How much Bolshevism is there in America?

The saddest sight in the Muscovite city is the place I named the Lane of Tears. It is an alleyway between two rows of permanent stalls on the Sukarefka, where women and men, old and young, almost entirely of the educated classes, with the exception of a few professionals who occasionally compete with them, foregather and sell their personal effects in order to keep body and soul together.

For three months I went to the market daily and never failed to visit the Lane of Tears. I have seen gently nurtured women selling their silken underclothing to the vulgar wives and mistresses of Commissars, who, all unmindful of the feelings of the seller, held up the garments for all to behold amid the ribald laughter and lewd jokes of the soldiers standing near. I have seen a young widow selling an officer’s tunic and strive to gulp down the tears as, with the proceeds, she hurried off to the bread pitch. If I read the story right, that tunic had been dear to her as the last remaining remembrance of the young husband the firing squad had taken from her.

Begs Money for Bread.

One day as I was having my shoes cleaned, a luxury which later I was unable to afford, an elderly lady addressed me in rapid Russian. I did not understand her as she spoke so swiftly and I told her so. She immediately asked me in French, German and English, with hardly a trace of an accent, what language I spoke. She told me in torrential French that she was starving (she looked it), and begged me to give her a little money with which to buy bread. She said all this as if she had learned it by heart and had then had to summon up her courage to say it, as after asking for the money she told me in a faltering voice that she would not have done so but that she had not tasted bread in four days.

I took her to a food stall and insisted on her joining me at an early dinner. The food was rough but good. As we ate I got her to tell me her story. Her eldest son, an officer, had been killed in the war against Germany; her second son and her husband had been shot by the Bolsheviks in 1918, and the crowning blow had fallen only a few months previously, when her only daughter and her husband were executed.

Having sold all her possessions, she was now starving, and, as she told me, had only one wish in the world, to fall asleep one night and never wake up. I gave her what I could. I never saw her in the market again. I have often wondered whether her wish was fulfilled. I trust it was; for that poor lady and thousands like her, death can hold no terrors, only relief from untold suffering.

A lady getting on in years, whom I often met on the Sukarefka, selling her clothing and other little trifles, has, I am glad to learn, arrived back safely in England. She is an English governess who had been in the service of a rich family living in the provinces. She made repeated applications to Rosenberg of the Soviet Foreign Office to be allowed to return to England, which were brutally refused. While the French Red Cross was in Moscow she was fed, but when it was evacuated she found it hard to keep alive. I was unable to help her, as I was desperately close to starvation myself. This lady was living at the English home, where I visited her several times. It was eventually taken over by the Soviet, and the remaining English women were herded four and five in a room, while the Bolshevik inmates lived in comfort in a room apiece.

Brutality of Bolsheviks.

The seizing of St. Andrew’s Home was only an instance of the brutal manner in which the Bolsheviks treated the British and the Americans in Moscow. The action was all the more despicable and cowardly inasmuch as the people living there were for the most part poor governesses, quite destitute of funds.

When Krassin left Moscow I applied to Rosenberg for permission to leave, which was refused on the ground that the frontier was closed. When the frontiers were opened I again asked to be allowed to leave and was put off with the excuse that the frontiers were still closed, although I knew them to be open, as several foreigners had left. It was only when Nuorteva, who came from Marten’s bureau in New York, took over Rosenberg’s job that the Foreign Office put its cards on the table and stated that they refused to honor my safe conduct and that they intended to hold me as a hostage. It took me a month to persuade Nuorteva to allow me to go. Nuorteva, leaving aside natural differences of opinion, behaved like a white man and showed himself both kind and considerate toward all the foreigners and genuinely desirous of helping them so far as the Vetchika would allow him to.

During the last three months of my stay, while waiting for permission to leave, I went closely into the life of the city. I visited all sorts and conditions of Russians in their homes and gained an intimate knowledge of how they lived, if one can use such a word to describe their bare existence.

In nearly every house there was overcrowding, four and five and even six people living and sleeping in one room. Their staple diet was black bread, kasha, salt herrings and potatoes. If a family was able to afford a little meat once a week and some milk, sugar and fruit, they were living in comparative luxury.

Card System a Farce.

The card system, except for the new aristocracy, that is to say the members of the Communist Party, who number only 500,000 in all Russia, is a farce. The bulk of the commodities one is entitled to purchase with cards do not exist. The cards are really only good for the bread ration, kasha, salt herrings and occasionally a little cooking oil, sugar, tea and potatoes.

The bulk of the people exist on black bread, kasha and unsweetened tea. The rations are just sufficient to maintain life. The people, to judge by their outward appearance, which medical men can probably explain, look healthy, but in reality they are terribly undernourished and are without any reserve strength. If an epidemic broke out in Moscow the people would die like flies.

The children are well taken care of. There are numerous creches, children’s homes and children’s dining rooms. However, even in the care of children the Soviet differentiates between the children of Communists and the offspring of non-Communists. The main reason why the Bolsheviki take good care of the children is because it enables them to bring up the coming generation on Bolshevism, Communism and class hatred from the cradle.

The sanitary arrangements of Moscow are deplorable. Most of the piping broke during the winter of 1918–1919 and no effort has been made to repair it since; in fact, no repair work of any description has been done during the past three years. The roads and pavements are full of yawning cavities and one risks his limbs if he goes out after dark. The streets are unlighted.

No regular scavenger service is maintained. The work of cleaning the streets, the railway stations, &c., is done by forced levies of bourgeois and “eye wash” parties of Communists, who work on Saturday afternoons for propaganda purposes. The street cars are running on a limited service and are invariably crammed to suffocation. The shops, of course, are all closed, with the exception of a few which sell milk, fruit and vegetables. There are no restaurants and no hotels open to the public. There are no newspapers except those published by the Soviet and which are crammed with lies from cover to cover. There is not the slightest freedom of pen or speech.

The population lives in a state of terror. The soldiers of the Chika are dressed in weird Mephistophelian headgear in order to terrify the people. House searches are invariably made at night or during the small hours of the morning. People are arrested daily on the flimsiest charges and thrown into prison without any form of trial. People accused of speculation and counter revolution are shot in thousands, being given no chance of proving their innocence. Eight thousand paid agents are employed in Moscow alone. The Soviet spy system is probably the most highly developed organization of its kind in the world.

“Veritable Bird of Prey.”

The most hated man in all Russia is Dzherjinsky, the head of this system. He has done to death literally hundreds of thousands of men and women. He is a man without a heart or a conscience, a veritable bird of prey, whose appetite for blood is insatiable. When the Reds overran Siberia after the fall of Kolchak, they announced as they advanced into the country the abolition of the death sentence and guaranteed to all White officers who surrendered a full pardon and permission to return to their families.

This undertaking was broken almost immediately after they gained complete control of the country. Thousands of Whites were butchered throughout Siberia. The man who ordered this was Dzherjinsky. Mrs. Clare Sheridan wrote in her diary that when she said goodby to him it made her feel sad that she would never see him again!

I have talked with all sorts and conditions of people in Moscow, from the lowest to the highest, and failed to find one person, apart from those in favored positions in the employ of the Soviet, who had a good word to say for Bolshevism or Communism or any other “ism.” On the other hand, the working classes have no wish to be again under the old regime. They all want the same thing—a Government that will give them a chance to earn a decent living and will leave them alone. They are tired of decrees, weary of rationed food and Communistic control and, above all, they loathe the “Chika.”

The majority of the girls and women working in the Government offices are leading irregular lives with the Commissars who furnish them with additional food and clothing. Girls who in pre-revolutionary days, would never have prostituted themselves, even in Russia, where morality was always on a low scale, to-day are forced to sell themselves in order to keep body and soul together. Bolshevism is the foulest prostituting agency the world has ever seen.

SOVIET RULERS A GANG OF THIEVES, BOON DECLARES

I left Moscow on Saturday, the 10th of October, by the courier’s train which was carrying despatches for Joffe, the head of the Soviet Peace Mission, and arrived in Riga on the morning of Tuesday, the 13th.

There travelled with me an English officer, Capt. J. S. Campbell, late of the Gunners, who had been captured by the Reds in January when on the Pechora River, East of Archangel, on a timber survey, and who had spent a considerable time in prison both in Archangel and in Petrograd. My other travelling companions were Mr. Hopwood, the assistant manager of Kodak, who had been in Moscow for eighteen years, and his two daughters.

Both Campbell and myself will always affectionately remember the charming reception given us by Col. Tallents, the British Commissioner to the Baltic states, and the assistance which was rendered us by Mr. Louden the British Consul. While in Riga we also saw Mr. Young, the American Commissioner, to whom we gave all the latest information respecting Americans held prisoners in Moscow.

In Riga we found it difficult to realize that we had finally escaped from the Bolsheviks, and it was only when we arrived in London, on Oct. 19, having travelled via Berlin, that we really felt that at last we had reached safety and civilization.

‘Gang of Marauders.’

In London I found people who were interested in Russia actively discussing the proposed trading agreement with the Bolsheviks, but nobody who had had any experience of them supported the scheme or were other than strongly opposed to it. I have spent the best part of the last three years in Russia, partly with the Reds and partly with the Whites, and during the whole of that time I occupied myself as a business man.

All my personal business interests are centred in Russia, and I have everything to gain by resumption of trade with that country, but notwithstanding, I am absolutely and uncompromisingly opposed to any trade relations whatsoever with the Soviet power. I shall have nothing whatever to do with Russia in so far as trading is concerned while the Bolsheviks remain in power. I regard trading with the gang of marauders who now wield power in that country as unsound in theory and in practice.

The basis of all business is credit, and the basis of credit is reputation. The Bolsheviks are thieves. Their word is worthless and their stock in trade is principally stolen gold, and I decline to become a receiver of stolen property even at the instigation of the British Government.

Mr. W. B. Vanderlip told me in Moscow that as soon as Mr. Harding took office the United States would recognize the Soviet Government and trading between the States and Russia, would be in full swing this coming year.

With all due respect to Mr. Vanderlip and his fantastic contract (which is not worth the paper it is written on) I do not believe that the United States of America will have anything whatever to do with the Soviet Government or that the United States Government will follow the lead of the British Government by entering into an ignoble contract with the biggest bunch of murderers and scoundrels the world has ever seen, or do any act which will tend to increase the power of a gang of marauders whose aim is to smother the truly democratic form of government which obtains in the States, and in the building up and protection of which the sons of America have so gallantly shed their blood in the past.

I should like the people of America to know that, apart from Mr. H. G. Wells and certain misguided members of the British Government, there are only two classes of people in England who desire that England should trade with the Bolsheviks, viz: those manufacturers and merchants who have large stocks of goods on hand which they are unable to dispose of, and the Direct Action people and their associates. Outside these two classes the people of England are opposed to any dealings with Lenine & Co.

“The Enemies of Mankind.”

For those manufacturers and merchants, whether they be English or American, who wish to trade with the Bolsheviks, I have nothing but contempt. They are the sort of people who fleeced their respective countries during the war, who lost no opportunity of taking advantage of their country’s plight, and to-day they are willing to deal with the enemies of mankind, if by so doing they can fill their own pockets.

There are not more than one per cent. of real Bolsheviks in the whole of Russia. The anti-Bolshevik elements in that country are unitedly opposed to the lifting of the blockade. Whilst they appreciate that to a certain extent their present deplorable conditions of existence would be somewhat improved by the importation of goods of first necessity, they prefer to undergo still greater hardships if by so doing they can bring about the overthrow and final destruction of Bolshevism.

Mr. Wells has stated that the Russian population is roughly content with the Bolshevist rule. I am at a loss to understand how Mr. Wells gained the impression of “roughly content.” Had Mr. Wells spent a year in Russia, as a free agent, unhampered by Bolshevik guides, and then made the statement that the population was “roughly content,” I should have characterized it as a cold, calculated lie, but inasmuch as he only spent two weeks in Petrograd and thirty hours in Moscow (I was there at the same time), we can attribute the statement to ignorance; in fact, Mr. Wells has shown himself as remarkably ignorant in relation to many of the vital factors of the Russian situation.

I do not believe that the honest trades unionist in any country is in favor of that form of government which the Bolshevists have instituted in Russia. I cannot but feel that if the genuine trades unionist in England and America possessed the same first hand knowledge that I do of Bolshevist rule he would be willing that the Government of his country should trade with the Soviet Power and thereby strengthen it.

Nowhere in the world to-day is the genuine workingman so badly treated as he is in Russia. Labor is conscripted and trades unions have been abolished. The workingman has apparently no rights and no voice in the government of his country. He is denied the right to strike or to protest against his grossly inadequate wages.

The Bolshevist government is the government of the militant minority. That minority comprises principally the criminal elements of the country. Lenine time and again stated that the people, taken as a whole, are too ignorant to be allowed to have a voice in the government of their country. He maintains that the country should be governed by the dictatorship of strong men who should decide what is good for the people, and, having decided, should enforce their will upon the people by means of military power.

I would recommend the workmen of America to note and inwardly digest:

(1) The people of Russia have no voice in the government of their country.

(2) There is no freedom of pen or speech.

(3) Labor is conscripted.

(4) People accused of offenses against the Soviet laws, which are not stable but are altered from day to day, are thrown into prison without trial.

(5) There are no juries.

(6) Trade unions have been abolished.

(7) The right to strike is denied.

(8) There is military conscription.

And, having done so, to say whether or not they desire to bring about the same conditions in their countries. I don’t think they will. I think they will agree with me that such a government is impossible. Those foreigners who have lived in Russia under the Soviet rule are unanimous in denouncing it as the worst government the world has ever seen.

Wells Knows Nothing About It

Mr. Wells, after two weeks’ stay in the country, tells us that the Soviet power is the only possible form of government for Russia at the present time. He conveys the impression that inasmuch as he has decided that “there is now no alternative to that Government possible,” that that settles the matter and we must do as Mr. Wells advises us. Mr. Wells ridicules Marx and yet, almost in the same breath, tells us that the Bolshevist Government, which is a Communistic government, is the only possible government for Russia.

It would seem to me that we are entitled to judge the value of Mr. Wells’s advice on these two statements alone and that it is not necessary to delve further into his impertinent literary gymnastics except to say that Mr. Wells, despite his boast that he was not hoodwinked during his stay in Russia, if judged by what he has written, was fooled up to the hilt.

Mr. Wells states: “Much that the Red Terror did was cruel and frightful; it was largely controlled by narrow-minded men, and many of its officials were inspired by social hatred and the fear of counter revolution, but if it was fanatical, it was honest. Apart from individual atrocities it did, on the whole, kill for a reason and to an end.”

Again, I suppose, we must attribute this statement to Mr. Wells’s ignorance. There has never been in the history of the world a more corrupt and dishonest organization than the Extraordinary Commission. There is no greater scoundrel than a Dzherjinsky, the President of it. But, ignorant and bumptious as you are, Mr. Wells, who are you to tell the world that the Extraordinary Commission is honest? What do you know about it? What have you seen of its methods? I venture to say that you have seen nothing and that you are writing, as you frequently do, of things you know nothing about.

You live in a free country, free from all persecution, enjoying every human comfort, under an established Government; and you go to Russia, spend two weeks there with your bleating, mouthing perversion of humanity, Maxim Gorky, and come back and tell your countrymen that they must support a set of blackguards.

A final word with you, Mr. Wells—leave Russia alone. You have done a lot of harm and you have earned the just resentment of every true friend of Russia. If you must dabble with poison, write another “Ann Veronica.” The Russian problem is one which will be solved by men, not by literary acrobats.

In conclusion, I would like to remind the great American people that they fought in the great war to make the world safe for democracy. You helped to destroy German militarism, but remember that German militarism was nothing as compared with that of Soviet power. Having set out to rid the world of militarism and make it safe for democracy, have you any right to leave the task undone? Is there not a moral obligation resting upon you to crush the militant minority which is exploiting and terrifying 99 per cent. of the Russian people?