Agnes Smedley
Agnes Smedley
Agnes Smedleywas an American journalist and writer, well known for her semi-autobiographical novel Daughter of Earth as well as for her sympathetic chronicling of the Communist forces in the Chinese Civil War. During World War I, she worked in the United States for the independence of India from the United Kingdom, receiving financial support from the government of Germany. Subsequently, she went to China, where she is suspected of acting as a spy for the Comintern. As the lover of...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAutobiographer
Date of Birth23 February 1892
CountryUnited States of America
Now and then some Party member would announce a study circle, and I would join it, along with some ten or twelve working men and women.
I have lived in the homes of workers; they live on boiled potatoes, black bread with lard spread on it instead of butter, and rotten beer.
I have written for years of the Red Army, yet my first living contact with it was with these peasants. They did not understand me.
Germany is in terrible condition this year. This is particularly true of the working masses, who are so undernourished that tuberculosis is having a rich harvest, particularly of adolescent children.
What a couple. I'm consumed into ashes. And he's always raking up the ashes and setting them on fire again.
But he like my mother, had certainly come to know that those who work the most do not make the most money. It was the fault of the rich, it seemed, but just how he did not know.
For months it seemed that a revolution was certain. But instead, slavery seems more likely now. The working class no longer has the physical resistance for a revolution, and the Entente is too strong, and Russia is too weak.
In one hotel, the maid who built the fire fainted in our room. Exhaustion was the cause. We talked with her later and learned that she worked 17 hours a day and makes 95 marks a month - about 50 cents.
Everybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe.
I have loved and bitterness left me for that hour. But there are times when love itself is bitter.
I have always detested the belief that sex is the chief bond between man and woman. Friendship is far more human.
When I was a girl, the West was still young, and the law of force, of physical force, was dominant.
More and more do I see that only a successful revolution in India can break England's back forever and free Europe itself. It is not a national question concerning India any longer; it is purely international.
Now, being a girl, I was ashamed of my body and my lack of strength. So I tried to be a man. I shot, rode, jumped, and took part in all the fights of the boys.