- bor, the distributors were arrested, and the judge declared
that he wished he could get the editors of the paper.
In connection with this meeting, there was a humorous incident which ought to be mentioned. Among the statements made by Miss Bryant was that the Bolsheviki had taken Odessa because the French troops had refused to fight them; several companies had gone over to the enemy. This statement was published in the "New Justice," and was among those which the Los Angeles newspapers refused to admit to their columns. Louise Bryant had travelled all over the country making the statement, and almost everywhere the capitalist press refused to print it. But two months later came an Associated Press despatch from Paris; the Odessa incident had become the subject of interpellations in the French parliament—so at last the news was out that French troops had mutinied when ordered to fight the Bolsheviki!
Now comest the joke of the matter. To the Associated Press despatch, the "New York Times" added the following comment:
The account of the mutiny of the seamen on the French Black
Sea Fleet, given by M. Goude in the French Chamber, rationally
explains for the first time the extraordinary events which took place at
Odessa on April 8, the day the city was evacuated by the Allies and
by all the population who could get away.
Don't you think those words, "for the first time," are
funny? Almost as funny as the story of "Tom Muni" from
Petrograd!
And then President Wilson comes to Los Angeles, and there is held in the largest music auditorium in the city a mass meeting of two thousand citizens, which unanimously submits to the President a request for amnesty for political prisoners. The "Los Angeles Times" gave this meeting not one word. I am invited to address the City Club of Los Angeles, and I tell them of this failure of the "Times" to report the news. Whereupon the "Times" starts a campaign to have me put in jail! I quote its first editorial; they have followed it up, every other day for a couple of weeks—they are quite determined that I shall go to jail!
Get the I. W. W. Seditionists! And lock them up. Tight! Right!
But why let Upton Sinclair roam at large? He spits more poison than
the cheap skate. It is villainy to promote anarchy in these ticklish
times Blood will be on the heads of some of the civic club managers,
