With this utter collapse of Socialist theories and professions in Bolshevikiland, we need not wonder that, according to a cable in the "New York Times" of March 2, 1920, the French National Socialist Congress adjourned at Strasbourg, March 1, 1920, "after voting down by more than 2 to 1 a motion to ally the Socialists of France with Lenine and Trotzky." According to the same cable, "The pleaders for the Third Internationale, formed at Moscow, were answered by the reply that the beautiful doctrines enunciated there had been thrown aside by Lenine and Trotzky and that any one who believed in real Socialism would be a fool to get behind the leaders of Soviet Russia."
Is it now in order for our American Bolshevists, Gene Debs, Morris Hillquit (alias Hilkovitz) and Vic Berger, solemnly to inform us that Russian Bolshevism never was Socialism, nor anything like it, but only a base counterfeit? And will they also inform us that Lenine and Trotzky are unprincipled adventurers and cold-blooded blackguards who have hidden behind the mask of Socialism to blackjack a great people and filch a wealth they never did a day's work to accumulate?
When our American wavers of the Red Flag try to hide their shipwrecked theories behind a repudiation of Bolshevikiland, we shall have to remind them of their many, many utterances jubilantly assuring us that "Bolshevism is Socialism in practice." A specimen will do, taken from one of the books published by the Jewish Socialist Federation of America, a "part of the Socialist Party" of the United States piloted by Debs, Hilkovitz and Berger, which we quote as cited on page 34 of the "Outline of the Evidence Taken Before the Judiciary Committee" of the New York Assembly:
"Bolshevism is not a new Socialist theory, but the practical carrying out in life of the old Socialist theory.
"Bolshevism especially is not a theory. Bolshevism is a method of how to establish Socialism in life.
"Bolshevism is practical Socialism, the Socialism of today, and not of the remote future day."
CHAPTER XVIII
THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST RELIGION ABROAD
It is but proper to begin this chapter by conceding that there are many church-going members among those who vote the Marxian ticket--not as an indorsement of the teachings of international Socialism, but merely as a protest against political corruption and the abuses of capitalism. Justice, moreover, demands that we acknowledge the existence of a small minority of dues-paying members of the Socialist Party who neither attack religion nor tacitly approve of the atheistic propaganda carried on in the official Marxian press, as well as in the books, pamphlets and magazines on sale not only in the leading Socialist book-stores of America, but even at the National Office of the party in Chicago.
In most countries of Europe, where the war against religion is much more open and widespread than in America, the Socialists are frank in confessing that their movement is atheistic and anti-religious.
In our own country some of the more violent Socialistic enemies of the church admit both in their speeches and in their writings that they would be extremely happy to see the very idea of God become a matter of ancient history. Christian Socialists of the old Carr faction, who constitute a minority of far less than one per cent of the Socialist Party of the United States, have not only conceded the existence of an atheistic propaganda within the ranks, but have attacked it and utterly failed to suppress it.
Apart from these two classes of American Socialists, who admit the existence of a campaign in favor of atheism, most Socialists in our country, because they fear that votes will be lost if our people are convinced of the anti-religious character of the party, steadfastly deny that they are conspiring against religion. Indeed they are quite cunning and crafty in their effort to beguile the unwary. If the person hesitates joining the party, owing to his conviction that nearly all the Socialist leaders have been the enemies of religion, he is informed that it would be just as foolish for him not to be a Revolutionist for this reason, as it would be for one not to become a Republican because Robert Ingersoll did not believe in God and even propagated atheism.