Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1920-08-27
LABOR AND THE SovlETS
ARE DRAWING FAR APART
German RADICALS, Like the British Trade
Unionlsts, Are Dissusted With the
Spectacle at Moscow

OPINION in Germany, like the hard
| thinking delegation assigned by British
! trades unionists to obtain a private view of
| sovietism in operation have just returned
| from Russia in a mood of disillusionment
| and despair.
They found no Moses.
| They found no promised land
They found dcsoation and failure and un-
belicvable injustice and the shadow of ap-
| preaching disasters that will bring fresh
mscres to the least fortunate of all Euro
| pean peoples.
The world owes something to these men
| who now have the courage to be frank with
| the world and with themselves. They wanted
| to see what was behind the claims and coun-
ter r-claims, the false pretensions and the
| false testimony of revolutionists, statesmen,
visionaries, agitators, exploiters and lounge
lizards of the reactionary embassies.
What they found on their pilgrimage
| would seem unbelievable If it appeared il q
| book or on the stage or anywhere but in
real life.
Suppose that lively group of Greenwich
| Villagers should suddenly manage to oust
| Congress and obtain control of the govern
ment of the United States, of all the money
and of all authority; or suppose again
that spiteful and undiscipined children
should establish themselves in the places of
| authority and, through the medium of gov
ernment, seek vengeance the adult world
| for all the real and imagined wrongs of child
| hood, and you will have a notion of what is
| actually happening to almost 200, 900 900
people in Russia.
Let us begin, for the sake of argument, by
assuming that the founders of bolshevism
actually intended to befriend the masses
The German kaiser believed that he could
improve the world by owning and bossing it.
So did Napoleon. Assassns who shoot in
the dark often insist that they are messen-
gers of the millennium.
There is organized slavery in Russia on a
scale never before dreamed of in the world
To maintain system of rule opposed to all
the normal trends of the human mind Soviet
leaders have conscripted labor and denied
bS ruthless force the expression of free
opinion. They have taught that no man or
woman has right to have hopes or aspira-
tions that are not the common lot of the
humblest and the most ignorant. They de-
vised elaborate mechanisms Of government to
prevent the free play of human thought and
human energies. They did this in order that
all men might be equal
The human desire to do, to achieve. to
all the force of a ruthless tyranny.
In Russia more than 90 per cent Of the
population cannot read. Communication is
carried on by means Of the spoken word
Russians are credulous and sensitive The
revolution gave +" almost every peasant an
independent right to a bit of land and a
limited right to the harvest. The Bolshevists
at Moscow have convinced the people that if
the present government falls the land will be
taken away from them. And yet the Moscow
regime is opposed openly or in secret bv
more than two thirds of all the people
The reason for this is simple but inter-
estng. With his first harroet the Russian
peasant felt for the first time like a free
individual. He had worked and he may have
worked harder than his neighbor. 1t seemed
unfair to ask that he should pool the fruits
of his labor 'for the good of the state
Food is the greatest need Of the hour in
Russia. So the peasant who once believed
that private property was an Offense before
heaven was the first 10 hoard such goods as
he was able to acquire. The cities needed
food for the industrial workers whom Lenine
had organized after the fashion of the bees
to labor and ask no questions. The farmers
refused to contribute and production in the
factories declined and starvation walked in
ten of seizures and arrests, and Moscow
conscripted more thousands and put them
to work in the fields under military disci-
pine.
The psychological reaction that made a
potential capitalist" out of every peasant
was a. clearly evident in the high official
quarters Of the Soviets as it was among the
illiterate. When the BOlshevst visionaries
were poor and safe from temptation they may
have been sincere enough But their first
contacts with money, their first taste Of power
wholly corrupted most of them. Nowhere
in the world is there privileged class fur
ther removed from the life of the masses
than the one that is running the affairs of
Russia from Moscow.
When the BOshevists first acquired mower
any man who may have been trained in a
way of life that took him a little apart from
the crowd was marked for punishment and
disgrace. The janitor in a hospital had as
much or more authority than the senior sur
gcOn The rich of another day were turned
out in battalions 10 sweep the cutters for
their meals. The theorists who had lived
for years in the nurky attics of New York.
Paris, Berlin and Vienna rolled meanwhile
in luxury and forgot their fellowship with
the proletariat.
The most skilled technicians Of industry
were treated as criminals until, after four
teen months Of confusion in all the national
Ccnters Of production, the SOviets took them
out OF the street cleaning gangs, out of the
kitchens and out of the clay pits and begged
them to give their talents to the state.
The question that Obtrudes after a read
ing of the anti Bolshevist reports formally
rendered by British and German radicals re-
latcs to the sorry quality of sta esmanship
which has persisted in European countries
to defeat its own ends in Russia
Where will it lead to at the last?
Within n month the tide of labor Seuti-
ment in Europe has turned powerfully