The newspapers mentioned are ardent defenders of the Soviets. But certain more conservative organs, wholly opposed to Bolshevism, also found some way to take a position favorable to the Soviets. One of the leading Democratic newspapers of the country, reversing the view expressed by the above mentioned journals that the Hughes Note was to be praised because it was friendly to the Soviets, argued that it was to be blamed because it was too hostile. Wilson and Colby were hostile enough; Harding and Hughes go too far when they are more hostile still:
Insisting that "production is conditioned upon the safety of life, the recognition by firm guarantees of private property, the sanctity of contract and the rights of free labor," they, Harding and Hughes, demand in effect an economic revolution in Russia, and it is a demand that cannot very well be substantiated as a basis for commerce.
This conservative paper then proceeded to endorse the entire argument upon which the pro-Bolshevists now stake their agitation: Lenin, it appears, has surrendered to "peasant individualism." "The Communist autocracy has had to yield to rural public opinion backed by the physical power of the peasant. … What was called in the beginning a necessary but temporary dictatorship of the proletariat ran its course much more quickly than in the French Revolution." What truth there is in all this—if any—we shall show in later chapters. Undoubtedly something of this kind may happen if the Soviets are not further bolstered up by political recognition and financial aid from
