Our papers were giving us lurid accounts of the Bolsheviki advancing in the Baltic provinces, burning and slaying as they went; but the conspiracy slipped a cog, and there crept into an Associated Press dispatch a little paragraph which gave the game away. In reading it, understand that these provinces are a part of Russia, which the Russians were taking back from the Germans:
Warsaw, Dec. 29.—The Bolsheviki are advancing rapidly toward Vilna, and are favored by mild weather. Their advance guards are said to be orderly, well clothed and well armed. They have committed no depredations except where they met with resistance.
And here is another from Berlin, Feb. 15, 1919, which gives us the real reason for the world-wide dread of the Bolsheviki. Ralph Rotheit, correspondent of the Berlin “Vossische Zeitung,” visited the Bolshevik line at Vilna.
He pictured the situation as extremely pessimistic, although so far the Bolsheviki have always been defeated by the Germans whenever they ventured skirmishing. However, Rotheit writes, the Bolsheviki do not rely so much on fighting as on corrupting opponents by never-ceasing wireless propaganda, and by sending emissaries into the districts still occupied by the Germans, and by Bolshevik literature with which the latter’s positions are flooded. Rotheit says unfortunately the effect of this propaganda at Kovno, headquarters of the German commander, was only too evident, as in many other places on German territory, as well as the Russian and Polish.
Here we have the real quarrel with the Soviets, the real reason why they must not, cannot be permitted to survive. They are propagandists; day and night they agitate, they preach and they print—and for some reason, the more loudly we proclaim that their propaganda is false, the more deeply we seem to dread its success! Since when have we lost our faith in the might of truth? Since when have we decided that error must be fought with bullet and machine-gun? Surely there must be some dark secret here, some skeleton in our family closet!
The truth is that we have seen in Russia a gigantic strike, an I. W. W. strike, if you please; and it has been successful. The workers have seized the factories, and now we call for the militia to drive them out. The very existence of capitalism depends upon their being driven out; as the phrase is, they must “be made an example of.” And so the capitalist press is called in, our great lying-machine is given the biggest job in its history. The Associated Press does for Russia precisely what Charles Edward Russell showed it doing for Calumet, what I showed it doing for Colorado. All our newspapers, big and little, do what they are accustomed to do whenever there is a strike in America—telling everything evil about the strikers and nothing good about them, clamoring for violence against them, justifying every crime committed against them in the name of “law and order.”
Recently the Soviets, pressed by starvation, have bowed so far to the will of world-capitalism as to agree to pay interest on the Tsar’s debts; they have offered to pledge some of the vast natural resources of Russia to pay for the machinery and supplies they must have. So Allied diplomacy hesitates and falters; dare the diplomats risk the terrors of Bolshevist propaganda, that mysterious black magic? Dare they allow the world to see a prospering social revolution, a government of the workers, by the workers, for the workers, which does not perish from the earth?
They decided upon a conference with the Bolsheviki, on a remote island in Turkish waters. Our newspapers printed the fact that the invitation had been extended to the Bolsheviki: but they did not print the Bolshevik acceptance. They did not print the text of the Russian foreign minister’s appeal to the French Socialist, Longuet, as to the meaning of the Allied proposals. They did not print the fact that the conference was abandoned because William Allen White, American delegate and man of honor, insisted upon full publicity.
President Wilson sent a confidential mission to Russia, composed of William C. Bullitt and Lincoln Steffens. They came back and reported that there was order in Russia; that the Russian people were satisfied with the Soviet régime; that the “nationalization of women” in Russia was an absurd yarn; that the cause of the starvation and misery in Russia was the allied blockade; and that Lenin wanted peace, and was willing to do almost anything to get peace. President Wilson, for reasons presumably known to him, turned down the advice of this commission. Steffens made a public statement as to his position, which was reported in the “London Daily Herald,” but in no American newspaper or magazine. Bullitt resigned from the Peace Commission, and addressed to President Wilson a brief and dignified letter, explaining his reasons: which letter was published in the “New York Nation,” but in no capitalist newspaper in America, so far as I could find out.
Then Bullitt was summoned before the Senate committee, and the Associated Press sent out a brief and inadequate report of his testimony. Next day he submitted the confidential report about Russia which he had delivered to President Wilson. This was the most important information about Russia yet available to the American people; and the “Los Angeles Times,” from which I get my first news of the world, gave not a line of this report! More than that, in order to avoid having to mention the report, the “Times” cut out that day every word of its news about the struggle over the peace treaty in the Senate! Instead, it gave two columns, of which I quote the headlines: