part mildly critical or ambiguous, but, on the whole, was distinctly friendly to the Bolshevist régime. Individual members of the delegation practically half of it, including Tom Shaw, Ben Turner, Mrs. Philip Snowden, Dr. Haden Guest, as well as Bertrand Russell, who accompanied the delegation had issued the strongest adverse statements. But the report, as a whole, was friendly, doubtless owing to domestic politics and to diplomatic motives which do not appear. This was all the more shocking to the Russian Socialists and Trade Unionists since all other foreign labor delegations—Germans, Italians, Swedish and Spanish, had had the courage of their convictions. (See Chapter XII.) The Social Democratic appeal is therefore doubly important, serving not only as a picture of Russian labor persecution but as an indictment of the inexcusable failure of the British delegation even to touch on these vital matters in its one-sided report—from which was excluded also the valuable individual testimony of Mrs. Snowden and other delegates, while the pro-Bolshevist material of the extremists, Robert Williams, Purcell, and Margaret Bondfield, was reproduced.
The Social Democratic appeal secured the following endorsement from Merrheim, Secretary of the largest French labor union, the Metal Workers, a leader of the French Confederation of Labor, and an ultra-pacifist and syndicalist himself:
Such are the facts. … There should arise the vehement and indignant protest of all trade union members and socialists (throughout the world) who still have a sense of dignity and independence.
