America at the moment is guilty of betraying democracy in the most portentous situation of our time. It sneers at the democracy of America, turns up a supercilious nose at the great American labor movement, and rushes with abnormal appetite into the social and moral violence of Moscow.
Perhaps some of this phenomenon is due to the fact that the so-called liberals of America have fallen victim to a mania for mysticism and Moscow is the small end of the cornucopia from which is emitted the great haze—the great narcotic supply of all the conglomeration of mental morphia addicts.
What this condition makes necessary is that Americans must distinguish between the true liberals and the false liberals, the real liberalism and the pretense of liberalism.
The pretending liberalism is for Sovietism in Russia and for American recognition of that reversion to barbaric type.
If, as we are told, all that now is required by the Soviets is a de facto recognition, let there be no misapprehension as to what that means. That means recognition to the extent that we declare the Soviet Government to be the government in fact—the government that is. An official Soviet wireless on September 10 said:
The only thing which the Russian Government demands is that de facto relations be resumed, as it is obvious that otherwise trade relations are impossible; therefore such resumption of de facto relations is inseparable from trade relations.
Plain notice, this, to the world that Russia will pay
