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the gendarme, the detective. He receives a Government salary for administering his poison to the masses. This is the most dangerous part of the whole affair. Were it not for this monstrously firm and strong organisation of the plundering capitalist State, there would be no room for a single priest. Their bankruptcy would be swift enough. But the trouble is that the bourgeois States support the whole church institution, which in return staunchly supports the bourgeois Government. At the time of the Tzar the Russian priests not only deceived the masses, but even made use of the confessional to find out what ideas or intentions their victims entertained towards the Government; they acted as spies while discharging their "sacred duties." The Government not only supported them, but even persecuted by imprisonment and exile and all other means, all so-called "blasphemers" of the Greek Orthodox Church.
All these considerations explain the programme of the Communists with regard to their attitude to religion and to the Church. Religion must be fought, if not by violence, at all events by argument. The Church must be separated from the State. That means that the priests may remain, but should be maintained by those who wish to accept their poison from them or by those who are interested in their existence. There is a poison called opium; when that is smoked, sweet visions appear; you feel as if you were in paradise. But its action tells on the health of the smoker. His health is gradually ruined, and little by little he becomes a meek idiot. The same applies to religion. There are people who wish to smoke opium; but it would be absurd if the State maintained at its expense, that is to say, at the expense of the people, opium dens and special men to serve them. For this reason the Church must be (and already is) treated in the same way: priests, bishops, archbishops, patriarchs, abbots and the rest of the lot must be refused State maintenance. Let the believers, if they wish it, feed the holy fathers at their own expense on the fat of the land, a thing which they, the priests, greatly appreciate.
On the other hand, freedom of thought must be guaranteed. Hence the axiom that religion is a private affair. This does not mean that we should not struggle against it by freedom of argument. It means that the State should support no church organisation. As regards this question, the programme of the Bolshevik Communists has been carried out all over Russia. Priests of all creeds have been deprived of State subsidy. And
