Referring further to the meeting at the Y. M. C. A., Mr. Simons said a little later in his testimony:
“Lunacharsky and Spitzberg said in that meeting, and they sent it out in their proclamations: ‘The greatest enemy to our proletarian cause is religion. The so-called church is simply a camouflage of capitalistic control and they are hiding behind it, and in order to have success in our movement we must get rid of the church.’ Now a frank statement like that seems to me to indicate their anti-religious and anti-Christian animus.”[20]
Mr. Simons further testified as follows:
Senator King. “Has there been a confiscation of church property and buildings?”
Mr. Simons. “Yes, sir; and in quite a number of instances monasteries, with their wealth, have been taken, and all kinds of indecent things have been done by certain Bolshevik officials.
“I have some data showing that they have turned certain churches and monasteries into dancing halls, and one instance has been reported to me where a certain Bolshevik official went into a church while the people were there waiting for the sacrament, and threw the priest out, so I am told, and himself put on the clerical garb, and then went on the altar and made a comedy of the ritual, which stirred up the religious sense of the people to that extent that they threatened—of course, among themselves—that they would yet kill that man. He happened to be an apostate Jew.”
Mr. Roger E. Simmons testified as follows in regard to the Russian priest who was put in the same prison with him by the Bolsheviki:
“A high priest of the church was there. He had been preaching sermons publicly denouncing the immorality of the Bolsheviki. They imprisoned him and shot him. This priest told me that he was a great admirer of Dr. Mott of America.”
Senator Nelson. “Do you not think that the church in the end will prove the rallying center for the anti-Bolshevik forces?”