Page:Meet the Communists (Flynn).djvu/19

 women worked in war industries in Britain, the Soviet Union and America, to supply our armies with weapons. We Communists insist upon women's right to work, to equal seniority, to equal pay and to adequate protection at work. Women have seen the horrors or heard the harrowing accounts of what fascism did to children—wholesale deliberate murder of thousands to destroy the future citizens of Europe; starvation, torture, affecting their growth, emotional stability and mentality. To bring about a world where all children are safe, normal, happy, is the will of the women in Europe today. That is why they vote Communist by the millions in Europe. Women here, too, need the Communist Party to help shape political events so that peace will be maintained and our children not be called upon to suffer another more terrible and bloody war, or that women will not be degraded to the level of cattle as happened under fascism.

A WAY FOR YOUTH TO BUILD LIFE WITH A PURPOSE

We extend our invitation to the youth, whose lives were cruelly interrupted by a war, whose aspirations are thwarted, whose plans for a career in the arts, professions and sciences are cut short by poverty, whose success is bought only at the price of submission to commercialism, whose finest hopes and noblest ambitions are frustrated in the withering struggle for existence under capitalism. We offer to youth life with a purpose—a chance to help build a new, free world of Socialism. Where, except in the Soviet Union, does youth today have a chance to develop their intelligence, capabilities, capacities, and devotion to ideals? Socialism is the realization of youth's noblest dreams. "Our Party will always be a Party of Youth!" said Lenin.

Communist youth eagerly entered military combat against fascism. Not only did thousands of our American Communist Party young members fight in the Army, Navy and Air Forces, but as early as 1936, over 2,000 went to Spain to fight side by side with the Loyalists. The men of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and Canadian Mackenzie-Papineau Brigade were the first Americans to shed their blood on Europe's soil fighting Hitler, Mussolini—and their tool, Franco. They were 19