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“...IN MEMORIAM
BY RUDOLPH SCHWAB.
Let not the muffled drum, nor slow and solemn knell.
Mourn for our comrade who has passed away;
Nor rain hot tears upon his mortal clay.
Furl not the flag, nor let your sorrow swell,
Let not your dull and dismal dolour dwell;
The International I Come comrades, play!
Salute! The scarlet standard raise today!
He served, he led; he served and led us well.
Catch up his flaming torch and hold it high!
Forward! The dizzy heights are yet unsealed;
Roll drums! Close ranks! March on! Resume the road!
We cry not out for help, we need no goad;
Ere ebon night to silver dawn has paled
Our scarlet standard from the peak shall fly....”
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“...10 REMINISCENCES OF DANIEL DE LEON.
imposes upon men who have to stand in the breach, so to
speak. These two of the tri-partite team succumbed; the
third, De Leon, like a rock jutting out into a raging sea,
breasted the dash of the angry waves until the grim reaper,
death, laid low the mortal part of him; his other part, that
which in the language of Sam French can not, will trot and
did not die, is immortal and will be with us as a living force
as long as the struggle for human emancipation will go on, is
influencing our thought and action today and will continue to
influence countless other human beings yet unborn.
Factors Three
Returning from this digression to the subject in hand, and
taking up again the thread of the narrative when the Socialist
Trade and Labor Alliance was about to be formed, several fac-
tors must now be borne in mind. One is that the backbone of
the new organization was D. A. 49, K. of L. This District
Assembly pulled away from the rapidly crumbling parent
body...”
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“...84 reminiscences OF DANIEL DE LEON.
The Last Tribute
It is a bright, sunny day in the month of May, 1914.
I find myself in an undertakers establishment, arranged
in chapel-like effect. Standing on a dais, I am flanked by
draperies in the sombre color of mourning. Before and be-
low me stands a casket and in the casket lie the mortal re-
mains of what once was Daniel De Leon. The strong fea-
tures, stilled in death, stand out more strongly than ever, the
white beard having grown to flowing length during a linger-
ing illness.
Beyond, scarcely discernible in the subdued light, I per-
ceive a number of men and women, come to pay the last
tribute to the dead leader,solemn, expectant, waiting forme
to begin speaking. I speak. Tell them what sort of man he
was whom we have lost; what he did and for whom he strove
and what his loss means to the Socialist movement, though
that movement will never lose him. I ask them to draw in-
spiration from his life and his work, from what he has said,
has written...”
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“...abuse and vituperation, and how the rest of us became imbued
with his own good humor in regards to it, I quote a stanza
from one of the birthday effusions which we sang at him on
his sixtieth birthday:
His adventures have been numerous, terror to poor Kan-
garoo,
Speared the elephant, kicked the donkey, kept old Sammy
on the go.
Pope De Leon, Rabbi Loeb, wicked are your shafts for
fair.
All the animals quake with terror when your arrows rent
the air.
The Thorns in His Crown
De Leon, however, was mortal, and it would be too much
to expect that he could pass through the reefs and breakers of
his long activity in the Labor Movement unscathed and with-
out annoyance and some bitter experiences. De Leon had
plenty of annoyance, and there were certain kinds of this which
were very wearing upon him and which might indeed have
made him bitter if he had not been so well balanced.
The sharpest thorn in my crown, he often used to say,
with the expression of a genuine martyr, is that of poets.
There is...”
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“...DE LEON-IMMORTAL
BY SAM J. FRENCH.
Si*ce Ust we met, alas, tny comrade said, De Leoa
died--
Forthwith I challenged: Tis not sol De Leon cannot,
did not, will not die,
Only mortal things go through the change called death
and leave no trace of that which in their forms had previously
existed.
The stupid bourgeois dies, bemoaning his sad lot as does
a bellowing kine foundered in the trackless bog,and, like
unto the kine, sinks into the mire of oblivion, to be forgotten
with the passing day.
The churl dies,and death ends all for himis thrown
into the ground, less valued than the rooting swine whose
carcass would at least make food for living men.
The lordling dies, and with much pomp and ceremonial
mummery is laid awayand all posterity recks not that he
lived.
The warrior dies, and, truly in his case, The path of glory
leads but to the grave.
The politician dies, and all his cunning tricks and vulgar
play at what he deems great statesmanship, availeth not to
make his name immortal; een though...”
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“...leaving behind a man-made hell of brain-
emasculating, superstition-fed ignorance and fear, to have
his memory and calling held in contemptuous execration by
enlightened generations yet to come.
Even the gods die,as human lore expandsand one by
one the very names they bore become mere threads with which
to weave new nursery tales for children, or themes to illus-
trate the crude beliefs the race accepted while yet its mental
status was infantile.
Aye, in countless thousands mortal things and things be-
got of mortal wants and fears, are chemically changed, or dis-
appear, and all goes with them that they were or stood for
before the transformation.
*
When all the preaching charlatans of old, and all the sor-
did traders of the marts, and all the sturdy fighters of the
wars are long forgotten, what names will our posterity revere?
Those that were borne by great and noble minds who
gave to usand, not to us alone, but to all the world: to those
who are and those who are to benew knowledge...”
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