In any list of men and women in this country friendly to the Bolsheviki it
will be found that they are practically all pacifists and
anti-conscriptionists, while a great many are non-resistants and
conscientious objectors to military service. Practically all of them are
vigorous defenders of the freedom of the press, of the right of public
assemblage and of free speech. With the exception of a few Anarchists, they
are almost universally strong advocates of radical political democracy. How
can high-minded and intelligent men and women--as many of them are--holding
such beliefs as these give countenance to the Bolsheviki, who bitterly and
resolutely oppose all of them? How can they denounce America's adoption of
conscription and say that it means that "Democracy is dead in America"
while, at the same time, hailing the birth of democracy in Russia, where
conscription is enforced by the Bolsheviki? How, again, can they at one and
the same time condemn American democracy for its imperfections, as in the
matter of suffrage, while upholding and defending the very men who, in
Russia, deliberately set out to destroy the universal equal suffrage
already achieved? How can they demand freedom of the press and of
assemblage, even in war-time, and denounce such restrictions as we have had
to endure here in America, and at the same time uphold the men responsible
for suppressing the press and public assemblages in Russia in a manner
worse than was attempted by the Czar? Is there no logical sense in the
average radical's mind? Or can it be that, after all, the people who make
up the Bolshevist following, and who are so much given to engaging in
protest demonstrations of various kinds, are simply restless, unanchored
spirits, for whom the stimulant and excitation of revolt is a necessity?
How many are simply victims of subtle neuroses occasioned by sex
derangements, by religious chaos, and similar causes?
II
The Bolshevik rule began as a reign of terror.
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