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America, then, has fully endorsed the stand of the American Federation of Labor at its 1920 convention. As further evidence of the complete harmony between American labor and the rest of the nation upon this subject, we may point to the able statement of that eminent representative of labor, former Secretary of Labor, William B. Wilson, in his decisions in the Martens deportation case. The decision itself is a highly important state document. Its principles were more briefly summarized in a letter written by Mr. Wilson a few weeks later (January 3, 1921) to Charles Recht, then Counsellor of the Soviet "Embassy" and now in charge of Soviet affairs in this country. In this letter Secretary Wilson, basing his statements upon a vast number of documents in his hands and upon the testimony of Mr. Martens, the Soviet "Ambassador," reached the following conclusions as to the character of the Soviet régime and the American attitude towards it:

 

In the evidence presented to me in the Martens case it was clearly shown that a group of men calling themselves Communists had set up a military dictatorship in Russia; that they had camouflaged it under the name of a dictatorship of the proletariat, seeking to convey the impression that it was a dictatorship by the proletariat; that it had by force of arms introduced compulsory labor, in other words, slavery, into Russia; that the proletariat were compelled to work at occupations selected for them at meager wages and long hours imposed under the direction of the military masters. Naturally the sympathy of the Administration and of the American people, including the workers, goes out to the Russian people, under such circumstances, just