the revolution will compel this whether the
Soviet or any other Government in Russia
likes it or not.
Comrade Melnichansky is Secretary of the Executive Committee of the All Russian Federation of Trade Unions and one of the most clear-headed of the labour men I met in Russia. He is a communist, who before the revolution was an exile working for his living in America, and like thousands of others was waiting for the call to come which would take him back to fight for freedom in his native land. That call came in 1917 when with Trotsky and several others he started his journey home. The British Government, he told me, is more responsible for the presence of Trotsky and himself in Russia than anyone else. Had the authorities representing Britain in Canada so desired they could very easily have detained these revolutionaries when they were held in custody both on board ship and on land. Melnichansky tells with great glee the story of how he and his friends chaffed the British officers for being representatives of a Government afraid of a handful of Bolsheviks.
Since meeting him I have met people who are still of opinion that the Germans bribed Lenin and his friends to make the revolution and gave them safe conduct across Germany for that purpose. It seems to me the charge
