year. I have ignored, too, the remarkable collection of documents edited
and annotated by Mr. Sisson and published by the United States Committee on
Public Information. I do not doubt that there is much that is true in that
collection of documents--indeed, there is some corroboration of some of
them--but the means of determining what is true and what false are not yet
available to the student. So much doubt and suspicion is reasonably and
properly attached to some of the documents that the value of the whole mass
is greatly impaired. To rely upon these documents to make a case against
the Bolsheviki, unless and until they have been more fully investigated and
authenticated than they appear to have been as yet, and corroborated, would
be like relying upon the testimony of an unreliable witness to convict a
man serious crime.

That the Bolsheviki have been guilty of many crimes is certain. Ample
evidence of that fact will be found in the following pages. They have
committed many crimes against men and women whose splendid service to the
Russian revolutionary movement serves only to accentuate the crimes in
question. But their worst crimes have been against political and social
democracy, which they have shamefully betrayed and opposed with as little
scruple, and as much brutal injustice, as was ever manifested by the
Romanovs. This is a terrible charge, I know, but I believe that the most
sympathetic toward the Bolsheviki among my readers will, if they are
candid, admit that it is amply sustained by the evidence.

Concerning that evidence it is perhaps necessary to say that I have
confined myself to the following: official documents issued by the
Bolshevist government; the writings and addresses of accredited Bolshevik
leaders and officials--in the form in which they have been published by the
Bolsheviki themselves; the declarations of Russian Socialist organizations
of long and honorable standing in the international Socialist movement; the