I. — The White Terror

— Hurray! Hurray!
Hurrah! Hurrah! We are all so gay!
All the trade unions are closed, they say;
We bosses shall not have to worry about a strike.
All the peasant leagues have passed away,
We landlords can do whatever we like.
All the — Reds — are cleaned up,
And disturbances done;
We police, soldiers and generals
Are kings again and second to none.
— Imperialists! Imperialists! —
They called us;
We are no longer — Imperialists! —
You see: Our new tools do the murdering for us.
Hurray! Hurray!
Hurrah! Hurrah! We are all so gay! —

— Not yet, one thing more;
Come along, boys!
Bobbed-haired girls are roaming the streets.
Suspicious-faced boys are whispering to every one they meet,
Crafty-eyed coolies will slay us in our defeat â?¦
Grab them! Drag them away!
And put them into prison! —

— No, no! Comrade!
This is very wrong.
Prison is strong but the bars will bend.
There were hard, tall prisons in Siberia, my friend,
But Lenin escaped and fought to right their wrong;
Other prisoners have also won their day, and live to singa a victory song.
If you but let radicals' heads stay on their shoulders
They will chop your heads some other day!
Why should we shrink from a slaughter or fight,
Four hundred million Chinese: Are we not plenty? —

— Yes, yes! It is right,
All you say!
Chop the — Reds' — heads off,
Let not one man stay!
Search! Search!
Hurry! Hurry!
Go to the street!
Go to the back yard!
Go to the bath-room!
Go to the cemetery —
Question the dead!
Go to the river-bank —
Inquire of the gray sand!
Search! Search!
Hurry! Hurry!
Oh look!
There is a — Red — !
Oh look!
There is a Bolshevik!
Oh look!
There is a Radical!
Oh look!
Here's a worker
Oh look!
Here's a Coolie!
Oh look!
Here's a man! A woman â?¦
Grab them!
Drag them away!
Take them to Red-Flower-Hill!
Give them death! Kill!
Line them up under the sinking sun,
Slay them, slay them with merciless gun! — —

— Wait!
Wait!
Would you deprive us of our long-sought pleasure?
We have plenty of time, plenty of leaisure.
Killing is a pastime much too cheap.
Tease them, torture them before they finally sleep. —

— Ha! Ha!
It would be real fun!
Ha! Ha!
Just look at them!
You poor, ignorant, ugly workers and coolies!
Money you want, eh! Go and get it!
Go to the robber packs: you won't regret it.
Death if they catch you; wealth if you win!
Give half of your hopes before you begin;
We will protect you: you shall not die!
The Government will sometime purchase you and place you high.
Now you envy generals and captains of the field,
Listen to our wishes and you your lives will yield.
You make us laugh at your foolish wiles,
Scheming for a dream beyond your eyes.
Do you want to be an officer digging in the files?
Is this your desire that you so much prize —
As you are struggling along in your short work-clothes
And shoes of grass,
You wouldn't know how to put on a long silk gown
Of the noble class!
Take no stock in the foolish Bolshevik words,
You were not born for a high station —
You have no grace: you are raven birds
Wishing you were nightingales on a dream-plantation! —

— Police! Soldiers!
Dirty dogs!
Am I complaining and afraid of my approaching death?
No torture can stop my breath!
But I am sorry!
I am ashamed!
You: poor men,
We: poor men.
Why should you sell yourselves
To the rulers, to the masters,
Instead of joining with us to end disasters?
If you don't know that
Where are your brains?
If you know,
It is no use for me to explain!
Think!
Remember!
You were born a worker
And you shall die a worker!
Breathing your first and last breath,
You shall be always of the working class.
Think!
Remember!
We have no wrong
When we were born.
It is the exploiting class
Who makes us eat grass! —

— Class! Class!
My body is much taller than my masters!
Were there — class — ,
It is not my master
But I who am the higher class! —

— Foreign Devil!
Imperialist!
You now smooth away the wrinkles of worry
From your wintry faces,
And there blossom merry flowers
Of content and satisfaction.
You smile;
You laugh;
You shout;
You clap your hands!
Though you do not kill us with your hands,
And are as — ignorant — as we,
We know that all our lives
Will be reported to you,
And you will put them on your record-books.
You so-called — civilized races — ,
With death in your pockets
And kindness in your faces!
You occupy our seaports,
And storm us from our seas.
Take away our rice and cotton,
Make us starve and freeze!
Pour in opium and morphia to poison our bodies;
And God of Christ, God of the Dollar, poisons our youth's minds,
You hypocrites coming always crying
— Mutual help! — , to save your friends from dying.
You help our rulers to murder: to kill: to pillage
Our neighbors' village;
Using our boys to aid your tillage!
— Open Door! — — Open Door! — you shout.
Certainly, we will open the door,
And let those smiling robbers exploit us to the limit.
We shall die; yet we have no sorrow,
And our blood will cry to to-morrow.
And our death will release
China from oppression, and bring her peace!
Comrades! Fellow-workers! Shouts defy —
While we are waiting our turn to die,
Let us raise the Red Flag doubly high,
Shouting with joy, — Kon Chan Wan Shui! — —

— Hold your tongues! Ill-bred! Low-born!
Your arguments are vain.
We will not listen again —
Ill-bred! Low-born!
We will hear no words against the men of other parts.
They are not Red Russians from peddling carts,
But gentlemen and helpers with good hearts.
Ill-bred! Low-born! —
— Put gags in their mouths and tie them around,
Keep their ill-bred tongues well-bound —
Stop their scorn: stop their sound! —
— This one can talk no more.
Oh, gag! Why don't you help him talk? —
— What! He scorns us with his eyes!
Eyes of scorn — ! —
— Pull them out!
Where are your fingers, fellow-soldiers?
Now is the time! — Gouge! —
— Ha! Ha! His eye-balls are out!
Fingers are bloody!
Our hearts are happy! —
— What? You are a real Bolshevik!
You still scorn us with a gesture! —
— Chop off his hands!
Chop off his arms! —
— He has fainted! —
— He has fainted! —
— No! He has not suffered enough;
Throw water on him; call his bluff.
He wanted to argue: he wanted to scorn,
Let him have his reward: Ill-bred! Low-born! —
— Let him enjoy our offering to its last drop! —
— He moves no more! —
— Is he dead now? —
— We can have no more fun
It is a pity!
But it will save the price of bullets
For our graft-ridden city! —

— You bobbed-haired girls: I see by your eyes.
You want no communism: In this guise,
You want the freedom of the sweet — Kon Chi —
Beneath your babel of Radical noise,
You want only more loving from the young sweet boys. —
— Don't you know.
The Communists had a naked parade in Hankow? —
— Really? Somebody said it was only a rumor!
Let them parade here now! —
— Tear off their clothes! —
— Are they not beautiful, naked? —
— They want more love,
Give them more love!
Bayonets! Bayonets!
Make the bayonets their lovers!
Sharp-pointed lovers seeking the sweet spot
With a new kind of love! â?¦
— Say Lor Lee, let's save that kid!
Forgive the youngster whatever he did —
He is only thirteen years or so! —
— Denied! Denied! You do not know
How far these suckling babes will go;
They are not like the children of long ago,
Take off his head before he has time to grow;
A kid nowadays grows much faster,
To spit on your face, and call himself your master. —

— O students of schools,
Are you coolies? Are you fools?
Are you workers? Where are your tools?
Why do you traffic with the coolie-rabble,
Mixing your wisdom with their gabble?
Use your learning: leave them alone,
Why expose your head to the headsmen's stone? —
— Spare the intellectuals,
Let them go!
Give them a glance,
They are cheap: they are low!
You are the sun:
They, the ice —
They will melt one by one
At your advice!
Don't you see:
Their necks are decorated
With the capitalistic degrees
Showing — to you — they are ready and willing to please! —

— Now see: the Red Russians fall! —
— Kill them! Shoot them all! —
— Remember the Boxers! Remember the Peking wall!
Yes, we shot them once before —
Shot them down in their foreign gore,
But it cost us our ports and it cost us our shore! —
— Now this is past and the Russian men
Are hated by the world: It was not so then!
Now we can sprinkle their blood on our lands
While the — Foreign Devils — stand and clap their hands.
Chang Tso-Lin in the north can march
Into their Embassy beneath their arch.
This he may do but he dare not kill,
For Chiang Kai-Sheck must work his will.
Praise to the Nationalist Kou-Min-Tang,
It is better than the rest of the bandit-gang. —
— Foolish with power the worker- hosts
Of the new made Russia, have left our coasts,
Given up Unequal Treaties: withdrawn the sword.
Kill them! Kill them! Let them have their reward.
Shall the Hammer and the Sickle of the Russian slave
Rest in peace over the Tsarist Grave? —
— Who says so? Who says so?
The Bolsheviks are able —
They buy our workers and make them strike;
Buy our men to do foolish things: to suffer and to die.
To jump into boiling water and to lie upon the spike! —
— Yes! Oh yes!
The Bolsheviks are able,
They have power in their fingers' magic blood
To cause a Japanese Earthquake and a Mississippi flood! —

II. — The Red Terror

— Terrible! Terrible!
The workers are again uprising!
I narrowly escaped death in the city.
You comrades here on Red-Flower-Hill should stay no longer!
The workers are nervous —
Excited —
Angry —
Crazy!
Their faces are blue,
Their hair stands on end,
Their noses smoke,
Their bodies shake,
And shouting with rage, they wreck the plants
With a sound like thunder!
They are not men,
They are tigers!
They are lions!
No — they are more terrible —
They are something we cannot understand!
— With armed fist,
Capitalist!
With armed fist,
Militarist!
With armed fist,
Imperialist! —
The terror of death
Stops my breath!

— Smoke and boom of guns â?¦
Hundreds of workers fall;
Stepping over the corpses,
Thousands still advance.
They take our rifles, our artillery.
They attack us from the front,
And their spies suddenly turn upon us in our own rear forces.
Think —
We foresaw it, even.
It was a dark night;
No light at all.
We were in bed, thinking:
Who knows when we shall lose our heads?
We know revenge will come some day,
Who knows if it is coming tonight?
We remember the revenge;
But sometimes we forget it.
Awakened by terror,
Whither should we run?
To a harbor where we thought once to flee to safety,
But we found a trap, full of storm!
We should need aid,
But whom could we ask to lend us a hand? â?¦

— I called my maid to put on my shoes;
She slapped my face with them,
Shouting: You have enslaved me day and night,
Now, again you ask me to put on your shoes
At a time like this!
Your time is over —
THIS TIME IS OURS!
— Where was your pistol? —
— I was so excited that I forgot where I put it.
I called my cook to help me pack;
But he grabbed his knife from behind him, saying:
— You once beat me on my back,
Now you ask me to pack! —
He threw the knife,
But I dodged it, escaping by the window.

— I shouted to a rickshaw boy a quick — Hollo — .
He replied, — Yes, I'll carry you
Where you wish to go:
Chop your head off and let your blood flow!
Three miles once I drew you,
Yet did you think to give me a cent?
You asked me to pull the rickshaw,
Now I will make you eat the rickshaw! —
He grasped the rickshaw to sideswipe me,
But I turned, fleeing.

— I rushed to my soldiers and ordered them to fight.
I gave them money to induce them to fight,
But they replied:
— We shall no longer be fools
We shall no longer be militarists' tools!
Too late to pay us with your gold —
You now must pay us with your blood — .
I was hit by a bullet,
Which luckily lodged in my shoulder! —
— But how did you manage to get here? —
— I pretended to be dead and fell down.
They ran away;
I covered my body with corpses and painted my face with blood;
Nobody discovered me so I did not pay with my life. —

— Did you report to the Superior? —
— Superior, Superior?
Inside of the palace,
Beside his new-found wife,
Flames ended his life! —
— What about our general? —
— Don't speak of the general, please!
The general was wise: in heavy disguise
He ran for his sacred life!
He boarded a foreign gunboat —
I followed him, like others,
Trusting to be taken aboard;
But he fired upon us, driving us back.
He shouted that he didn't want the boat overloaded.
That is our general! —

— Look! Look! —
— Smoke! —
— Fire! —
— Listen! Listen! —
— Voices!
Coming nearer!
The Reds come to Red-Flower-Hill
To push their comrades from the headsman's stone. —
— Hurry! Let us go. —
— Let's save ourselves! —
— Say! How about the social queen, Miss Pretty? —
— Killed, some say! —
— Why didn't she flee, Captain? —
— How could she, idiot! —
— Why not? She has feet! —
— Certainly. But they were destined for dancing and being kissed,
Not for such uncouth employment as running. —
— Rickshaw! Sedan-chair! Automobiles! High-heeled shoes!
Damn you! You killed her — not the Reds . —
— Stop talking, march!
Mad workers are coming. —

— Find the Whites! Find the Reactionaries! —
— Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! —
— Here is a white! —
— Here is a reactionary! —

— Don't touch me, communists!
I am a famous philanthropist.
I give candy to the orphans: socks to bums,
Shawls to old ladies when Christmas comes. —
— Hypocrite! Hypocrite!
Eating the workman's flesh off his bones,
Returning him a mass of mangled bones.
This is your gift. —

— I am the non-participant, you see!
I belong neither to Left nor Right; to Red nor White.
I keep my eyes open and seek truth and justice always. —
— You are here. You live.
You assert yourself by putting one foot before the other.
You cannot fool us by pretending that you do not walk at all
You are not Red: You are then White!
You are not Left: You are then Right!
You say you seek truth and justice, yet when it passes
You have no eyes! —

— I am a poet. I make ripe the peace of the human race. —
— You so-called poets sigh for nothing!
Winds; clouds; moon; flowers; tears — all nonsense! —
— Of course, poetry is poetry, not propaganda! —
— Not propaganda? You propagate sex and nonsense!
You burn incense for the ruling class.

You oil the machine of the capitalist class! —
— Shut up! I know you! You were in our party before.
You trim your sails to the prevailing wind,
And jump in time to escape the blow!
You are like street walkers' eyes
That watch for. — Yes — and — No — !
Your words are sweet as honey;
Your glance is as shifty as a fox's;
When the crisis comes,
You are the first to say — Good bye — !
Your nose is like an eagle's beak,
Your mouth like a shark's snout —
Thus, you eat people's hearts;
You never feel regret.
You are the Opportunist.
To-day you will meet the revenging knife of the communist!
— I have done something for our party â?¦ —
— What have you done:
You actually brought into our party
The poison of your bourgeois class,
Destroyed our party once
And caused the revolution to fail! —

— I am your benefactor!
I helped you when you were in great need;
Without my help in clothing and food,
You would not have the teeth to bite me! —
— Quite true, Sir! But I'd like to ask,
Who made it be possible that you
May wear your hypocrite's mask,
And do what you have done to me?
It was I and my class.
I pay them now in killing you,
And make the world perfect, through
Ridding it of — good — men like you! —

— Son! Son! My dear son!
Why should you kill even your grandfather's only son?
You don't care about your father, perhaps,
But you should not forget your beloved mother! —
— Who is my father? Who is my father?
You are the capitalist, the militarist,
The exploiter, the oppressor, the traitor!
When I gave you good advice,
You scorned me as unfilial and unwise —
And declared that you disowned me!
Who is my father?
Who is my father?
Were you my father,
I would kill you so much the quicker!
Were I loyal to my father,
I would not be loyal to my grandfather ;
My grandfather was a poor farmer.
Were I loyal to my father,
I would not be loyal to my mother;
My mother was for a long time a poor seamstress.
Kill my father!
Kill my father!
To save thousands of others' toiling fathers!
Who is my father?
Who is my father?
End your guilty life
With this revengeful knife! —

She: —

— Beloved: Your unforgotten kiss
Has lingered sweetly on my lips;
I could not know we would meet like this.
I was faithful long and made no slips.

— While you were far afield in the fray,
I was aching for your lips to harry;
In my soul I was theirs always —
Yet, I was forced at last to marry.

— I waited a day, a week, a time
That seemed such wasted years to me;
Yet never a word, never a line,
Though I enjoined you anxiously.

— How should I know that you still might care,
And my hand was sought: so I had to go;
And with my love, I made a fair
Helpmate and made his fortune grow.

— That he was a traitor, I must say true,
That I assisted him I won't deny;
But, dear one! I'll leave it to you,
You cannot want us harshly to die.

— You cannot deny our one-time love,
To which I was loyal so long,
By shaming us both in death, by rough
Acceptance of this pleading song? —

He: —
— What you say, my friend, is slily sure,
And a gentleman could scarcely say nay;
Such a motive would not be pure —
It serves my hate in too personal a way.

— On second thought, to enlighten you, dear —
I thing I must really insist,
The vengeance to make my stand most clear,
Is to be revolutionist! —

— Revenge! Revenge!
Tooth for tooth!
Blow for blow!
Terror! Terror!
White terror! Red terror!
The white terror is not yet over.
We must drown the — white terror — with the — red terror — !
No mercy!
No compromise!
No hesitation!
Bring them over,
Give them a blood-shower!
To confiscate the land, do away with the rent:
To clean up all the man-eaters,
Make the world belong to no one but the workers!
Now we have captured Canton power.
Maintain the power!
By the power,
Down with Feudalism!
Down with Capitalism!
Down with Militarism!
Down with Imperialism! —
And make the world
A real — Paradise —
Forever! —