Although American consulates and embassies overseas had begun to receive letters of protest in September, the real force of the agitation did not strike until October, when large Communist-organized demonstrations took place in many cities. For all their tenacity, the anarchists were no longer a mass organization and, so far as European developments were concerned, the East German historian Johannes Zelt is undoubtedly right in claiming that “from the beginning the Communists stood at the head of the Sacco-Vanzetti campaign.” In a tactic foreshadowing the Popular Front of the thirties, the Communist International called on all Communists, socialists, anarchists, and trade unionists to unite for the rescue of Sacco and Vanzetti—while, at the same time, the anarchists in the Soviet Union were being liquidated en masse. The organized protest, as it spread across Europe, would include men of good will of all beliefs and persuasions, but control of the movement stayed in the hands of the Communist International and, later, the subsidiary International Red Aid, founded by the Cheka chief, Dzerzhinsky. For the Communists, Sacco and Vanzetti were pawns in the class struggle, convenient symbols to be exploited in a drive for power where the blood of even anarchist martyrs might become the seed of the Party. However the anarchists were to feel about the Communists taking over—and in time they would feel bitter indeed—the Party had the tight organization, the mass control, and the finances that made quick action easy. On September 20 the Central Committee for Action of the French Communist Party began making plans for a monster demonstration before the American Embassy. According to the resolution then drawn up, “Only direct and clearly revolutionary action can save the Italian liberators Sacco and Vanzetti from the death penalty to which they have been condemned.” The Communist daily _L’Humanité_ opened a subscription fund for the two men and proclaimed: “There is an American Embassy in Paris. We owe it a visit!” Rank-and-file demonstrators had scarcely heard the names of the two Italians when they received orders to take to the streets, but in their militancy they responded, just as they had for other issues and would again when some central committee pressed a different propaganda button.