carried away their men as conscripts for the Bolshevist military adventures in Poland, Siberia, the Caucasus and other far away sections.
To Bertrand Russell Lenin said: "Nothing will do any good except arming the proletariat (that is, that part of the proletariat considered reliable by the Communists). Those who believe anything else are social traitors or deluded fools." Asked by the Norwegian Socialist visitor, Friss, "Do you intend then to use the Red Army against the internal enemy?" Lenin replied: "Yes, of course. What the peasants call a divine right we call high treason."
Again when referring to the plunder of the peasantry before the British Labor Delegation Lenin laughingly replied that they were being paid for what was being taken in worthless paper money. As quoted by Haden Guest of that delegation Lenin was not ashamed: "The peasant," he explained, "is a small capitalist. Therefore, the dictatorship of the proletariat means the government of Russia by the towns. We do not recognize equality between the peasant (that is, the agriculturist) and the town worker."
The Bolshevists have given various names from time to time for this looting of the countryside by the Red Army. The usual name has been "taxation in kind." As Trotzky declared in certain of his "theses" (Pravda, December 17, 1919) : "the obtaining of goods from the country will inevitably be considered by the more prosperous elements of the peasant class as a State tax in kind. The methodical and regular payment of such a tax can be assured only by coercion on the part of the State." Not only did the peasants so regard these
