reach perfection, a privilege granted only to the gods. MOTHER EARTH is human, all too human, therefore it will, no doubt, continue to blunder and be faulty. However, MOTHER EARTH will never recede from her position, she will never yield to conventions or shirk consequences, she will remain undaunted and she will be heard! With this bold declaration, MOTHER EARTH makes her tenth bow to the world. To all those who have loved and sustained and encouraged her, she sends once more her greeting and her deep appreciation. EMMA GOLDMAN. Owing to the fact that this is an Anniversary number we have been compelled to leave all other matter, including important comments, for the April issue. Also articles about the three Comrades which the Revolutionary movement has lost this month: Jack Whyte, George Brown and our French Comrade, Old Zibelin. Tributary articles to them will appear next month. N EW YORK seems far, far away-almost two thousand miles separate me from dear old Gotham —but my mind reverts to the familiar scenes, and my spirit dwells again among the friends and comrades gathered to celebrate the tenth anniversary of our little magazine, MOTHER EARTH. And well we may celebrate the occasion. Nine long years of an uphill fight against tremendous odds, a quiet day-by-day fight, made more difficult because of the lack of the spectacular and the hopelessness of "immediate" results. I once heard some one say that no periodical has a right to exist more than ten years. A decade is sufficient -he argued to make even the most radical publication "established" and conservative, and therefore a traitor to its initial spirit and purpose. The more reason have our friends to rejoice at the tenth anniversary of MOTHER EARTH, for even nine years have not "established" the magazine in the sense of financial success, nor turned it conservative, for MOTHER EARTH is as badly out spoken and as uncompromising to-day as was in its first issue of nine years ago. The reason for it is obvious and fortunate. Our magazine voices a movement; it is not the organ of a party. A party-political or otherwise-necessarily becomes more circumscribed in thought, more rigid in feeling and timid in action, in proportion as it grows in numbers and power. A movement, on the contrary, is inherently flexible, constantly forced to widen its boundaries, and to receive new inspiration and courage through the influx of new elements. MOTHER Anarchism is a social philosophy, a revolutionary tendency, a popular movement-never a party. EARTH seeks to voice the various expressions of the Anarchist spirit. Let us rejoice that that spirit and its voice, by their very nature, defy all that is rigid and hide-bound. I suppose that in the life of every revolutionist there is a period as there was in my life-when the words "Social Revolution" charmed forth the vision of a great upheaval, beginning perhaps in some little incident of rebellion, unexpected and sudden, and as suddenly sweeping the country-aye, the whole world-with the fire of a tremendous revolutionary uprising destined to end, after a short period of transition, in the triumph of Communist Anarchism. But Time tempers the impatience of Youth with the clarified perception of experience and understanding. Slowly, but imperatively, life forces us to learn to conceive of the Social Revolution as something less cataclysmic and mechanical, something more definite and humanly real. Not over night, nor from over the mountains, Messiahlike, comes revolution, much less the Social Revolution. If the latter means a complete and lasting social change, a fundamental reorganization of life based on the revaluation of popular ideas and conceptions, then it necessitates the gradual-primarily individual-substitution of new values for old ones. Human institutions are founded upon generally accepted, and therefore dominant, ideas. To uproot the former it is necessary to revolutionize the concepts underlying them. That is the most vital work within the daily evolutionary process of society. Its accelerated pulse-beats, called revolutions, are merely the mileposts indicating the distance covered; they measure individual growth within social progress; they materialize the conscious striving toward enlarged individual selfownership, increased economic opportunity, and greater social liberty. Many and various are the streams that pour into life's ocean, constantly agitating the apparently even flow of its waters. But never can this or that particular storm of itself force life into new channels. Rather, I take it, do the various disturbing elements-however different in tendency or often even antagonistic in purposeconspire to agitate the lazy currents of human thought, awakening discontent and discussion, breaking down old traditions and dead men's barriers, and ultimately crystalizing into broader conceptions and higher aspirations, interpreted into action. If the above be true, how vital then and significant is the propaganda of Anarchism, which seeks no illusory temporary advantage or the fickle acclaim of the unawakened. Rather does it labor to vitalize the selfconsciousness of the social units and groups, to revolutionize understanding and stimulate emotion, to inspire the daring that translates ideals into reality and thus serves to undermine the accepted, the static and ossified. To rouse humanity to continuously greater self-consciousness-the first step toward self-ownership and assertionis the purpose of Anarchist propaganda. What it is accomplishing can be doubted only by the willfully blind. In every phase of human activity the Anarchic spirit, the conscious breaking of old fetters and constant striving for greater liberty, is manifesting itself in no uncertain manner. In art and science, in literature and the drama, in education and the rearing of children, in the family and the attitude of woman-everywhere there is going on a progressive breaking of ikons, a bold and determined seeking of new paths. Post-impressionism in art and literature, futurism in painting and philosophy, humanism in science, the rebellion of woman, the increasing menace of the disinherited, awakening to the dignity of man and the power of labor -what are all these but manifestations of the Anarchist spirit, the creation of new human and social values? Here and there, it is true, the breath of reaction casts poisonous blackness athwart the path of light. It blinds the vision of man, and tortures him with the madness of the past. He loses his way, and gropes in the darkness; he mistakes friend for foe, and drenches the earth with the blood of his brothers. And all seems dark, and men lose hope. Carnage walks the earth. The stench fills the air; it grows overpowering. It disgusts and revolts. The mind staggers at the ghastly sight; hearts pant for breath and air, and then-the black clouds break, strong rays pierce the dark, and the cry of sobered hearts and minds beats back the foul madness and stamps the bloody fetich into the graveyard of the past. Out of its ashes rises a clearer perception and a strengthened will. The will to be, to grow, to assert. The old lies dead, destroyed. No power can wake it into life again. The debris is cleared away, and the newer vision turns from the blackened old paths and casts about for a broader, freer road. The dynamic genius of liberty accelerates the pulse of humanity and vitalizes its firmer step. May the tenth year of MOTHER EARTH contribute its share in this rejuvenation, and shed light and inspiration upon the broader, freer road. We have received the following night-letter from Comrade Alexander Berkman: "Stories credited to me by the press regarding Lexington explosion are faked-no truth in them whatever." ** ANARCHY-Absence of government; disbelief in, and disregard of invasion and authority based on coercion and force; a condition of society regulated by voluntary agreement instead of government. N MOTHER EARTH 1905-1915. BY HARRY KELLY. INE years have slipped over the divide since a half dozen of the faithful gathered at the office of Dr. Solotaroff, on East Broadway, to discuss ways and means of launching a new publication based upon libertarian principles. Several meetings were held, and then, as always, an individual took the initative and the publication MOTHER EARTH appeared. The original intention was to make a magazine similar to L'Humanite Nouvelle, that brilliant and scholarly publication issued at Brussels, but time quickly changed all that. In our opinion the general or average standard of intelligence is higher in America than it is in Europe, but as for a real intellectual class it is so small as to be almost negligible. People familiar with the revolutionary movement in this country know how scornful and disgusted the European idealist becomes after a short stay here. The idealism of Russia, the revolutionary spirit of the Latin worker and the sturdy independence of the Teuton and Anglo-Saxon are talked about and compared to the disadvantage of Americans with their crass materialism and greed for money. The real facts are that the idealism and revolutionary spirit of the European countries are the same as here-limited to a mere handful of people who in no wise represent the masses. The absence of an intellectual class here made the publication of such a magazine as L'Humanite Nouvelle impossible at that time, and it is more than doubtful if it could be done now. We ventured the opinion nine years ago that writers for a magazine published by Emma Goldman would be classified as Anarchists and that it would be straight Anarchist, not merely liberal. This happened before the second number appeared. Upon the appearance of the first number the newspapers promptly called it an Anarchist magazine and two of the contributors hastily disassociated themselves from it and asked for the return of manuscript sent in for publication. From time to time MOTHER EARTH has had a contributor who was not |