- endo, his anti-climax coming when he left the rostrum to conduct a
canvassing of his audience for prospective subscribers to his magazine and purchasers of stock in same. When the police officers appeared on the scene, nothing of treasonable nor anarchistic nature was heard.
Eastman's address contained many statements so preposterous that even the most gullible refused to believe them. He demanded that Eugene Debs, Thomas J. Mooney and all I. W. W.'s in jail should be freed and advised his hearers to emulate the Russian Bolsheviks and rise in revolution.
Only a scant audience heard the address.
As it happens, I do not have to ask the reader to take
either my word or Eastman's about this meeting. Here is
part of a letter written to Max Ihmsen, managing editor of
the "Los Angeles Examiner," by Rob Wagner, artist and
author of "Film Folk."
Mar. 2, 1919.
Dear Max Ihmsen:
The other night Mrs. Wagner, Charlie Chaplin and I, seeking light on darkest Russia, went to hear Max Eastman's lecture. During what we thought was a very thoughtful and unimpassioned address, he made the statement that the press of the country was in a deliberate conspiracy to withhold or color all news from that country.
We all felt that he was unfair in including all the papers with those notorious offenders, such as the "Times," from which one could expect nothing else. But the next morning we read an account of the lecture in the "Examiner" that was false from the headline to the final sentence, which said: "Only a scant audience heard the address."
The lecture was not broken up by the police; in fact if there were any police present no one even saw them. The chairman announced that Mr. Eastman would speak on Russia; then Mr. McBride would tell them about their magazine; and then at the end Mr. Eastman would answer questions. The program was finished exactly that way, without the slightest interruption, and to the very sympathetic applause of some twenty-five hundred auditors.
Nor did Mr. Eastman insult the President. In urging the withdrawal of American troops from Russia—a policy vigorously urged by Hearst papers—he simply stated that there was a striking inconsistency between President Wilson's words and his deeds; for when the President addressed his memorandum on the Marmora conference he assured the delegates that America had absolutely no interest in the internal affairs of Russia, and would not take sides; while at that moment he was commander-in-chief of an army that was at war with the Russians on two fronts.
Rob Wagner went on to explain that he wrote this protest
"in the kindliest spirit"; and Mr. Ihmsen in reply expressed
his regret, and promised to investigate the matter. You
remember how it was with the express companies in the old
