The Wrangell sentinel., 1920-06-03
Shall Chaos or Reconstruction in Europe Follow the Great
 World War?
hoSSiA'S TRIAL OF SOCIALISM
Ultimate Good to the World Looked for From the Practical Test Now Being Made in Tn,
 Country.
Article XIV.
By FRANK coMERFoRD.

The red flag" remedy has been de- manding trial, test. The demand has been growing. Before its adyo- cates can be silenced they. must be shown. Out of the test of socialism in Russia is bound to come good Whether the theory is a practical one or not. putting it to the test will an. swer a question, satisfy a demand, and tend to quiet unrest.
 The fair-minded investigator cannot deny that there was justification and reason back of the effort to try the remedy. That the world has been sui fering from poverty cannot be denied. have found few men. even among the conservative, responsible leaders of business and governments in Europe. who did not admit that conditions in the world before the war were not right; that some change in the order of things was inevitable: that the dis satisfied elements in society were com ing together and that unless men were given better lives. they were deter mined to fight. The working man was deteriorating physically under the strain of brutal working conditions which 'eXacted too many units of phys ical energy for the number of calor- ies of food he was getting. The haemo- globin count, the red corpuscles. were disappea ring from the blood of the working people. It was not a theory one could see 1t in the faces and move ments of the people. Medical men recognized the fact. A walk through the poorer district of any industrial city in Europe furnished plenty of evidence of this alarming condition Men, women and children were resort ing to false stimulants to keep up. Tea, coffee and alcohol were being used in increasing amounts.
 Always on Verge of Want
 Men were stretching their arms and yawning. Squalor and filth furnished the homes. Many lived in abject pow erty, many more lived on the border line of the garbage alley. Few were able to accumulate even the smallest surplus. They could not by scraping
 
 game. It had become hand-to-mouth existence, weekly, monthly fight to meet the grocery bills, buy stockings. shoes, and the scant amount of clothes to cover their bodies It was bread and coffee for breakfast, bread with jam and tea for dinner. tea and cheese for supper. Sausage sometimes took turns with cheese Once week. the Sunday repast, great stew. few vegetables and a bone. In the Latin countries it was the same. except that diluted cheap wine was substituted for themselves poorer and older at the end of the week than they were at its beginning. Over the workingman's head was suspended night and day by a thin. weak thread, the dreaded sword of poverty. Men feared that the thread might break any minute It was the thread by which they held the thing called a "job." What did they care about the rights of private property? They didn't have any private prop erty. The socialists had willing list eners when they ranted about com munism. It promised to give these people property, to give them com mon ownership of everything. It wasn't hard to convince them that this was better than ownership of nothing
 The bOlsheviks of Russia are en- titled to the presumption of good foith 1T, oaloottpo ha NTorvtop f,r,,,,,ln It is only fair to them, and to the rem edy. to examine the experiment with mind free from prejudice. In admit ting the good intentions of the bOl- sheviks I am not conceding that bol- shevism Is practicable, workable; that it has succeeded or can succeed For the present am trying to fairly give the whole story of the effort. It Is as foolish to try to answer the bOl shevik propaganda by calling the bol- sheviks ugly names, as 1t would be stupid to accept bolshevism because its advocates are sincere.
 Need for Calm Consideration.
 Russia is the patient. If we are to intelligently judge the treatment called bOlshevism, 1t Is necessary to get complete history of the patient and examine the conditions under which the experiment was tried. Any doctor who is a scientist would follow such a procedure in handling. med ical case. If doctor announced to the scientific world that he had a rem edy for cancer. which at the present time Is an incurable physical disease. just as poverty Is social one, the scientists would give hearing to his theory. seek fair test for 1t, keep their minds open, and judge the eff cacy of the remedy by the results it produced. Communism, as treat ment, cure for poverty, has never been put to the test on scale and in circumstances which justify any posi- tive judgment as to whether or not the plan is practical one. As I have written, the Russian bOlsheviks insist tsx