March 17, 1918 — Woman’s Dining Club, Baltimore Hotel, Kansas City MO

Some of you may be disappointed in what you hear from me tonight. I doubt whether you will hear what you want to hear. I feel that I should tell you that the stand I took in regard to Socialism shortly after America’s entry into the war is not the stand I take today. I have returned to the views I formerly held. . .

Surely there is not a capitalist or a well-informed person in the world today who believes that this war is being fought to make the world safe for democracy. It is being fought to make the world safe for capital, so that those who control the industrial machinery of England, France, America, Germany, Russia and Italy can dispose of the overproduction of the workers of those countries in lands less highly organized or not organized at all.

If America had entered the war for the ideal of democracy our armies would have gone to Europe when Belgium was ravished, or at least when the Lusitania went down. But no, we did not start to fight until our dollars were in danger. We had to fight or revise our top heavy industrial system.

When Russia deposed its czar we heard from a great deal of handclapping from the world but what did you hear when the real revolution took place? Not commendation at least. Russia is the threat against industrial serfdom and I have no doubt that there is a gentlemen’s agreement to bleed her to death and then, the capitalistic gentlemen, of, shall we say, any countries, sit around the green table and parcel Russia and the rest of the world into economic spheres, which our workers must slave to maintain.

Source: Los Angeles Times, March 18, 1918, p. 13.