heinous offence no doubt and one requiring
very severe punishment. During his term of
imprisonment, his wife, mother and myself
and his baby visited him. He was barricaded
off, as if either he or we would do some harm.
We were allowed to talk only in the presence
of a warder, and on saying goodbye he was not
allowed even to touch his baby.
I shall be told that these are the rules of our prisons. So they are, but no such rules prevail—certainly for political offenders—in Bolshevik Russia, not even when these political offenders belong to the country which has done its worst to crush the Soviet Republic.
There is another side to the prison question also, to which all of us should give some attention. The Bolsheviks do not think that it is possible to cure the evils of civilised life by punishment. The big thing they have done by allowing illicit trading and marketing to be carried on, is worthy of a great deal of attention from us all, because it is the keynote to their whole policy. They believe that human beings are bad or good because of their surroundings. They believe that greed and avarice, thieving and lying are just a part of that system of life which depresses and represses the natural desires of mankind. They think it is quite right that people should wish to have the best obtainable in the world ; that men and women should desire to get the fullest
