and Service, and when she answered emphatically that every
soldier in the United States army was fulfilling to the highest degree
his obligations to that law, both pacifists and conscientious
objectors dissented noisily, and a student from Columbia College got
up and began to harangue the audience.

Order was finally obtained: Palla added a word or two and retired; and
Ilse Westgard came forward.

Somebody in the audience called out: "Say, just because you're a
good-looker it don't mean you got a brain!"

Ilse threw back her golden head and her healthy laughter rang
uncontrolled.

"Comrade," she said, "we all have to do the best we can with what
brain we have, don't we?"

"Sure!" came from her grinning heckler, who seemed quite won over by
her good humour.

So, an armistice established, Ilse plunged vigorously into her theme:

"Let me tell you something which you all know in your hearts: any
class revolution based on violence and terrorism is doomed to
failure."

"Don't be too sure of that!" shouted a man.

"I am sure of it. And you will never see any reign of terror in
America."

"But you may see Bolshevism here--Bolshevist propaganda--Bolshevist
ideas penetrating. You may see these ideas accepted by Labor. You may
see strikes--the most senseless and obsolete weapon ever wielded by
thinking men; you may see panics, tie-ups, stagnation, misery. But you
never shall see Bolshevism triumphant here, or permanently triumphant
anywhere.

"Because Bolshevism is autocracy!"

"The hell it is!" yelled an I. W. W.

"Yes," said Ilse cheerfully, "as you have said it is hell. And hell is
an end, not a means, not a remedy.

"Because it is the negation of all socialism; the death of civilisation.
And civilisation has an immortal destiny; and that destiny is
socialism!"

A man interrupted, but she asked him so sweetly for a few moments more
that he reseated himself.

"Comrades," she said, "I know something about Bolshevism and
revolution. I was a soldier of Russia. I carried a rifle and full
pack. I was part of what is history. And I learned to be tolerant in
the trenches; and I learned to love this unhappy human race of ours.
And I learned what is Bolshevism.

"It is one of many protests against the exploitation of men by men. It
is one of the many reactions against intolerable wrong. It is not a
policy; it is an outburst against injustice; against the stupidity of
present conditions, where the few monopolise t