 
 m 26 1916 
 
RADICAL'S PROGRESS 
 
 BATTLE 
 
 Liverpool, July 12, 1915. 
 
 You will be wondering where I 
 am and what I have been doing all 
 this time. Your letter was here when 
 I arrived home from the Dardanelles. 
 I have been out there since the be- 
 ginning, in February, as chief officer 
 of a troop transport. We were under 
 all kinds of shell-fire and rifle-fire, as 
 well as being attacked by several 
 aeroplanes daily, but we didn't get a 
 scratch. 
 
 I am sick to death. I saw more 
 men blown up in one hour out there 
 than I saw killed all through the 
 Boer War. I am cured of ever wish- 
 ing to be a soldier again. You will 
 appreciate why when I have finished 
 my story. 
 
 After we landed our troops on 
 April 25, we were turned into a dis- 
 tributing hospital ship. Over twenty 
 thousand wounded passed through 
 our vessel. It fell to my lot to sew- 
 up and bury the dead. To see the 
 flower of the youth of Britain, Aus- 
 tralia, and New Zealand, — and Tur- 
 key, too, for that matter, — mangled 
 and maimed beyond recognition : not 
 a man over thirty-five years and not 
 one under nineteen years. . . . To 
 see lines of men charging, with 
 shrapnel blowing big gaps in their 
 lines, makes one wonder if there is 
 a living God who looks down and 
 allows such things to go on. 
 
 I have a great liking for the indi- 
 vidual Turk, and when I saw our 
 Lancashire Fusiliers take a redoubt 
 and pitch the Turks into the sea 
 with the bayonet, I felt a great pity 
 
 for the poor, honest Turkish peasant. 
 Notwithstanding all that appears in 
 the press about the cruelty of the 
 Turks and their inhuman treat- 
 ment of wounded, in all the twenty- 
 thousand-odd wounded who passed 
 through our ship I met no single in- 
 stance of cruelty or of wounds not 
 honestly got. 
 
 April 25 will stand out as the day 
 of horrors in my life. I suppose the 
 landing against such odds was one 
 of the finest things in history. Some 
 poor chaps never got ashore. Boat- 
 load after boatload of troops ground- 
 ed on the barbed-wire entanglements 
 which stretched from the shore un- 
 der water for thirty feet and not a 
 man in them was left alive. They 
 floated away later, filled to the gun- 
 wales with their dead. 
 
 On shore the sight was worse. So 
 congested were the Turks in their 
 trenches on such small land space 
 that every 12-inch or 6-inch shell 
 simply sent heads, legs, arms, and 
 trunks of bodies flying in all direc- 
 tions. I think there must have been 
 at least fifty heavy men-of-war, — 
 British and French, — as well as tor- 
 pedo-boat destroyers as thick as 
 gnats, banging away all day and all 
 night without a stop. From the giant 
 Queen Elizabeth down, every ship 
 was searching the Turkish trenches 
 with guns of all calibres. Above, 
 aeroplanes were spotting and bomb- 
 dropping. Every living person in a 
 circle of twenty miles was bent on 
 taking life or mangling some other 
 person. This carnage was between 
 men who had never exchanged a 
 cross word ; who had never even 
 seen one another. 
 
RADICAL'S PROGRESS 
 
 I don't know whether we as a na- 
 tion can hate. I must say that, after 
 takmg aboard a couple of thousand 
 wounded of our own men, I felt hot 
 all over and cursed the Turks all I 
 knew how ; but when it came to tak- 
 ing wounded Turks aboard — well, I 
 couldn't but help them all I could, 
 especially when I saw some of our 
 own slightly wounded men carrying 
 badly wounded Turks up the gang- 
 way. What treatment they had been 
 led to expect I don't know. The 
 poor wretches had fear and agony of 
 wounds written all over their faces. 
 . . . What I saw in the Boer War 
 led me to believe that the British 
 Tommy is a gentleman at heart. 
 What I saw on this ship only 
 strengthened that belief and assured 
 me that the heart of the British 
 workingman is sound and clean. 
 Our fellows had nothing more bitter 
 to say against the Turks than that 
 they were doing their jobs. 
 
 There was little rest for anybody 
 either by day or night. If one wasn't 
 actually at work tending the wound- 
 ed or receiving them, the booming of 
 the guns and the vibration of the 
 ship made sleep, or even rest, impos- 
 sible. 
 
 What I saw and went through has 
 knocked the bottom out of me. I 
 believe that I just escaped the mad- 
 house by a hair's breadth. And 
 when I was told to go back again 
 I refused pointblank. There is no 
 danger to the ships now except from 
 submarines. I refused solely because 
 I could not stand the sight of so 
 much battered humanity. I would 
 shoulder a rifie if they would take 
 me: you know that I have offered 
 myself four times and have been 
 turned down each time. I simply 
 cannot stand any more seeing men 
 between twenty and thirty years old 
 with legs blown off. arms blown off, 
 
 and great gaping wounds from 
 shrapnel all over the body — young- 
 sters struck deaf and dumb from 
 shell-shock though not actually hit; 
 and men stone-blind from the same 
 cause. 
 
 A big Australian, six feet three, 
 about twenty-seven, had a shell ex- 
 plode almost in his face. It threw 
 him on his back and injured his back 
 muscles. Just as he struggled to his 
 feet, another shell, bursting behind 
 him, threw him on his face and 
 strained his stomach muscles. He 
 was struck blind, deaf, and dumb. 
 His mouth opened and shut contin- 
 ually, as fast as though he were eat- 
 ing. Two men had to be told off to 
 keep his forearms quiet — they kept 
 coming up to his shoulders as 
 though he were at physical drill. 
 His body shook all over. 
 
 We had him aboard one week. By 
 that time his mouth had resumed its 
 normal movement and he had got 
 back the sight of one eye. Then he 
 passed through us to another ship. 
 
 How would any one of your Amer- 
 ican jingoes like to be twenty-seven 
 years old with both eyes shot out 
 and both wrists shattered by shrap- 
 nel? The man I mean was a young 
 Scot. I helped him up the gangway. 
 He stood six feet three — a beauti- 
 ful specimen of physical manhood. 
 After a day aboard he suffered terri- 
 ble torture from the heat of the 
 weather and of the ship, and also 
 from the swarms of flies attracted b}'" 
 the smell of blood. He could not lie 
 on a cot. so we had to fence off a 
 corner in the 'tween decks, carpet 
 it with pillows and mattresses, and 
 let him grope round in his agony. 
 On the spots where the blood had 
 soaked through his eye- and wrist- 
 bandages the flies clustered in black 
 clots. He moaned night and day and 
 was scarcelv conscious. He was to- 
 
RADICAL'S PROGRESS 
 
 tally blind, and even the sense of 
 touch was denied him, because his 
 wrists were so shattered that they 
 would have to be amputated. 
 
 Another man — a Lancashire Fu- 
 silier — was shot in the intestines. 
 His torture was frightful. He raved 
 like an animal and died in agony. 
 
 The majority of the wounded men 
 were unconscious, and died so. 
 
 One evening I buried twenty-seven 
 of the best my country ever pro- 
 duced, all Scots Fusiliers. The words, 
 "We therefore commit his body to 
 the deep" are graven on my very 
 soul. It is at this part of the service 
 that the body is slid overboard. For 
 full an hour after this first burial, 
 the thought of these countrymen of 
 mine being sewn up in blankets and 
 dumped overboard like so many bun- 
 dles of rubbish — I had a terrible 
 craving to get at the throats of the 
 capitalists and jingoes who are re- 
 sponsible for it all. Submarine com- 
 manders cannot be blamed for sink- 
 ing Lusitanias. They are simply do- 
 ing their jobs and obeying orders. 
 Those who issue such orders cannot 
 be got at ; at least, not yet. 
 
 Day after day these burials went 
 on. Later I refused to attend them. 
 The finish came when one body 
 stuck to the stretcher by reason of 
 the blood having oozed through the 
 wrappings and congealed. The body 
 had to be pried adrift before it would 
 slide of its own weight into the sea. 
 
 I cannot tell you any more just 
 3'et. I sicken as I write. 
 
 The stupidity of it all ! — the wrong 
 men doing the fighting and bearing 
 all the suffering. Kindly-hearted 
 fathers killing other kindly-hearted 
 fathers at the behest of — whom? 
 One ceases to wonder if mothers in 
 the future will ask why they should 
 e:o throusrh nine months of labor and 
 
 then rear children, — for this. I 
 should like to have had a few thou- 
 sands of American mothers on the 
 quay at Alexandria every time we 
 discharged our freight of mangled 
 humanity. Or, better still, those in 
 your country who are clamoring for 
 war: let them volunteer to come 
 over as stretcher-bearers only. 
 
 It is horrible, horrible, too horri- 
 ble. I have refused to go back. 
 Come what may, I will have no more 
 of it. My nerves are all in. Physic- 
 ally, I am not a coward. If my re- 
 fusal to go back is moral cowardice 
 I am content to let it go at that. 
 There are no penalties attached to 
 my not going back except the loss 
 of my position with the company. 
 My affair comes up in a day or two, 
 and a few capitalists will sit in judg- 
 ment on me, and perhaps without 
 the least compunction they will 
 damn my sea career of twenty-two 
 years in twenty-two seconds. Well, 
 let them do as they will. / care noth- 
 ing for the judgment of men who have 
 never seen suffering or sorrozv. 
 
 I will take their dismissal if. it 
 comes to that. It will mean starting 
 at the bottom again if I go to sea, 
 but I will never do that. If I am 
 dismissed from the company, then 
 the sea and I have shaken hands for 
 the last time. ... I have turned the 
 situation over in every possible way 
 to see if I am lacking in patriotism. 
 I find that up to the present I have 
 done my job and served my country 
 as few have done since the war 
 started. Therefore I have made my 
 stand, let fall what may. 
 
 And now let me speak of the 
 United States. From what I have 
 pieced together since arriving home, 
 I gather that public feeling in your 
 country runs high over the Lusita- 
 nia affair. Many seem to be clamor- 
 
RADICAL'S PROGRESS 
 
 ing for war. Who are these people 
 and zvhat do they know of war? Who 
 eggs them on, and for what reasons? 
 Again I say, let them come over and 
 serve as stretcher-bearers only. Or 
 perhaps your jingoes are of the same 
 breed as ours: do all their fighting 
 in frock coats while the youth of the 
 country do their dirty work for 
 them, \ 
 
 I think the Lusitania dead would 
 be the last, if they could, to cry out 
 for venegeance, and to sacrifice 
 scores of thousands of America's 
 best youth for their sakes. There 
 must be another way out. There 
 must be thousands of other ways 
 if only the nation would keep cool 
 and think. An American who urges 
 his country to enter the fight is a 
 bad American. It is frightful to 
 think of thousands of such fellows 
 as I have met over on your side 
 being torni to pieces with high ex- 
 plosives. Within twenty-four hours 
 at the Dardanelles we had twelve 
 thousand men killed and wounded. 
 Our losses out there far exceed 
 those published. From cottage and 
 mansion they came, from university 
 and poor school. They represented 
 the best we had. Your ranks would 
 have to be filled with the same ma- 
 terial. 
 
 By the time this reaches you I 
 may be sweeping the streets. I'm 
 extremely nervous, not on account 
 of what the company may do to me, 
 but from what I have been through 
 lately. I don't sleep too well. I see 
 mangled bodies and faces all the 
 time. I'm up against it every way I 
 turn : I cannot get into the firing 
 line; I can't stand the job I've been 
 on lately; and I stand practically 
 condemned by the company. In the 
 firing line one wouldn't see a tithe 
 of what I saw at the Dardanelles, 
 
 because there we had aboard the 
 mangled of all fronts, whereas, in 
 the trenches, one would only see the 
 wounded of his own immediate 
 front. — What a maze of contradic- 
 tions I am in ! I seem to be fighting 
 my way through to something — 
 what, I don't know. 
 
 I am intensely interested in what 
 the company may decide, because if 
 the decision goes against me there 
 will be a new life opening out. I 
 don't dread menial labor if I can 
 work out my salvation that way. Of 
 all the questions I have fought out 
 with the company — and they are 
 many — this is the most interesting 
 and perhaps the most vital. If I am 
 dismissed, I suppose many will say 
 that I funked it. Others, who know 
 me, will not say so much: they'll 
 probably say, "What a damned fool 
 he was, and next in turn for com- 
 mand, too!" 
 
 Meanwhile, I am resting and play- 
 ing with my kidlets, awaiting the 
 judgment of the heaven-born. 
 
 The situation is ludicrous. Here 
 I am, a man who fought through the 
 Boer War; a m.an recommended for 
 the Distinguished Service Medal ; a 
 man promoted from the ranks to 
 troop-sergeant at one leap ; a man 
 who, plugging along with one kid- 
 ney and minus two ribs, was men- 
 tioned in dispatches at the Darda- 
 nelles in April ; a man who has been 
 shot at with rifles, field-guns, how- 
 itzers, aeroplane bombs, and naval 
 guns, and threatened by submarines ; 
 and yet I have to be judged by 
 financiers who have never had a 
 duck-rifle in their hands, to see if I 
 funked going back to the Darda- 
 nelles. 
 
 If they want a plain answer to a 
 plain question I'll tell them straight 
 that I did funk going back to see so 
 
RADICAL'S PROGRESS 
 
 many thousand of my best country- 
 men mangled by devilish instru- 
 ments of war. I know I have a wife 
 and two children depending on me, 
 but I am not afraid for them. I 
 have been up against it before, and 
 have won through, and I'll win 
 through here somehow if I get 
 sacked. I will admit defeat when I 
 am in the grave, not before. 
 
 Excuse this letter. It is a dis- 
 jointed affair. I am scarcely myself. 
 You will hear again as soon as I 
 have been judged by the heaven- 
 born. Till then, do all you can to 
 keep your country out of this mess. 
 
 LrvERPOOL, July 13, 1915. 
 
 The inevitable has happened at 
 last. A¥hat I told you of in yester- 
 day's letter came off today. 
 
 The money-bags tried me and 
 found me wanting, and I have been 
 asked to resign. 
 
 I went up without the slightest 
 intention of walking back a peg. 
 They seemed astounded at my re- 
 fusal even at the price of dismissal. 
 
 So now I am out of a job, with a 
 wife and two youngsters depending 
 on me for the means to live. It has 
 been the greatest fight of my life, 
 and according to my way of think- 
 ing I have won out at the cost of my 
 job. The opportunity was mine to 
 walk a liner's bridge with a captain's 
 tin hat on ; but only at the price of 
 keeping my mouth shut and my pen 
 quiet. Your friend may be a fool, 
 but he is honest enough to stand 
 aside and take the blows when it 
 comes to that, rather than to sail the 
 seas hounded by capitalists and 
 forced to do things which daily 
 menace the lives of thousands of 
 innocent travelers. I knew that I 
 had to make my choice before the 
 company would give me command. 
 That was told me many moons ago. 
 
 The question that I have been ask- 
 ing myself since my dismissal is : Is 
 it worth it all? 
 
 The only answer I can get from 
 my inner self is : Yes, yes, yes. 
 
 My dismissal took place at 3 p. m. 
 prompt. It is scarcely 5 p. m. now, 
 so I've lost no time in let-ting you 
 know. 
 
 What an intense sensation of re- 
 lief I have ! The cloud of years has 
 cleared at last and left me once more 
 in the sunshine — and with more 
 fight than ever. The sea and I have 
 parted at a time when command 
 was in my hand. What I am going 
 to do I don't know yet. I don't ask 
 much of life if I can help my fellow 
 man. Certain it is I won't go under. 
 I am content to sweep streets or 
 anything. I have confidence in my- 
 self now that I have been put 
 through what was, for me, the su- 
 preme test ; and I have confidence in 
 the future even if, at the moment, I 
 don't see daylight. 
 
 Your land-lubbing friend. 
 
 II 
 
 BONDAGE 
 
 [The following passages from let- 
 ters of a much earlier period will ex- 
 plain certain allusions in the fore- 
 going.] 
 
 You ask what started me on my 
 course of radical thinking. Two in- 
 cidents, both from the Boer War. 
 
 The thin end of the wedge entered 
 my mind from seeing an old Boer 
 farmer bayoneted. I myself had 
 killed a man before that. But this 
 day, as I was riding along, I saw a 
 sergeant order an infantryman — a 
 West Kent man — to capture an old 
 Boer who was making for a horse, — 
 his own, I fancy. 
 
 The man dropped out of the ranks 
 and took after the Boer, who was 
 
RADICAL'S PROGRESS 
 
 an "Eighty-Oner," white-bearded, 
 with black crape on his hat; they 
 never surrendered. 
 
 "Halt!" yelled the Kent man. 
 
 The Boer kept on after the horse. 
 
 "Halt! you old beggar!" yelled 
 the Tommy again. 
 
 The Boer paid no heed. 
 
 "I'll give you one more chance ; up 
 with your hands!" 
 
 The Boer kept on. 
 
 I saw the West Kent man take the 
 step for the bayoneting — a purely 
 mechanical motion. The old man 
 reached around and gripped the 
 blade with both hands. The Tommy 
 gave it a twist. All the Boer's fin- 
 gers dropped ofif. The Tommy drew 
 his blade out of the two bleeding 
 stumps and stabbed the old man to 
 the heart. The Boer fell dead. 
 
 Then the Kent man unfixed his 
 bayonet, wiped the blood off on his 
 sleeve, fixed it again, and fell back 
 into his place in the column. 
 
 "You beast !" thought I, and wait- 
 ed for him to pass me, expecting 
 him to have the face of a fiend. 
 
 As he came near, he turned his 
 head my way and I got a good look 
 at him. It was a worse shock than 
 the sight of him killing the Boer. 
 
 In his face zvas everything that 
 manhood holds best. He was a tine- 
 looking fellow — a man of character. 
 
 Two days before, I had killed a 
 man myself. It was in a skirmish. 
 My regimental chum sang out at me, 
 "Step right!" I did so instinctively, 
 and this fellow lunged past me, and 
 fell with the force of his missed 
 blow. I brought down the butt of 
 my rifle on his skull and crushed it, 
 as one breaks an egg. 
 
 All the rest of the day I vomited 
 at intervals. Once I cried. I could 
 not eat. Two days earlier had come 
 a letter from my mother asking me 
 
 not to take life if I could help it. . . . 
 It wasn't the letter. It was the phy- 
 sical shock of seeing a man's brains 
 beaten in like jelly. I made up my 
 mind then and there that I had had 
 enough of patriotism. 
 
 Toward the end of the war I was 
 detailed with forty-nine other troop- 
 ers to act as escort to the present 
 King and Queen. They were then 
 Duke and Duchess of York. The 
 honor was supposed to be ours. 
 
 Riding along the streets under the 
 hot sun, between crowds of cheering 
 people, and eyeing this undersized 
 man, I fell to comparing him with 
 the men of his bodyguard, forty-nine 
 fine, strapping fellows. I cannot be- 
 gin to tell you the shock it gave me. 
 
 That, for me, was the beginning 
 of the end. The contrast between 
 this Duke and the men of his body- 
 guard did the business for me. Later 
 it dawned on me that I had been 
 fighting an honest, hard-working 
 Boer peasantry for the sake of a 
 gang of London financiers. 
 
 If ever I take up a gun again it 
 will not be in cold blood. But I'll 
 fight for the poor against this rotten 
 commercialism, even if I and my 
 wife and children have to go down 
 into the gutter for it. 
 
 April, 1914. 
 
 I have five men to work the life- 
 boats. According to the company's 
 books I have fifty — the captain and 
 five officers, the four quartermasters 
 (who steer the ship), the boatswain 
 and boatswain's mate, and his ser- 
 vant (a boy of ten), the carpenter, 
 the carpenter's assistant, the joiner 
 — and so on. Actually, however, I 
 have five. Five to keep the ship 
 clean and work the boats. The rest 
 have to be on station. The result is 
 that we have to clean ship all night 
 and work boats all day; we can't 
 
 8 
 
RADICAL'S PROGRESS 
 
 turn the hose on the decks when the 
 passengers are about. And the boats 
 are in terrible shape, and getting 
 worse all the time. I need fifty-five 
 men instead of fifty men. Last trip 
 I reported a raft with air-tank punc- 
 tured, impairing its buoyancy. Noth- 
 ing done about it. Capacity : thirty 
 persons. She'd drown thirty per- 
 sons. And yet I am expected to 
 bring the ship in clean with her 
 boats in working order. It simply 
 cannot be done. And the money 
 saved on extra men whom the com- 
 pany won't hire, the company is 
 dragging out of our hides by over- 
 work. I have a conscience. I won't let 
 things go. So I work myself like a 
 dog to keep things up. In Liverpool, 
 after the last trip, I lay down on my 
 couch for a nap, and slept twenty- 
 five hours without waking. My wife 
 and a neighbor put me to bed. Until 
 I was told, I never knew how I got 
 there. 
 
 We officers know what it is to be 
 thirty hours on our feet. I have 
 been forty hours without sleep or 
 rest, living on my pipe. After a 
 siege like that, we go to sleep while 
 we are walking the bridge. Our 
 bodies keep awake, but nothing un- 
 der heavens can keep our minds 
 awake. I have been waked by 
 bumping against the binnacle as I 
 walked, or by banging my head 
 against a stanchion ; or we even 
 bump into each other. Heads soggy. 
 Think quickl)^ we couldn't, not if we 
 had to. 
 
 November, 1913. 
 
 On that trip to New York our 
 Hungarian crew deserted. The Bal- 
 kan War had broken out and they 
 were afraid that on the return they 
 would be seized and sent to the 
 front. We had to go to sea with a 
 crew of Italian peanut-venders from 
 
 West Street, who didn't know the 
 meaning of a nautical term, and 
 could not even understand my lan- 
 guage. 
 
 The first morning at sea I had to 
 go down into the forecastle with a 
 cudgel and drive them out. It was 
 foggy and blowing a bit, and under 
 such conditions the wind usually 
 howls. No sooner were they on 
 deck than she took the spray of a 
 wave over her bow and drenched 
 them; drenched me, too. With that 
 they all fell flat on the deck, raising 
 their hands and screeching "Madon- 
 na Christi !" 
 
 To get one of them into the crow's 
 nest on lookout, I had to rig a tackle, 
 pass a loop line under his armpits, 
 and hoist him up. They couldn't even 
 swing out a boat on its davits. We 
 had to wait until dark before swing- 
 ing out the two emergency boats 
 which we always keep ready, and 
 then we had to get the officers 
 out to do it. Dared not do it when 
 the passengers were about. With 
 such a crew we were navigating a 
 ship with two thousand souls aboard 
 of her. 
 
 When we got back to Liverpool I 
 told the general manager about this. 
 
 "What would you advise?" he 
 asked. 
 
 "I'd advise, if you couldn't get a 
 crew in New York, to get one in 
 Boston, and if not in Boston, then 
 along the New England coast where 
 they grow real sailors, even if it cost 
 you £100 to the man. That would 
 be better than carrying two thou- 
 sand people at the risk of their lives, 
 with a crew that can do nothing, not 
 even understand what is said to 
 them." 
 
 "You are not a business man," 
 says he. 
 
 "No," I said, "I am a sailor." 
 
RADICAL'S PROGRESS 
 
 "It came out all right ; it was good 
 business," was his remark. 
 
 But some of us have consciences, 
 and such a reply as that doesn't sat- 
 isfy the conscience of an officer who 
 is entrusted with the responsibility 
 for those two thousand lives. 
 
 September, 1912. 
 
 For the past month we have been 
 idle in London, owing to the strike. 
 I sent for my wife to come down 
 and we took digs right in the slums 
 of the dock. We wanted to see how 
 the very poorest live. 
 
 The striking dock laborers in Lon- 
 don have been quiet and orderly. It 
 was in Liverpool that the rioting 
 took place — the Irish element. My 
 wife and I went among them where 
 they were gathered by the thou- 
 sands, and not an ugly word were 
 we offered. I have gone down 
 aboard ship at one and two o'clock 
 when they would all be out in the 
 streets, — they had nothing else to 
 do, — and no one offered to mo- 
 lest me. 
 
 They told me it was hardest on 
 the kiddies. Whole families were 
 starving. I was amazed at the pluck 
 of these men. It takes pluck to 
 tighten your belt another hole each 
 day and say nothing. 
 
 These fellows and their families 
 were sober and clean : a very good 
 type. They expected the strike to 
 last much longer than it did, and 
 were prepared to suffer accordingl}^ 
 Even when they began to starve 
 there was no sign of yielding. That's 
 courage, when you have nothing to 
 back you. 
 
 . . . Don't think our new Associa- 
 tion [a seaman's union] is going to 
 confine its operations to the better- 
 ment of sailor's conditions only. The 
 traveling public is to be taken into 
 consideration also. If ever I reach 
 
 the giddy height of command of a 
 company passenger steamer, I feel, 
 now, that I shall get sacked inside of 
 a year. I'll be up against my con- 
 science and the old order of things. 
 I have now been elected a member 
 of the Executive Committee in Lon- 
 don. This may, very soon, bring my 
 name into print ; and it remains to 
 be seen whether the company will 
 have the intelligence to see in my 
 actions a desire to remedy crying 
 evils, or if it will look on me as a 
 damned agitator and get rid of me 
 as such. 
 
 April, 1913. 
 
 My career as a committeeman of 
 the union was brief and stormy. 
 
 During the strike a meeting was 
 called in London to indict the ship- 
 owners for certain practices. The 
 leading journals sent their best 
 pressmen. The accusations were be- 
 ing read by a member of the com- 
 mittee. 
 
 I interrupted : "Those charges are 
 not true." 
 
 "Are you with us or against us?" 
 demanded the chairman. 
 
 "I am not with you," I told him, 
 "when you make charges which are 
 not true." 
 
 "How do you know they are not 
 true?" said he. 
 
 "I can go aboard my ship and 
 within an hour bring back copies of 
 the company's regulations to prove 
 it," I replied, "and I warn these gen- 
 tlemen of the press that if they go to 
 print with these charges, knowing 
 that they have been challenged, I 
 will go over their head to their edi- 
 tors." 
 
 The meeting adjourned in confu- 
 sion. 
 
 "Couldn't you let this pass?" the 
 committeeman said. "Isn't it better 
 
 10 
 
RADICAL'S PROGRESS 
 
 for our cause to allow it to go un- 
 challenged?" 
 
 "Nothing is good for your cause 
 which is a knowing falsehood," I 
 told them, "and I decline to have any 
 share in a struggle conducted on 
 such lines." 
 
 July, 1905. 
 
 On that voyage we touched at 
 Odessa during one of the pogroms. 
 The ship lay directly in the line of 
 fire from a height where the Cos- 
 sacks were stationed. Sometimes 
 the bullets would ping! against the 
 vessel's side. We had to keep un- 
 der cover. Close to the docks where 
 we lay was a heap of the dead, — 
 Jews, of course. To go ashore in 
 the daytime was almost certainly to 
 be shot. But at night we would 
 crawl out, sneak ashore, and pull the 
 half-dead living out from this heap 
 of corpses and carry them aboard. 
 Among others, we got out a woman 
 and two of her children. I gave up 
 my room to her. Two more of her 
 children and her husband lay dead 
 in the heap. She wept most of the 
 time. . . . 
 
 Two years afterward, whilst I was 
 "second-extra" on the run between 
 Liverpool and New York, on deck 
 duty, I was walking through the 
 steerage one day when some one 
 without any warning whatever threw 
 an arm around my neck and kissed 
 me. I flung away and saw to my 
 disgust that it was an untidy Jewish 
 woman. She seized both my hands 
 and kept repeating, — 
 
 "Odess'! Odess'!" 
 
 Then it all came over me. She 
 was the same woman we had 
 dragged out of that heap, and was 
 coming out to New York with her 
 brother. 
 
 Ill 
 
 LAND OF PROMISE 
 
 September 1, 1915. 
 
 You may be rather surprised to 
 hear of my new venture. 
 
 The fact is, I had it out with my- 
 self after finishing with the com- 
 pany, and have taken to the land, 
 farming. Your friend is now a 
 farmer. 
 
 In my last letter I merely said 
 that the money-bags had decided to 
 dispense with my services. The 
 chairman, in a very nice manner, 
 told me that after long deliberation 
 and thought the board of directors 
 had decided that I was not a proper 
 person to command one of their 
 ships, as my line of thought and 
 speech and my many unofficer-like 
 acts had led them to suppose that 
 company interests would suflFer un- 
 less I altered my views to suit com- 
 pany traditions. 
 
 I merely told them that I did more 
 than an honest day's work for a 
 day's pay, and beyond that, I con- 
 sidered that my thoughts and actions 
 belonged to myself and I would take 
 care that they were not influenced 
 in any way by company dictates. 
 
 That ended everything. Their de- 
 cision was made final, and from that 
 moment your friend ceased to be a 
 sailor. 
 
 Certain of the officials were taken 
 aback at my attitude and expressed 
 surprise. 
 
 "Gentlemen," I said, "your deci- 
 sion leaves me undismayed, and the 
 cloud that has been hanging over me 
 for years has parted and left me 
 once more in the light." 
 
 Several offered me their services 
 outside the company, but I declined 
 them. 
 
 They asked me to remember my 
 wife and two children. I replied that 
 they were my care, not theirs. 
 
 11 
 
RADICAL'S PROGRESS 
 
 They seemed staggered, and con- 
 cluded that I must be possessed of 
 private means, and could therefore 
 afford to stick to my principles. 
 
 All that now seems a long time 
 ago. Since leaving I have had a 
 happy time. I have walked a hun- 
 dred miles on this island looking for 
 a suitable place, and at last I have 
 found one. Let me describe it to 
 you. 
 
 Compared to my house in Liver- 
 pool, the farmhouse is a hovel. It is 
 perched up on the mountain side 
 with a glorious view and glorious 
 air; also, one can catch a decent 
 glimpse of the sea. There are eighty- 
 seven acres of land to the place, a 
 good lot of it heather-clad. It is 
 situated close to the highest moun- 
 tain. The post comes three times a 
 week, and to post a letter means a 
 four-mile walk. Grub is awfully dif- 
 ficult to get until I have a horse and 
 cart. I've had to make a six-rnile 
 walk for it to town, and six miles 
 back, using the baby-cart as motive 
 power. Water for the house means 
 a walk up the mountain side about a 
 thousand yards. 
 
 But we are all happy. I have 
 started with a hive of bees, a fifty- 
 thousand colony. In time I'll get 
 about thirty hives if the bees do well 
 up here during the winter. What 
 worries us most at present are the 
 fleas. The place is swarming with 
 them. The people who had the place 
 before must have been dirty. Is it 
 true that country people generally 
 are so? 
 
 When I get the house in order, I 
 am going to buy stock and imple- 
 ments and start ploughing up a few 
 fields. I have built a small wall 
 already. The place now looks like 
 
 a jail. In fact, I've called it "B 
 
 Jail." But there are great possibili- 
 
 ties in it. When I get really settled 
 and known, I am going in for poli- 
 tics. Of course you will probably 
 know that the island has Home Rule. 
 In time, I think, I shall be able to 
 devote quite a lot of time to, having 
 a spar with the feudal system which 
 is so strong here. As an instance, a 
 wife is a chattel. She cannot possess 
 personal property : it all goes to the 
 husband when she passes into the 
 married state. There are quite a lot 
 of such things that require modern- 
 izing. I won't be idle in the Cause. 
 It is going to be hard work for a 
 year or so, and I have no illusions 
 on the matter. So long as I have 
 won my battle over myself and have 
 had my scrap with capitalism, I am 
 happy. The loss of social position 
 doesn't cost me a wink of sleep. . . . 
 Expecting this to happen some day. 
 I have saved all I knew how, and I 
 feel sure that I shall win over the 
 critical period long before my sav- 
 ings are exhausted. We are out of 
 writing paper and it means a twelve- 
 mile walk to the nearest store, so I 
 am using up sonny's scribbling pad. 
 
 October 3, 1915. 
 
 The pigs are fed, the goat milked, 
 and I have just robbed the hens of 
 an tgg or two. So now I can sit 
 down and thank you for your letter 
 and book. I was painting the gate 
 when the postman brought your let- 
 ter this morning, just smartening up 
 the place a bit before ploughing 
 starts. Really, I am taking to work 
 very kindly, though my hands are in 
 a shocking state and my back gives 
 me gip nearly all the time. 
 
 But it is glorious to feel that every 
 clod of earth I break is not done for 
 a man who thunders along at forty 
 knots an hour in a motor car bought 
 by the sweat of me and my like. 
 Since I have been out in the wilds I 
 
 12 
 
RADICAL'S PROGRESS 
 
 have scarcely had the slightest head- 
 ache. Before, I was all headaches, 
 caused from threshing out the prob- 
 lems that meant either suicide or lib- 
 erty. My position was untenable ; 
 more so than you can ever know. I 
 had either to abandon my convic- 
 tions and ideals, gathered in a life's 
 journey, or get out. I was asked 
 to accept company dictums, thereby 
 strengthening my position and clear- 
 ing all obstacles out of the way of 
 future promotion. Fate — or some- 
 thing stronger — decided for me. I 
 have lost friends and position, and 
 according to many officers in the 
 company, I have thrown away the 
 substance to obtain the shadow. But 
 you and I know which is the sub- 
 stance and which the shadow. 
 
 As I have told you, I knew long 
 ago that I had to make my choice 
 before the company would give me 
 command. It may have been inten- 
 tion or it may have been accidental 
 — the timing of it — after the Dar- 
 danelles, when I had reached the 
 pinnacle of Chief Officership. Wheth- 
 er I would have been man enough 
 to defy them if I had not been 
 through the Dardanelles business I 
 do not know ; but I do know that no 
 power on earth could have forced 
 me to lend a helping hand at such 
 wholesale slaughter again after what 
 I saw and felt. 
 
 Whether my country is right or 
 wrong in the cause of the war, I say 
 that it is absolutely wrong to see 
 countless thousands of its best youth 
 slaughtered in such cruel zvays. There 
 must be other ways of settling such 
 disputes, and to demolish monarchy 
 and capitalism would go a long way. 
 Labor on our side is causing a lot 
 of trouble. All unions are dead set 
 against war profits, and friend Lloyd 
 George more than anybody. It is 
 
 practically impossible now for any 
 concern to make more than an or- 
 dinary peace-day profit. And Labor 
 is right. Why, in the first months 
 of the war, when war spirit was at 
 fever heat, the men lost sight of the 
 fact that whilst they were sweating 
 and cheering, some firms were mak- 
 ing 60% profits; others, over 100%, 
 and others again nearly 200%. The 
 Welsh miners were, I think, the first 
 to resume their senses and ask what 
 the employers were doing. The 
 country got quite a shock. Why, 
 the company was making more than 
 three times the profit of ordinary 
 years; and this in a year of war, 
 when food and necessities are nearly 
 30%! higher than in normal times. 
 Ships were run with four instead of 
 seven officers. The extra work came 
 out of our hides without extra pay. 
 After the Dardanelles business I was 
 nearer the lunatic asylum than, I 
 hope, I shall ever be again. One can- 
 not work seventy hours at a stretch 
 in a broiling sun with guns roaring 
 night and day, airships dropping 
 bombs, and men being mangled into 
 lumps of unrecognizable flesh and 
 bone, without its wearing one out. 
 It was not so much the overwork as 
 the thought that stabbed me night 
 and day, that no small part of the 
 class that caused this slaughter are 
 lounging in places where their skins 
 are as safe as in peace times. I used 
 to see red and want to get at their 
 throats. 
 
 I feel now that I can never destroy 
 life again. The beasts I have so far 
 will never lose their blood by my 
 hands. I have a she-goat that fol- 
 lows me around like a dog. I could 
 never hurt her. Many a good din- 
 ner I could have killed here — par- 
 tridge, hare, or grouse — but I find 
 it impossible to do so. 
 
 13 
 
RADICAL'S PROGRESS 
 
 Why, when I went to the well the 
 other day for water, out of it jumped 
 a frog. I simply took it twenty 
 yards away and let it go, knowing 
 full well that it would hop back in 
 again as soon as I cleared out. 
 
 This may seem to you an ex- 
 traordinary state of mind for a 
 farmer to be in, but the fact' is, I 
 have promised myself not to take life 
 in any shape or form again if I can 
 possibly avoid it. The Dardanelles 
 and my bees have cured me of all in- 
 clination to be cruel to man or beast. 
 When the weather is dry and I have 
 a minute to spare, I sit by my hive 
 and watch the bees work. I have 
 them all over my face and hands, 
 and I seldom get a sting, and then 
 only from a tired bee returning with 
 its hind bags heavy with nectar 
 from the heather. 
 
 The adverse judgment of your 
 friends on my conduct is interesting. 
 It would be impossible, I suppose, 
 for them to see the case as I saw it. 
 And again, the majority of men are 
 against destroying a structure of 
 which they are bricks, or even per- 
 haps the props and builders. Give 
 them a dose of bloodshed such as 
 Europe is having and give them the 
 same causes of it; then, perhaps, 
 they would find it impossible, as I 
 did, to carry on. Let some of them 
 be tried, and see how they ring. It 
 is so hard for men who have been 
 nursed all their lives to comprehend 
 what human suffering is and what 
 causes it. One must get out and see 
 
 it. To do this some men cannot 
 pluck up enough courage ; others do 
 not dare for fear of social ostracism. 
 Self, always. For a man to shoulder 
 others' burdens and realize that he 
 actually is his brother's keeper re- 
 quires self-effacement, and I sup- 
 pose no man can do good work until 
 that self-effacement takes place. 
 
 At first it struck me as selfish and 
 cowardly to bury myself out here. 
 But what else could I have done? 
 Even if I had the stomach for it 
 now, the firing line would not take 
 me. I have sworn never to serve 
 capitalism again, and that means, of 
 course, that I shall never again go 
 to sea. As you see, I have simply 
 been forced out of society. 
 
 . . . I'm scarcely myself even 
 yet. In fact, I shall never be my old 
 self again. The Dardanelles knocked 
 that old self out of me, and has 
 made me a bitter enemy of the titled 
 and capitalist classes. I have al- 
 ways been opposed to them, but 
 without hatred. Today I hate them 
 with a hate that will die only with 
 me. Those thousands of maimed 
 men and thousands of others being 
 blown into the air by shrapnel have 
 seared me to my very soul. I only 
 ask now to be shown the way to 
 fight the causes responsible for such 
 wholesale butchery. 
 
 No, comrade, I can never again 
 be as you have known me. I have 
 suffered too much from what I have 
 seen. 
 
 14 
 
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