t. The callous and undiscerning
attitude of the ruling Tories deprived her of the last atom of hope. She
returned to Spain in 1938, wishing to stand beside her comrades during
their final futile efforts to hold back the fascist inundation.

Early in 1939, with darkness rapidly enveloping the whole of Europe,
Emma returned to Canada. There she died on May 13, 1940, clinging
tenaciously to the shreds of her revolutionary ideal until her last
gasp.

* * * * *

Emma Goldman was unquestionably the most active and audacious rebel of
her time. An idealist to the core of her being, cherishing liberty as
the most precious of human possessions, completely dedicated to the full
and free life for all mankind, she early became the object of
concentrated contumely and brutal abuse on the part of the defenders of
the status quo. Her threat to society lay not so much in her
revolutionary doctrine as in her attacks upon the abuses of capitalism.
B. R. Tucker and other individualist anarchists were equally opposed to
authority, but they were not molested so long as they did not concern
themselves with economic exploitation. Emma, however, had made it her
duty to fight against injustice toward the worker and the nonconformist.
Consequently she organized mass-meetings and marches against
unemployment; she became a picket-leader and fund-raiser, and protested
openly and persistently against violations of free speech and against
police brutality. This activity, especially effective because of her
untiring zeal and bold eloquence, gave her pre-eminence as a dangerous
enemy of capitalism and subjected her to persecution by the authorities
until she was driven out of the country.

Quite a few Americans, however, respected her for her honest idealism
and valued her as a goad stinging the social conscience of our
complacent public. One of them, William Marion Reedy, called her "the
daughter of the dream" after a meeting with her in 1908 and added: "She
threatens all society that is sham, all society that is slavery, all
society that is a mask of greed and lust." Floyd Dell spoke for many in
the blithe year of 1912 when he wrote: "She has a legitimate social
function--that of holding before our eyes the ideals of freedom. She is
licenced to taunt us with our moral cowardice, to plant in our souls the
nettles of remorse at having acquiesced so tamely in the brutal artifice
of present-day society."

For all her c