Evening star., 1918-01-25
URGE RULE SOLELY
BY WORKING CLASS
Bolsheviki Would Deprive All
Others of Voice in Russian
Government Affairs.
BY EDWARD PRICE BELL.
Cablegram to The Evening Star and
Chicago Daily News. Copyright, 1918.

LONDON. January 25.-Bolshevikism
is a new theoretic phenomenon. All
close students of the Russian situation
admit this. Governpent officials. tory
and liberal politicians and exponents of
every shade of labor socialism and
| thought so far are agreed. For some
| time the majority of British publicists
regarded the bolsheviki as pro-German
| if not actually German agents. Now
whoever has studied the bolshevik creed
admit that bolshevikism runs more
squarely counter to Hohenzollernism
than does any other political philosophy
extant.
| What bolshevikism proposes is that
| only the working class shall have any
voice in the government. So vital does
| it esteem this principle that it is willing
to employ force to any extent necessary
to realize it. Workers, according to the
bolshevik definition, would seem to be
only those persons in the nation who
till the soil and actually operate the
machinery of industry and commerce.
Other persons they designate as 'bour
geoisie' and wipe them off the political
slate. This. needless to say, is a theory
incompatible with democracy.
Up TO Ine present, SO lar as my kHOWl-
edge goes. no class or party in Britain.
however extreme in it's views respecting
capitalism is quite prepared to hoist
the bolshevik standard. No body of
Britons with which I am familiar argues
or ever has argued that the big men of
industry and commerce.. the scientists
and the intellectual and moral leaders
generally, should be disfranchised. But
this is what the bolsheviki propose if
their purposes are understood here.
Want a Socialist State.
In their view the proletariat should
have have a monopoly Of political power.
a socialist peace. They want a social
ist organization covering the whole
world. with the world leaders as they
have been known heretofore bereft of
power and influence in the structure of
the state. For Russia that would re-
pudiate at once the national debt and
abolish private property in land In
the field of foreign politics while urg-
ing their ideal of extreme socialism
they would leave every people to de-
termine its own political institutions.
Only one other party appears to have
had any considerable representation in
the short-lived constituent assembly.
This party is known as the socialist
These revolutionaries.
at least in the past, have preferred
coali( Jon TO pure proletarian rule They
objected also the substituting Of ir-
regular bodies like the soviet for con-
stitutional organs of government and
local centrals. However, the real aims
of the bolsheviki and the socialist reyo-
look remarkably alike The
latter, like the former. demand the ma
tionalization of the land and the re-
pudiation of the national debt.
With regard to peace the evidence
here indicates that the socialist reyolu-
are much keener for peace at
any price than are the bolsheviki One
still finds observers who imagine that
somewhere in Russia there are power
ful elements anxious to continue the
war for the realization of the aims of
the allies. One of these elements was
the population of the Ukraine. At
Brest-Litovak, however. we have seen
the delegates of the Ukraine secretly
negotiating with the Germanic DOW
ers to obtain-a separate peace on theJ
principle of the world democracy be
damned"