Commenting on Bolshevism, Mr. Eber Cole Byam, in the April 26, 1919, issue of "America," very aptly says:
"As the Roman world was reduced to barbarism by the barbarians so now the modern world is threatened with reduction to Bolshevism by the Bolsheviki. Whatever the word Bolshevism may have meant originally it has come to mean fiendish treatment of women, the savage murder and mutilation of men and the wanton destruction of the accumulated labors of generations. The Bolshevik is a Socialist, not the armchair theorist dreaming fantastic fancies. The Bolshevik is the real Socialist, the Socialist of practice."
The following encomium on Bolshevism appeared in "The Call," New York, April 26, 1919, and shows what strange inclinations the Socialists have towards barbarism:
"For the first time in Russia's history law has been established based on the direct will of the population, established through the most democratic franchise in the world. Under Czarism, law was merely the promulgation of autocratic tyranny....
"For the first time in Russia's history, perfect freedom of religion is guaranteed to Christian, Moslem and Jew alike. After the American pattern, no church may control the state....
"For the first time, millions of Russian workers and peasants find themselves with decent homes. For the first time, women have equal social rights with men. For the first time, a real educational system has been inaugurated for the children....
"The recent official American investigators sent to Russia found a great change in the life of the cities from of old. They described the life as puritanical. Russians explained the change to them by the fact that vice and debauchery had been confined mostly to the idle ruling class, the old aristocracy, and these things had passed with the passing of that class."
Listen now to the words of the Russian Socialist author, Leonoid Andréiev, who has seen quite enough of the "blessings" of Bolshevism. They appear in the April 26, 1919, issue of "Struggling Russia," under the caption, "S. O. S., An Appeal to Humanity":
"One must, indeed, be insane not to understand the palpable and simple acts of Bolshevism! One must be sightless, stark-blind or have eyes that see not, to fail to observe on the face of the great mutilated Russia murder without end, ruins, miles of cemeteries, dungeons and insane asylums; not to perceive what hunger and terror have done to Petrograd, and, alas, to many other cities!
"One must be earless, stone-deaf, or have ears that hear not, to remain callous to the sobs, the sighs and the wailing of women, the heart-rending cries of the children, the death-rattle of strangled men, the cracking of the assassins' rifles, the only music that has filled the air of Russia for the last eighteen months!...
"As the wireless operator on a sinking vessel, in the thick blackness of the night, sends out his last appeal, 'Help, quick, we are sinking, save us!' so I, moved by my faith in the goodness of man, am sending out into distance and darkness my prayer for my people who are sinking.
"If you only knew how dark is the night around us, if my words could only convey its density and depth! Whom am I calling? I know not. Does the wireless operator know who may intercept his call? For thousands of miles around the ocean may be deserted and not a living soul may overhear his appeal.
"The night is dark. The sea is frightful. But the operator has not lost his faith, and he calls persistently, to the very last minute, until the last light is gone and his apparatus is silenced forever.
"What does he trust in? He trusts in humanity, and so do I. He trusts in the law of human love and life. It is impossible that one human being will deny help to another in his hour of perdition. It is impossible that one human being will abandon another to perish without attempting to help. It is impossible that such an appeal for help will not receive any response!...
"Friend! I do not even attempt to tell you how frightful life is in Russia at present, in our tormented Petrograd. Others have told enough, and new words cannot be coined by the human tongue.
"It is frightful when children starve and perish, and assassins are well-fed and Trotzky is pouring down his throat the last bottle of milk. It is frightful when the cemeteries of Petrograd have no more room for the dead, and the murderers have a free road not only to the Princess Islands, but to all the ends of the world, and the wealth they have stolen will enable them to live in balmy lands and in the most attractive corners of our mercenary globe."
Catherine Breshkovsky, the Socialist "Grandmother of the Russian Revolution," though now an aged woman, lived long enough to bewail the fate of her country. Speaking of her native land, now reaping the harvest from the Marxian seed first sown many years ago, she says in her "Message to the American People":
"Flooded with tears and blood, Russia moans and cries out to the world. She is a living body, and her tortures cannot be looked upon cold-bloodedly as an extraordinary, never-before-witnessed experiments in social evolution. She is alive and every pore of her body is shedding blood."
Let the "scientific" American Socialists continue to take their information from "The Call." They are far too learned to be deceived by Russians such as Andréiev or the "Grandmother of the Russian Revolution." "The capitalist press is lying about the conditions in Russia." "The Call" alone speaks the truth, for it is a proletarian sheet.
Not satisfied with ruining his own country, Lenine would have Bolshevism spread to all other nations. He longs for their workingmen to rise in revolt against their present systems of government. Listen to his words in his "Letter to American Workingmen," published by the Socialist Publication Society, 431 Pulaski street, Brooklyn, New York: