I most sincerely believe that the chief reason for this insufficiency is to be found in the fact that, as yet, it is only a small percentage of the workers who are emancipated from the bourgeois conception of life. There is still a belief in State, in government, in rulers; and the beauty of a free condition of society, co-operating in all its parts, with an absence of domination from any section has not as yet been fully perceived by them; and until it is, in the hour of crises, they will turn to the institution through which power, government and domination finds chief expression.

This being so, I am the more grateful to the editor and conductors of MOTHER EARTH for laboring so thoroughly to popularize principles calculated, as I believe, to emancipate mankind, intellectually and economically.

I desire to add that, notwithstanding the awful fact that there are now thirty millions of men, either at war, preparing for war, or, already maimed and killed in this present topnotch effort at human annihilation,I am unable to be really pessimistic with regard to the future. It is too much to hope that the Americans, not being embroiled in this slaughtering campaign, will, as onlookers, see much more clearly than most of us have been able to, the real need for bedrock class conscious advocacy of such principles of national and international co-operation, as will admit of relatively rapid advance being made.

The servile State is here, and this accursed war is giving it another lease of life. State ownership and administration will stand a better chance after the war than before; yet I venture to predict that this stage will not last long. It will be the final, but perhaps, necessary stage of modern Capitalism, speedily to be superceded by a freer co-operation of peoples, minus an official bureaucracy, which in recent times has existed in its most highly developed form in Germany.

Allow me to express my thanks to the group of comrades who have kept MоTHER EARTH running for nine years as a source of inspiration and guidance. May its tenth year of life prove of even greater use than the past. Manchester, England.

I

AN APPRECIATION BY AN ARTIST

BY ROBERT HENRI

T is now several years since I went, out of curiosity, to hear Emma Goldman speak. Like many another, I had heard of her as a violent and dangerous agitator; an Anarchist bent on the destruction of the institutions of our civilization and an advocate of chaos. I was curious to see and to hear for myself. I heard a cool, logical and brilliant speaker, appealing to the reason and understanding of her audience. Since that day I have heard her speak many times, have read her works; and I believe her to be one of the world's greatest fighters for the freedom and growth of the human spirit. Her arguments are for order and for human kindness; and they are undoubtedly destroying to all those institutions of our civilization, which not only make possible, but bring about war, labor strife, all kinds of prostitution, and education which does not set the spirit free. She provokes thought; straight, frank, facing with the facts and the emotional problems of life. The present horrible war is only one of the plain proofs of ineffectiveness on the part of the institutions of our civilization. It seems time to listen to other reason than that which has failed; to other students of the causes of crime, of poverty and the scant fulfillment of man's promise. It is time to let them talk plainly to us. Whitman, Ibsen, Tolstoi, Kropotkin, many others, have set an undercurrent of new and stronger thought and Emma Goldman, with ideas and the rarest quality of courage in expressing what she believes to be true, is here to talk plainly to us as though we were free thinking creatures and not the children of Puritans.

I cannot see as a result of her inspirations the adherence to any ism, but I do see an incentive for each one to become a free and constructive thinker. If each individual faced more frankly the facts and the emotional problems of life, we would not be sitting, as we are doing now, saying: "This war is horrible, but we suppose it's God's will."

I

CONGRATULATIONS-PLUS

BY ADELINE CHAMPNEY.

T is a time honored custom to offer congratulations and good wishes upon the occasion of a birthday anniversary; one of the few accepted customs which Time has not rather dishonored and outworn. Hence in availing myself of this observance I experience something of the joy peculiar to the careful housewife who in the course of her spring cleaning discovers among the odds and ends which must be relegated to the rubbish barrel a piece of perfectly good material which she can utilize.

In the periods of intellectual house-cleaning which no life should be too busy to afford, old valuations may often profitably be reviewed and hasty judgments corrected, for a wise conversation of all which, though old, rings true, is often as important as the discovery of the new. With the consciousness that since the advent of MOTHER EARTH I have made such a revaluation comes the feeling that some new declaration of myself is necessary in the renewed assurance of friendship implied in this presentation of congratulations.

Truly something more than congratulations are due MOTHER EARTH, for while I know that the magazine has not been all that its publisher and editor hoped to make it, while it has not done all they have dreamed for it, it has in some ways accomplished more than their plans for it contemplated. While the ultimate effect of those actitivities originating in the MOTHER EARTH ASSOCIATION and centering around it are too subtle, too far reaching to be measured or even adequately conjectured, the traceable things are such that we may reasonably become enthusiastic even as to probabilities beyond our ken. Who can declare how much of the liberality of thought, freedom of discussion, and tolerance of action which we see increasing every day may be direcly due to these coast-to-coast tours, to the spoken word delivered, and the printed words disseminated? Emma Goldman has "toured exclusively for MOTHER EARTH," but in so doing she has scattered broadcast the seed of

liberty throughout the land, and the harvest is not yet. They who have ears to hear have heard, and hearing, pondered. For Emma Goldman does not set empty echoes rolling through vacant minds. Her intrepid personality, fired by a noble ideal, energizes and vitalizes. At her touch we vibrate, we breathe deeper, we feel ourselves more fully alive, we are stirred and spurred to action.

When I would write of MOTHER EARTH I find myself thinking of Emma Goldman; not that I would belittle her co-workers, but because her tremendous personality puts its own stamp on the work and proclaims it hers. Nay, more! She has put her stamp on the whole country. Not so long ago a community which received Emma Goldman hospitably merited a gold star for its liberalism, while now the community which attempts to interfere with her work is marked down in black. From Emma Goldman hunted and hounded to Emma Goldman commanding respectful attention from colleges, exclusive clubs and scientific societies is a far cry, but it is not Emma Goldman who has changed. Her courage and determination have forced recognition and respect, changing the attitude of the people.

Thus has Emma Goldman, in the indefatigable pursuit of her own work for the support of MOTHER EARTH, and the propaganda of Anarchism, been enlarging and conserving the liberty of the whole people; for freedom of speech for Emma Goldman means freedom of speech for you and for me, and for every man and woman with a message. This constitutes a forceful example of the social value of enlightened individual selfhood, for Emma Goldman, in seeking her own ends, has been assuring the rights of all, and accomplishing more for free speech and free assemblage than any society organized for the purpose. This work alone is a notable achievement and in itself gives Mother Earth high rank as a factor in social progress.

Another important work incidental to the MOTHER EARTH tours is the spread of sex-rationalism. The innate purity and beauty and the eminent common-sense of Emma Goldman's lectures on the freedom of love and on limitation of offspring make her work along this

line of vital import. The abominations of existing sex institutions are sickening the pure in heart of all faiths, and the vision of clean, healthy, sane and happy lives outside the pale is a revelation of salvation to many. No propaganda is more fearfully needed, none more farreaching in its potentialities for human happiness than the propaganda of sex-rationalism, and MOTHER EARTH is not the least of its prophets.

Among Anarchists MOTHER EARTH has made toward narmony, toward breadth and fellowship. Standing for Communism, it has not been bigoted either in respect to the contributed matter in the magazine or with regard to the literature sold. It is looking toward the movement rather than insisting on the economicism. This is a tendency in the right direction. When Communists, Collectivists and Individialists can get together on their Anarchism they become an influence, not merely a nest of contentiousness.

Among the people in general-I speak now of the people of the United States. I admit I am an American, and glad of it. Let those to whom all patriotism is anathema sneer. I am quite sure my patriotism would not be acceptable to the political campaign orator, but I have an affection for America, a concern for America, passing my interest in any other part of the globe. I find, moreover, an intrinsic reality in nationalism, fundamental, developmental, and valuable to world-progress. While not claiming that developments here are any more aportant than those of any other country, I am especially nd keenly interested in American social conditions, in the peculiar process of transition going on here.

So I am glad that MOTHER EARTH is in America, that it is making Anarchism recognized and respected here as a world-fact; as a theory, an ideal, that must be reckoned with. Not so long ago it was the well-informed man only who understood the significance of the word; now it is the ignorant man who does not know something of it. The Anarchist is now seen as an idealist where but shortly he appeared a villain, a brute or a clown. MOTHER EARTH shows him, not as a menace of darkness but as a man and a comrade. He is no longer an anomaly; the causes of his thinking and his feeling are made plain.