— 9 —
"And I saw everywhere the village and city schools the Soviets opened—rows of earnest children presided over by an eager-faced womanly teacher or two.
"The Soviets seem to be guided by common sense and the spirit of co-operation. There is no truth at all in the constant rumors of splits between Lenin and Trotzky, for instance.
"The Bolsheviki have, as you have heard, turned many of their munition factories into factories for the manufacture of agricultural machines. But not all of them, They knew that they must aid the first nation that had a revolution, so they kept a necessary number of the munition plants going.
"I saw in Samara the poster announcing the socialization of women, and making it appear that this plan was given out by an Anarchist society there. Enemies of the Soviets knew that they couldn't make people believe that the Soviets would authorize the socialization of women, so evidently their idea was to imply that the Anarchists would soon overthrow the Bolsheviki and put such practices into effect so that on the whole it would be better to go back to Czarism. The Anarchists came out with a vigorous denial, of course. I have a copy of the posters of the denial they put up, reading something like this:
"'From the Samara Federated Anarchists: Enemies, you are defeated and you show that you are getting desperate when you employ such methods. Anarchists all over the world have fought and are fighting for freedom. Is it likely that we would now use our freedom to enslave women?'
"And I heard friends and enemies of the Bolsheviki express their opinion frankly enough. An American in Moscow said, when he heard the Germans had opened a bank at Riga, 'Better German banks here than banks managed by them damn Bolsheviki!' And an American who was in Russia as a representative of the International Harvester Company and later was made an American Consul, said to me, 'Yes, I hope the end of the war is near, so that Germany and the Allies can come in here together and put down the Bolsheviki.'"
