Page:George Lansbury - What I saw in Russia.pdf/20

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xiv
PREFACE


People like me, who for long years have served in the ranks of Labour and Socialism, and for whom there cannot be a very long span of years ahead, must give love, sympathy and help to the virile and young everywhere.

In England we have the forms of democracy, but oh, so little of the spirit of democracy ! In Russia, out of the autocracy and oppression of Czardom real equality, real democracy are being born. The form is not always there, but the spirit is. Where else in the world will you find the equality of suffering there is in Russia ; where else would you find all equally sharing the hunger, privation, and disease caused by the Allies’ blockade ? Where else in all the world will you find a Government treating enemy aliens as Soviet Russia treated them during the years of war and struggle on every front? And where would you find so few enemy aliens interned and imprisoned. And, sad to say, as a requital they have been lied about and slandered, as if in very deed they had been the greatest tyrants under the sun.

I see the Socialists of Russia as a band of men and women striving to build the New Jerusalem; they declare that for their task they need no help from on High, no power