I find that like most radical papers, you assume that your reader knows a great many things that may be trite in the discussion of parlor Socialists, but with which the average citizen is not in the least familiar. For example, in your May issue, page 141, I find the assertion that the reports purporting to show how family life had been officially demoralized in Russia are "now happily proved false." If this is the fact, no such proof has leaked into the newspapers or other periodicals to which I subscribe, and in view of the fact that we have what purport to be authentic copies of the official edicts and decrees, I cannot believe that these reports have been proved false.
And here is a letter from Alice Stone Blackwell, which,
needless to say, could only be published in some radical paper.
It appeared in the "Public," New York:
Catherine Breshkovsky "the Grandmother of the Russian Revolution,"
is getting badly misquoted. She is astonished to see how different
some of the press reports are from what she really said. She
tells me she declared the other day that she would work twenty years
longer to keep Russia from having another Tsar, and she was reported
as saying that she would work twenty years longer to get the Tsar
back.
She also denied that women have been "nationalized," or "made common property," or that the Government puts any compulsion upon them in matters of sex. She said to me: "Women have more freedom in Russia now than they ever had before." As Madame Breshkovsky is strongly opposed to the Bolshevist régime, her denial of this particular accusation may be accepted as conclusive.
I have at several places in this book portrayed the degeneracy
of "McClure's Magazine," since it has become an organ
of privilege; also I have mentioned Newell Dwight Hillis,
agent of the Clerical Camouflage, and his knavish pamphlet
against the Colorado strikers. Now we see "McClure's" hiring
Hillis to vilify the Russian Soviets. After all these denials
have been published, and are available to all honest men, this
agent of the Clerical Camouflage contributes to "McClure's"
(June, 1919) a long article calling for the blood of the Russian
people. "McClure's" puts over the article a picture representing
a hideous fiend with a torch and bomb; also this editorial
statement:
Dr. Hillis's articles have brought in a flood of letters of commendation.
He writes as he preaches, fearlessly, truthfully.
I ask: Could the re-crucifixion of Christ go farther than
the application of the words "fearlessly, truthfully," to the
following dastardly lie:
