You Cannot Break Our Movement!

You may persecute, you may suppress, you may imprison - you can not succeed. Our propaganda will go on in spite of all.

We are enlisted in the cause of freedom and individual liberty, and we have dedicated our all to this great cause.

Think you, that you can crush this cause? You do not know its strength, its appeal to the fundamental instincts of humanity.

Our movement is built upon an idea, and the movement will go on because the idea is unconquerable.

Send our young men abroad to kill and be killed. Make the world a bloody shamble. Crush what little there is of democracy at home. Fill your jails. Do your worst.

But remember, the day of reckoning will come.

An outraged people will rise in its power and majesty, and make you pay for the blood and agony that you are now creating.

Our movement springs out of the inarticulate, unexpressed aspirations of our people. And to crush a people is impossible. You may drug them for a while, you may keep them in temporary bondage, - but not forever.

The Inquisition was overthrown. The French Revolution made its reckoning. The Russian Revolution crushed the bloodiest tyranny of modern times.

And so it goes. Your day is coming. And we shall do all in our power to hasten its coming!

From: The Social War, Volume 1, number 7, Chicago, 1917..