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44
WHAT I SAW IN RUSSIA


Moscow who could speak English. I found him not so much angry as hurt. He seemed to feel humiliated that it should be possible for anyone to think of religion as opium for the people. So far as he was able to judge, the men responsible for the statement—that is, men like Lenin, Trotsky, Lunacharsky and others—were all honourable, clean living, decent men, alienated from the Church in what to him seemed quite an inconceivable manner. Yet as we talked on, he himself touched the core of the whole matter, when with tears in his voice he admitted that in the days of the Czar the Church was nothing more than the handmaiden of autocracy and tyranny of the worst description. She had failed in her mission because she had been tied hand and foot to the powers of the State, never daring to raise a voice of protest against the infamies of Siberia or the terrorist methods associated with the dungeons of the fortress of Peter and Paul. Now was the day of travail and sorrow both for Russia and the Church. Perhaps what there was of true religion would now be able to find better expression because the Church, no longer tied to Governments, could with freedom deliver her message of peace and brotherhood.

This priest was one of the sanest, fairest critics of the Government. When I asked him, “ Are you quite free to carry on the work