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guy who was horning in became insistent, he spoke his piece.

"Shhh!" he said. "Why rouse the whole neighborhood? You'll queer things for all of us before you know it. Now, why can't you and I get together? We understand each other. This is my territory and nobody's going to horn in. Why don't you take over the next block? The people over there have outlawed robbery. If we don't get together this thing will spread and everybody will be fighting our right to rob. Now you just force your way in there and I'll support you."

And that, folks, is exactly what's happened in the international robbers' game.

They had a gang war over this once before, back in 1914, and the boys who were old hands at the game won out. They dictated a robber's peace and called it the Versailles Treaty. But during this gang war, something happened that the big boys didn't bargain for. In one of the territories ruled over by one of the old gang, there was a revolt of the people who had been robbed. Gang rule was abolished in one-sixth of the world. The people there abolished the whole rake-off system, refused to pay the graft.

And that had the big boys plenty scared as they dictated the terms of their "peace." Even in Germany, after they had gotten the Kaiser out of the way, they got something worse - a democratic territory - that was allowing all these "phony" ideas to spread. This thing had to be straightened out. The big boys decided that they had to get one of their own men over there-a strong-arm man to run things.

That boy Hitler looks good, they said. He's got the right ideas. Let's give him the right of way so he can smash that discontent. Let's give him a little bait, so he can keep the suckers quiet. Let him start a crusade. Yes, that's it. Call it a holy war against the guys who refuse to chip in. Give him some boys to work with. There's Mussolini and the Mikado. They're sore too. They feel they got gypped in the last fracas. Then let him go to town. A triple alliance against Communism-that's the slogan...and the sky's the limit.

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But in spite of all this - what did he do? After they built him up and said: "Go East young man," he changed his mind at the first glimpse of the mighty Soviet Union, and was forced to sign a non-aggression pact.

And why this crusade against the Soviet Union? Let's look into this land of socialism that our enemies are so riled up about. Maybe there we'll find what we're looking for. Perhaps our enemies' enemy is our friend.

The fact is that the Soviet Union stands for everything that the capitalist world opposes. In the capitalist world the working people are suffering from unemployment, hunger and want. In the Soviet Union there is no unemployment; the right to work and the security of the individual are guaranteed by the Constitution. In the capitalist world national and race hatred are fostered as a means of keeping the people in subjection. The independence of small and weaker nations is violated in order to entrench the rule of a few great powers. Socialism in the Soviet Union, covering more than one-sixth of the earth's surface, has transformed the former tsarist "prison of nations" into a land where hundreds of different races and nations live harmoniously, with freedom to develop their cultures and determine their own destinies. The Soviet Union, alone among the nations of the world, prosecutes as a crime every expression of racial hatred.

It is not by a miracle that such a new way of life has been made possible in the Soviet Union. It was the overthrow of the landlords and capitalists that did it. The overthrow of those who live by and through the exploitation of their fellowmen makes possible the freedom of all men - nothing more or less can do it.

Let us imagine this happening in the deep South. Imagine the wiping out of that old relic of slavery, the plantation system. Turn the land over to those who till it - the black and white sharecroppers and tenants. Give the right to vote to the disfranchised majority. Supplant the present white ruling class domination in the Black Belt with the rule of the ma-