"Comrades.--A critical situation has arisen within Local New York. Your executive committee is compelled to take unusual and vigorous measures to combat the disruptive efforts of an internal faction which seeks to dominate the party by undemocratic and unsocialistic methods. The executive committee addresses itself to you, the membership, to explain the gravity of the crisis and to urge your support in saving the organization which has been built up with so much sacrifice by thousands of Comrades. "The very existence of the party is at stake--its existence as the democratically self-governed party of the working class, laboring to awaken and educate the proletarian masses and to express their class interests on the political field.... "This organization, i.e., the Left Wing, is not open to all party members, nor even to all who accept the ideas set forth in its manifesto and program. Only such persons are admitted as can be counted on to set the authority of the 'Left Wing Section' above that of the party itself. Its meetings are held in secret, and their business is that of a permanent closed caucus to lay plans for controlling the action of the party branches and committees, and of obstructing their activities when it cannot control them. "Even within the 'Left Wing Section' itself democratic methods are not used. The admission of members, the choice of delegates to Left Wing conferences, and the framing of instructions to those delegates are intrusted to committees composing an inner circle. All members and adherents of the 'Left Wing Section' are called upon in their action as party members and as members of party committees, to give explicit obedience to orders issued by the inner circle. A sufficient sample of this is the appointment of a 'steering committee' for the Left Wingers in the central committee of the local, and the issuance of instructions to delegates affiliated with that section as follows: "'In all matters involving Left Wing tactics vote as a unit with the steering committee. Do not make motions, ask for divisions, further divisions, roll call, and appeals from the chair. The steering committee will attend to that.'