The Midland Journal

N. Y. REDS MOBBED BY MEN IN UNIFORM

Soldiers, Sailors and Marines Attack Socialists.

POLICE ARE OVERWHELMED
Police Powerless To Withstand Rush—Bolshevik Adherents Pursued For Half Mile By Enraged Fighting Men.

New York.—Hundreds of soldiers, sailors and marines broke through a cordon of police surrounding Madison Square Garden and attacked International Socialists, who had attended a mass-meeting at which Bolshevik doctrines were expounded. The men and women leaving the hall broke and fled as the men in uniform charged past the police, but were pursued into the side streets in all directions.

The attack on the Socialists came at the close of a meeting which threatened from the moment it began to break into a riot. It was called ostensibly to protest against the execution of Thomas J. Mooney, but Scott Nearing, who presided, and the other speakers devoted most of their attention to pleas for the release of "political" offenders.

Several men and women were arrested for displaying red flags smuggled into the garden in defiance of an edict by Mayor Hylan. Large numbers of men in uniform entered the building before the doors were locked with the avowed determination of preventing attacks upon the Government. They were restrained with difficulty by police and detectives from making an assault on the stage. Scores of fist fights were interrupted by officers.

Soldiers and sailors who were unable to get into the meeting sent out patrols to round up all the men in uniform who could be found to join in the charge on the Socialists which had been planned to take place when the oratory was ended and the Internationalists started for their homes.

Madison Square was the rallying point for the military. They quickly staged an impromptu mass-meeting at which speakers denounced the Bolsheviks. They were cheered not only by the men in uniform but by civilian sympathizers. When some one called upon "loyal Americans" to charge the garden and attack the Internationalists, several hundred responded. They were driven back, however, by mounted police and men on foot who had surrounded the building.

Realizing that they had failed in the first attack, the soldiers and sailors resumed their meeting and awaited the arrival of reinforcements. Probably 1,000 men of both branches of the service had assembled by the time the meeting adjourned.

Almost instantly the Square was filled with yelling, running, fighting men. The screams of women, most of them wearing red roses or carnations in lieu of the forbidden flags, rose above the din as they clawed and scratched the soldiers and sailors who were pummeling the male Socialists.

Mounted police, reinforced by automobile loads of reserves, rushed from every station house within a radius of miles, struggled valiantly to clear the square but made little progress.

The Square was cleared of milling men only when Socialists by ones and twos and in groups broke. The scrimmage in the park then was transferred on a smaller scale into every neighboring street.