The Connecticut labor news., 1923-03-02
A SOCIALIST PROTEST AGAINST
 SOVIET CRUELTY TO SOCIALISTS

! (An open letter by Emile Wander l velde to Leon Trotzky; translated from One, Democratic Russian daily
 published in Berlin.)
 To you, Trotzky, I turn at the pres ent moment. In the hour of reckon ing, you more than any one else, will have to answer for the life of the political hostages now in the Moscow prisons.
 For it was you who, with arrogant scorn, took upon yourself the task, with word and pen, to incite the mob to demand the death penalty for them.
 It was you who rallied to your mad Extreme Left when they proposed the immediate execution of the sen tence of the ist-Revolutionists last summer. Having lost the chance of killing them outright, you are now
 responsible for the humiliation and suffering that Is being inflicted upon these people who emerged from the Czarist prisons in order to enter your prisons and remain in them under the continual threat of death.
 Barbarous Prison Treatment.
 According to information in my possession. which comes from an au- thoritative source, the condemned So cialist-R t-Revolutionist are not being treated as political prisoners but as common criminals. Books are denied them They are not permitted to re- ceive food through the Red Cross. Since our departure from Moscow they have been deprived of the only relief they had-the opportunity to
 kl, Briefly, if this continues they will have to die in suffering and isolation Some of them are already very i'll. Gotz, this wonderful Abraham Gotz, whom even his most vehement enc mics cannot help respecting, is at the time of writing in such condition as to call forth intense anxiety among those who are close to him.
 And I am asking myself Will this continue, will you proceed to the end with this awful business, with the gradual killing of the political host ages whose entire crime consists in opposing violence?
 Pictures Distorted Condition.
 I do not appeal to that remnant of human love which may still exist in your heart. I fear that such appeal will be futile. But when, at the time of the Moscow trial, you wrote about me articles of slander and insult, you, nevertheless, were willing to recog- nize that I am mot completely lack ing in sound political reasoning" l am paying you back in kind, and therefore say to you: Do you not recognize the distortion and unnat- ural contradictions which just now ex- ist in your party and your Govern ment?"
 You promise to us European So- cia1ists) united front, and you make a united front impossible by refusing to consent to it in Russia. Further more, you carry on against our friends a merciless fight, depriving the Russian workers of those ele- mentary rights without which Rosa Luxemberg considers all Socialist work powerfless and unproductive.
 You are fighting for recognition by other governments. For that you need the general support of public opinion, especially labor and Socialist opinion Together with us you de- mand amnesty for those Gin foreign countries) who refused to fight against the Russian revolution. And at the same time you deny this ann nesty to people who before you and more than you suffered and fought i'll the name of the revolution. You are digging for your government and the | European working masses an abyss | which widens continually. You ar raign against yourself in irresistible | force all those in Europe to whom freedom and humanity are not empty l words.
 Why Trotzy Is Feared.