their friends of the Third
International, the Bolsheviki, invade the United States.

At this question the redoubtable Mr. Hillquit, according to the "New
York Times" of February 18, 1920, "settled back in his chair and smiled"
and said: "I should say that the Socialists of the United States would
have no hesitancy whatsoever in joining forces with the rest of their
countrymen to repel the Bolsheviki who would try to invade our country
_and force a form of government upon our people which our people were
not ready for and did not desire_." (Italics mine.)

Had Hillquit stopped where the italics began he would have stretched our
credulity to the utmost. But if "our people" meant to him American
Socialists, we readily believe that invading Bolsheviki, coming to wrest
the American dictatorship from our native talent, would find themselves
and their undesirable "form of government" pitched into the sea by
Hillquit and his crowd. Majority Socialist against Spartacide and
Bolshevik against Menshivik--we have seen how one Socialist group repels
the "form of government" forced by another.

When we think of the heroic exploits of Hillquit in repelling foreign
invaders from America about 1917-18, can we not imagine him hurling one
of his deadly manifestoes at his Bolsheviki friends? No doubt when
Comrade Martens, the vanguard of the invading Bolsheviki, stormed
Hillquit's castle on Riverside Drive with a fee and a commission as
"Councillor," the outraged patriot crashed a receipt in full against the
invader's outstretched paw.

As we think of Hillquit's love for peaceful "political action"--on the
witness stand--those words from his foundling, the "New York Call" of
May 1, 1919, return to our minds:

"The world revolution, dreamed of as a thing of the distant future,
has become a live reality, rising from the graves of the murdered
millions and the misery and suffering of the surviving millions. It
has taken form, it strikes forward, borne on by the despair of the
masses and the shining example of the martyrs: its spread is
irrepressible....

"The war of the nations has been followed by the war of the
classes. The class struggle is no longer fought by resolutions and
demonstrations. Threateningly it marches through the streets of the
great cities for life or death."

Mr. William English Walling, in an article published in the "New York
Times," January 20, 1920, asks a perti