However little of a cynic one may be, it is almost impossible to refrain
from wondering at the fact that so many writers and journals that in the
quite recent past maintained absolute silence when the czar and his minions
were committing their infamous outrages against the working-people and
their leaders, and that were never known to protest against the many crimes
committed by our own industrial czars against our working-people and their
leaders--that these writers and journals are now so violently denouncing
the Bolsheviki for alleged inhumanities. When the same journals that
defended or apologized for the brutal lynchings of I.W.W. agitators and the
savage assaults committed upon other peaceful citizens whose only crime was
exercising their lawful and moral right to organize and strike for better
wages, denounce the Bolsheviki for their "brutality" and their
"lawlessness" and cry for vengeance upon them, honest and sincere men
become bitter and scornful.

I am not a Bolshevik or a defender of the Bolsheviki. As a Social Democrat
and Internationalist of many years' standing--and therefore loyal to
America and American ideals--I am absolutely opposed to the principles and
practices of the Bolsheviki, which, from the very first, I have regarded
and denounced as an inverted form of Czarism. It is quite clear to my mind,
however, that there can be no good result from wild abuse or from
misrepresentation of facts and motives. I am convinced that the stupid
campaign of calumny which has been waged against the Bolsheviki has won for
them the sympathy of many intelligent Americans who love fairness and hate
injustice. In this way lying and abuse react against those who indulge in
them.

In this study I have completely ignored the flood of newspaper stories of
Bolshevist "outrages" and "crimes" which has poured forth during the past