Is it true that freedom of assemblage is impossible in this poor old “bourgeois democracy,” because, forsooth, the workers lack the halls in which to meet? Is that the condition in England, or in any of the western nations in which the much-despised “bourgeois democracy” prevails? How many communities are there in America where meeting-halls are accessible only to “the rich,” where they cannot be had by the workers upon equal terms with all other people? Over the greater part of America--wherever “bourgeois democracy” exists--our publicly owned auditoriums, the city halls, and school halls, are open to all citizens upon equal terms. Even where private halls have to be hired, and stiff rents paid, it is common for the collections to cover expenses and even leave a profit. In many of the cities the organized workers own their own auditoriums. In England, Belgium, Denmark, and other European countries--“bourgeois democracies” all--a great many of the finest auditoriums are those owned and controlled by the workmen’s organizations, and they are frequently hired by “the rich.” Finally, wherever the government of any city has come under the control of Socialist or Labor movements, auditoriums freely accessible to the workers have been provided, and this obstacle to freedom of assemblage which gives Lenin such concern has been removed. This has been done, moreover, without descending to the level of old oppressors, and it has not been necessary to resort to “armed workmen,” any more than to “browbeaten soldiers” with capitalist officers to protect the freedom of assemblage. So, too, with the freedom of the press. In the nations where democratic laws prevail _the workers’ press is just as strong and powerful as the interest and will of the workers themselves decree_. If the Socialist press in our cities is weak and uninfluential, that fact is the natural and inevitable corollary of the weakness of the Socialist movement itself. Was _L’Humanité_, when it was still a great and powerful newspaper, or were the Berlin _Vorwärts_, _Le Peuple_ of Brussels, and _L’Avanti_ of Rome, less “free” than other newspapers? Were they less “free” than _Pravda_, even, to say nothing of the anti-Bolshevist papers opposed to Bolshevism? True, they had not the privilege of looting the public treasuries; they could not force an oppressive, discriminatory, and confiscatory tax upon the other newspapers; they could not utilize the forces of the state to seize and use the plants belonging to their rivals; they could not rely upon the power of the state to compel people against their will to “subscribe” to them. In other words, the freedom they possessed was the freedom to publish their views and to gain as many readers as possible by lawful methods; the only “freedom” they lacked was the freedom of brigandage, the right to despoil and oppress others.