As censorship, raids, arrests, deportations, and assassinations descended upon the Left, labor, and anti-war movement in the Summer of 1917, Debs urges comrades to hold their nerve and steel themselves for the coming fight. Debs himself would be convicted of sedition and sent to federal prison in the dark days that followed.

‘Never a Time for Despair’ by Eugene V. Debs from The National Rip-Saw. Vol. 14 No. 8. October, 1917.

There is said to be a time for everything, but I cannot imagine a time given to despair that is not absolutely wasted. Pain and misery, sorrow and dejection; may have their compensation, but the time that goes to despair leads straight to the gates of death and oblivion.

Trials there are without end for us all, yet bitter as these may be they are not, as they sometimes appear to be, an unmitigated curse, but they have more often a purpose which, could we but divine it, would stamp them as the real blessings which come into our lives.

Despair is not the exclusive attribute of a weak character, but it may seize upon the strong and resolute for its victims, and if they succumb to its deadly influence they are lost to themselves and the world.

Just at this dark hour, when all the moral strength of the world is necessary to save it from destruction, thousands are giving up in despair, thereby confessing themselves too weak to face the crisis that confronts humanity, and therefore unfit to play their part in saving the race and finally humanizing the world.

Let the earth quake beneath our feet and the lightning flash above our heads; let the elements rage in fury and do their worst, the women and men of conviction, of courage and self-reliance, will stand their ground until the storm is passed, and when the new day dawns it will find them erect at their posts, if they did not perish there.

To weak and timid souls, those who confess their dependence and seem to rejoice in it, howling with the pack is not only a diversion of delight but the fulfillment of a life ambition. They do not doubt, they never dream, they are total strangers to a holy aspiration. They are content with the crumbs that fall from the table of Dives, and with the bones that he casts to the dogs at his gate, and woe be to these spineless sycophants if Dives, who despises them, drives them from their kennels to perish in the highway! From utter dependence they are plunged into utter despair, and the world to them is but a vast waste which forbids advance and from which there is no retreat.

Afflicted, indeed–aye, cursed beyond measure, are those who, in the struggle of life, are morally so weak that before the battle has fairly begun their hearts sink, within them and they fall ready victims of despair. To them the present war is but one appalling catastrophe with absolutely nothing beyond it. They do not think, they do not read, they do not reason, but, like the mental children they are, they fall down on their knees in despair, for certainly the hour of judgment has struck and the world is now coming to an end.

But fortunately there are in the ranks of the enslaved the women and men whom oppression has not crushed and who would never dream of despair. These alert and courageous spirits are the eyes of their blind fellow workers, the heart of their class, the soul of the social revolution.

Each of these stands sponsor for a thousand of the rank and file who have been put to sleep by the soporific of their masters, administered by their politicians, preachers and professors, and each of them is a personal guarantee that, whatever individuals may weaken, the movement can never be driven to despair.

At the present moment the strongest among us are tested to the core, and many who would have passed as absolutely loyal and unconquerable will desert our revolutionary standard and vanish from the movement. We shall regret their weakness and failure, but their loss was inevitable. They had not the moral strength to stand the test, and had to go into the discard. But there are others who, the severer the ordeal, the more resolute their loyalty and determination to stand at their posts and perish there rather than desert. These are the souls history immortalizes, for it is they who make history and who in truth are history.

For these intrepid souls there is no discouragement and no despair. They set the inspiring example that challenges their fellows to emulation. Charles Ruthenberg, Alfred, Wagenknecht and Charles Baker, of Cleveland, sentenced to serve a year in prison for standing by their convictions, are not despairing at their fate.

Tom Mooney and Rena Mooney and their comrades may be hung by the brutes in official control on the Pacific coast, but they will never strike their colors to the enemy.

Kate Richards O’Hare may be put in prison for expressing her convictions but every fibre in her being is loyal to the cause.

In these days of crisis let us stand straight up like true men and women, let us wage our propaganda with increased energy and determination, let is keep our banner flying, let us refuse to compromise and scorn despair, let us declare anew our allegiance to International Socialism and march proudly, joyfully, with the Revolution of Victory or Death.

The National Ripsaw, a Free-Thinking, Socialist magazine that, in the 1910s, included the O’Hare’s and Debs on its board. The paper under the O’Hare’s was a voice of the Party’s anti-war wing and became a main literary vehicle for Debs before it, like all of the anti-war Left press, was banned from the postal services. In it’s previous incarnation, The Rip-Saw was an openly racist, exclusionary “Socialist” magazine under editor Seth McCallen from 1903 until 1908 when the paper was taken over by Phil Wagner and the politics of the paper changed.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/national-ripsaw/171000-socialrevolution-v14n08w164.pdf