Coming Nation from Girard, Kansas • 11

11 The Coming Nation Road to Copenlhia On the Ruagge geoo Continued from April 15. 'ROM Antwerp we immediately went to Brussels, where the World's fair was taking place. There wc intended to mmi make as much use of our camera as possible, but we had not figured well. For eight days, the police department would not give us permission to work. BY SYDNEY GREENBIE.

he never failed to bring from the market. The burden I hardly could carry to his home. A Job Found and Lost He then told his boy, who was born in New York and who bore the New York bluff on his face, to take us to his friends at the fair. These were a big, stout, strong business woman, loud-mouthed and bold, and her nervous, timid husband, also of business proclivities, who dared not look her straight in the face. He once dared to raise his voice in protest, but she was a match for him and so neither conquered and both ruled.

They were Americans. She was interested in our story of our traveling and hard luck, and said she would make place for us in the lower dining hall. Highly elated, we spent our last few francs in fixing up. Then returned, waited until three o'clock, had dinner and still waited to be instructed in the work we were to do. Soon she came over to us and with no less business attitude than before, told us she could not do anything for us.

We pleaded the lack of money, the predicament of not being able to speak the language to no account. She did not need us, and all her previous vaunting of patriotism, of doing it because we were Americans, vanished at the more deliberated conclusion that we would not profit her. On Saturday and Sunday we made quite a little money taking photographs, but such is the condition of the workingman that on Monday we merely starved, empty pocketed. Hunger, aggravated by the stores of cakes and delicacies all about us, uncertainty of a night's lodging, dread of the ultimate end these were the experience we had in "Little Paris." All the things that attracted us to this really home-like city and made us feel that we would like to live there forever, acted as a brood of chickens when they hear the beating of hawk's wings and flee from under its shadow. (Had it not been for the kind assistance and genuine charity, not loud-mouthed, but dumb, of a few boys who had come from England to work the fair and who were struggling almost as much as we did, we might not have come out of it so easily.) And yet, after fifteen days of actual suffering, another young man left Brussels with us afoot, as innocent of wealth as our pockets could be, and made for Ghent and Ostende on the sea.

Entertained in Person At Ghent we were excellently entertained in the city prison (at our own request), given a bowl of good pea soup, the lady who handed this to us through a grated window regretting its simplicity, a good bread sandwich and an excellent bed. In the morning, we were honorably discharged and the police captain gave us his name, asking us to write to him from America. This was the best we had gotten anywhere. Of all the painful sights, the Belgian peasant presents a most degraded aspect. Their uncleanliness would bespeak the slum districts, rather than the open country.

Whatever other drawbacks the country has, its loneliness to some, its drudgery, its lack of comfort in city home conveniences, uncleanliness has no place there. Where it does exist, it is but a more flaring evidence of the oppression and the utter extinction of manhood 'induced upon a humiliated people. It is a condition that can be hurled at the teeth of our suave "back to the farm" reformers. Their clothes are dirty, their rooms are dirty; their eating utensils are dirty; their houses and stables are built together; wherever we stopped, between Brussels and Ostende, almost the entire length of the little country, the same unpresentable contrast to the open simplicity of the country was a shocking fact upon which this conclusion is based. Ostende, with its world-famed luxury, was our experience of Brussels, reduced to six days.

We went there, thinking that work could be easily obtained by English-speaking people, since it was a placed resorted to by Englishmen and Americans. We left Europe's great bathing place as rich as we found it, hardly so with ourselves. We earned enough to take us three-quarters of the way to Paris, and thence took to the road. How "Our Country" Cares When a United States citizen sends for an application for a passport, one of the conditions in granting it to him required by the application which is to be signed in the presence of a notary, is that in case of war, you will return to the country to aid in its defense. But should an American find himself stranded in a country where he cannot speak the language, where he cannot get a job so as to be able to earn enough to get home, he may as well prostrate himself before the altar and expect the needed sum to fall from the church steeple as to ask his country's aid.

England will send back home any citizen who, for any reason, he need not even give a reason, desires to return, paying the entire cost of the trip, even if its citizen be in the most southern city in South America. Not so the U. S. But the United States makes you sign the above pledge, to fight, to lay down your lives in its defense. In only two places did we ask the consul for help.

In Brussels, where all our efforts to earn our way were frustrated by the rainy weather and by the already over-flooded labor market. The other in Paris, where similar but more permanent labor conditions prevail. In both instances, the help tendered was purely personal. The consul at Brussels loaned us three dollars and we signed a promissory note for it the consul at Paris $12, for which we also signed a note. At Paris, the consul told us that they receive millions of francs in fees at the office, but should one franc be used for needy Americans, they would be charged with embezzlement.

How's this for reciprocity? From Slums to Sluggards It is but a few minutes' walk from the slums to the sluggards. Paris is no exception. Within half as hour you can walk from a dirty street near the Notre Dame to the most Elysian avenue, the Champs Elysee. The Louvre forms the nucleus of this mass of population to the left flows the Seine, to the right runs the Avenue L'Opera, with its flood of spendthrifts. This is Paris.

(7'o be Concluded Xcxt 1Ycek.) but when we said we did not intend to remain many days, only wishing to earn enough to leave for another place, that we were American students and hinted at writing the thing up, they gave way. and gave us a verbal permit for two weeks only. Cut the intermittent rain almost ruined us. Our suffering was intense, and we learned that Europe is even more opposed to Americans who have no money than America to Europeans. They want the American with wealth, and would not consider anything too humiliating to get some of it, but without money you are lost.

Their own people work for two and three francs a day, and living is cheap. They still have wooden shoes and dog carts. The Belgian women wash the sidewalks with a rag, just as we mop the floor, but are not so exact inside the house. The women are coarse, and are not far removed from the condition of their peasant neighbors. They sing and parade the streets, drink with the men at the public houses, eat shrimps and snails, and seem happy.

But I need hardly add to the universally known beauty of Brussels as a city. The Maison du peuple, the home of the International Socialist Bureau, is at Brussels. It is an inspiring place to stop in. The mixture of the nationalities here is noticeable. Russian refugees are there by the dozen.

It is a custom in Brussels for men to spend their Sundays and holidays in a public place, especially one such as the Maison du Peuple They bring their wives and children and their sandwiches to these places, and so pass the time. To a large city, it vitalizes it by introducing a sort of communal life, so utterly lacking in New York, for instance. Overlooking my personal objection to beer-drinking, I think the selfish reserve of people in the large cities is more menacing. One incident will throw light upon the the general unconcern and disinterestedness of the employer of labor. We went to the fair, looking for a job.

It was Sunday morning, and raining. At the gate we were turned away. On our way back we passed a restaurant advertised as American. Here we inquired for a job. The proprietor, a Jew, said he needed no help, but would try to get something for us with some of his friends at the fair.

In the meantime, before he had. done more than give us a cup of coffee and a roll, he looked at me, who he thought, was the stronger and asked me to accompany him to the market. There I saw an example of shrewdness that I could not help but admire, even though it disgusted me. He simply was a little keener than those with whom he bargained would gladly have been. His basket was soon beginning to tell its own weight.

He ended by dickering over the price of a bouquet of flowers for his wife, a token Ge Weinmans Day in raraaay, lODAY is Woman's Day (Frauen Tag) in Germany and AustnaT Une need not say Socialist Woman's Day, for in Germany more women to the Socialist party than to any other organization and "Frauen Tag" really means something to all working women. Seven BY LUELLA TWINING The meeting at Kindl Saal was most enthusiastic and ioo applications for membership were received. About i.ooo applications were received at the seven meetings. There are few women speakers in Munich, because women in Germany were not allowed to join political parties till 1908 and women have had little training in public speaking. Comrade Frau Kampf-meyer, the wife of the editor of the Muenchncr Post, a Socialist daily, told me the Socialist party is rapidly developing women speakers.

This, however, cannot be said of the other political parties. Berlin had 41 woman's meetings Woman's Day. Kollentay is known throughout Germany as a brilliant speaker. She writes she was in Dresden for two weeks before Frauen Tag speaking in behalf of the women, and had large audiences. Woman's Day she spoke in Frankfort.

The audience was splendid. That means something coming from Comrade Kollentay. for she knows what good crowds fine meetings are. She has spoken before so rram The women and men work and organize together in the Socialist party in Bavaria. They used to have a separate organization, but h3e abolished jt.

There are 3,000 women in the Socialist party in Munich and 100,000 in Germany. No doubt the Woman's Day meetings swelled the number greatly, for an enormous effort was put forth to get new members. I wish to express my admiration for Clara Zet-kin, the president of the International Socialist Woman's Movement. No doubt she has contributed more than anyone else to the success of the Socialist Women's movement in Germany. She is editor of Die Glcicheit, the official organ of Socialist women, and has been most active both as an editor and organizer.

Women will increase the influence of the Socialist party in Germany enormously, which now has a majority in every permanent city in Germany. Were it not for an unjust proportional representation, alloted by the government, the Socialists would control the Reichstag with its three million votes Capitalist papers say the probability of a great increase in the Socialist vote calls tor anti-Socialist agitation everywhere. Imagine the power the Socialist party of Germany will wield with the help of the women who are joining it in large numbers and working with tremendous enthusiasm. meetings were held simultaneously in different parts of Munich. I attended the one in Kindl Saal, an enormous hall well known here.

When I entered the hall, an hour before time to begin, I couldn't help feeling envious of our German comrades, for it was packed. In five minutes people were being turned away. Several weeks ago when Comrade Frau Koll-meyer. a prominent worker here, told me they were to have seven meetings, I thought they were making a mistake. I asked her if it would not be better to have one large meeting.

She said they could not get a hall in Munich large enough to hold the people who wished to attend. This proved to be for seven large halls were packed. Comrade Kollmeyer told me they were obliged to put all the men out of the hall in her district to make room, for the women,.