organize for propaganda; it has learned the arts of hate. Today all the energies which were directed against the Kaiser have been turned against the radicals; also the spy-system which the government developed for the war has been turned against the radicals. Government agents raid their offices and seize their letters, and these letters are spread broadcast in the capitalist press—duly doctored, of course, and supplied with commentaries to distort their meaning.
For example, the "Lusk Committee" of the New York State Legislature holds a secret session with the executives of the New York newspapers (June 3, 1919, at the Murray Hill Hotel), and lays out its campaign in detail. It then proceeds, with a carload of soldiers and detectives, to raid the Rand School of Social Science; taking along a secret service agent of the British government, which is shooting radicals in Ireland and India, and wishes to find out all it can about their supporters in America. They find a manuscript, outlining a plan for propaganda among negroes. It was a rejected manuscript, as it happens; but the Lusk Committee "accepts" it, and spreads it broadcast. I shiver, contemplating the day when they raid my office, and publish all the queer manuscripts that arrive in my day's mail! Manuscripts of health-cures, manuscripts of bible-prophecies, manuscripts of plans to abolish money, to communicate with Mars, to exterminate the vermin in the Los Angeles County Jail!
Also they find a circular of the Rand School, saying that the Socialists "must prepare to take over the government." They publish this in the newspapers with horrified clamor: Sedition! Treason! Let the charter of the Rand School be annulled! As if there were any political party or political association in America which does not propose to take over the government! As if there were anything else which any political party or political association could propose!
Among the other seditious documents are some copies of "The Profits of Religion," which gives occasion for sarcasm from the investigators. They propose to investigate "the profits of agitation"; so they spread broadcast the fact that Scott Nearing was paid six hundred dollars by the Rand School—and deny Nearing an opportunity to testify that part of this was payment for lectures delivered outside of the school, for which the school had collected the money on a
