the German government, they were at this time offering to reject the Brest-Litovsk treaty, if America would support them; but America was a virtuous capitalist nation, and the entire capitalist press of America was a unit in proclaiming that our country should have no relations with men who refused to pay interest on the Tsar's debts to J. P. Morgan & Company.
All the lying power of our Journalism was turned against the Russian Soviets; and if you have read this book without skipping, you know what that lying power is. No tale was too grotesque to be believed and spread broadcast. In the same week we would read that Trotsky had fled to Spain, that he had been put in jail by Lenin, that he had been seeking a job on the "Appeal to Reason," Girard, Kansas! They published so many inventions that they couldn't keep track of them. Here are two paragraphs from a single issue of one newspaper:
Nicolai Lenin, the Bolshevist Premier, is the only prominent Bolshevist
left who appears to lead an austere life.—"New York Times,"
February 26, 1919.
Premier Lenin, refugees say, is not affected by the food problem. His bill for fruit and vegetables in a recent month amounted to sixty thousand rubles.—"New York Times," February 26, 1919.
In his book, "Russia in 1919," Arthur Ransom tells how
in Finland he read detailed accounts of mutiny and revolt in
Petrograd, the city being bombarded by naval guns. He went
into Petrograd and found the city peaceful, and everybody
laughing at his tales. Returning to England he found that
the tales had been forwarded to England, and published and
universally believed. As I write these words, I read in my
paper every other day of the fall of Petrograd. The accounts
are detailed, some of them are "official," and they continue for
weeks. But finally I read that the anti-Bolshevik armies are
in retreat from Petrograd!
Or take the "nationalization of women," the most grotesque scare-crow ever constructed to terrify a highly moral people. I have shown you how the imagination of "kept" journalists runs to foul tales about sex orgies of radicals. A comic paper in Moscow published such a "skit" on Bolshevism, and the outcome is explained in the following from the "Isvestija," the official organ of the Central Soviet Government, May 18, 1918:
