PREFACE
Like everyone else these days who goes to Russia, I am writing a book. I have no apology to offer for inflicting yet one more story about “ Bolshevism ” on a long-suffering public. I am sure that, with the exchange of prisoners, and the return to England of hundreds of men and women lately detained in Russia, my book will not be the last.
A word of explanation is due as to how I came to get into Russia, at a time when Labour leaders and others were refused permission or passports to enter that forbidden country. The facts are quite simple. Last January, peace was about to be made between Esthonia and the Russian Soviet Republic. The “ Daily Herald ” numbers amongst its friends members of all the delegations in London representing the border States of Russia. We had specially championed the cause of Esthonia in the pages of the weekly “ Herald.” I thought it would be a good thing to go through Scandinavia to Dorpat, see the peace signed, and, if possible, enter Russia with the returning Russian delegates. Nothing was certain ; I had no sort of understanding with anybody as to whether I should be allowed to enter Russia or not. I asked for a passport to Scandinavia and Finland and secured the necessary “ visés ” before leaving England—except the Finnish, which, I was informed, could not be given for two weeks. I did not ask for a passport to Russia for the quite simple reason that neither the British nor any other Government had any power to issue such passports, since no Government in Europe at that time had officially recognised the Soviet Government. There was no mystery about my journey. I travelled like any other newspaper man, saw everybody of importance in each country through which I passed, and tried to learn all there was to learn about conditions. My intention was to be away from England three weeks or a month. I was away nine weeks, every day of which brought me knowledge, understanding and experience. I want to put on record my deep debt of gratitude to the Ministers and other Government officials, both British and foreign, with whom I came in contact. During the whole nine weeks, except for the short controversy in Copenhagen over Litvinoff's hotel, and for the unfortunate escapade which ended in my arrest and imprisonment in a detention camp, called a “ Quarantine Station,” in Finland, my relationships with everyone were most cordial. I was treated as an honoured guest by Socialists and non-Socialists ; I received the confidences of Ministers, and of one Prime Minister. The Customs Houses, Passport Offices, and Secret Police, were a very great trial and inconvenience, but they were all safely negotiated—although at times it seemed as if the very devil himself were engaged in spoking my wheels.
I learned one thing which is indelibly fixed on my mind. It is this : all Governments from the greatest to the least are ruled by fear. It is fear which has created the British vSecret Police under Sir Basil Thomson, and it is fear which has linked this department up with the Secret Police of other countries. So powerful, so widespread, is the net which Sir Basil Thomson and his secret agents are weaving, that even the domain of ordinary diplomacy is not free of them. When James O’Grady went to Denmark to negotiate the exchange of prisoners, the most important member of his staff was one of the chief assistants to Sir Basil Thomson—who, I suppose, knows more about the activities of us all than we know ourselves. It is mere literal truth to say that the negotiations between O’Grady and Litvinoff became cordial and possible only after this gentleman's return to England.
I think it well that the British people should understand we are now partially ruled by an irresponsible Secret Police. While the working classes are arguing about the sort of International they wish to establish, the Capitalist Governments have created a new “ International ” made up of spies and Agents Provocateurs, and this in order to preserve for the privileged few in all countries the right to exploit their fellow men and women. The Workers’ International should make one of the first objects of its propaganda the entire sweeping away, root and branch, of this system of international mischief-making and spying. Unless we do so, there will be no sanctuary in the world for revolutionists or even reformers.
Had the present iniquitous system and laws been in force fifty years ago, Mazzini, Marx, Kropotkin, and thousands of others would have found no refuge in England or elsewhere. The “ sacred right of property ” for the time being has swept away the “ sacred right of asylum ” for political offenders. In defence of this International Bureaucracy it is argued that the need for it exists because of the propaganda carried on by secret Societies and Revolutionaries. It is a strange commentary on this argument that many Governments carry on a persistent secret propaganda, paid for out of secret service funds which are never checked or audited, thus enabling police officials to have at their disposal huge sums of money with which to create and stir up the violence they are employed to track down.
It is also possible to use such funds and secret power for blackmail and private revenge, and in some countries this is actually done. The one and only safeguard for democracy is perfect freedom of speech and organisation, and a free press.
Yes, fear is what we all have to fear, for this it is which makes individuals and governments cruel beyond words. We hear a great deal about Russian atrocities in prison. In at least one of the Baltic States, I know for a fact, torture is still applied to prisoners, and I also know that in Great Britain political prisoners are treated in the usual inhuman manner in which all common prisoners are treated : that is, garbed in a hideous uniform stamped with the broad arrow, kept in solitary confinement, forcibly fed if they hungerstrike, and in every way made to feel how sordidly mean and miserable their position is. I call attention to these facts here, because they apply to every country, and my one solid conviction gained in conversation with all sorts of people is that Socialist and Labour Governments must be prepared at all hazards to throw over all such methods, once they come into power.
In my story I do not propose to be an apologist. I do not consider Lenin or his comrades need me or any one else to act as such. In my judgment, no set of men and women responsible for a revolution of the magnitude of the Russian Revolution ever made fewer mistakes or carried their revolution through with less interference with the rights of individuals, or with less terrorism and destruction, than the men in control in Russia. When I speak of the rights of individuals I exclude property rights, for the one object of the revolution was to abolish for good and all the “ right ” of one set of individuals to exploit the life and work of their fellow men and women. Further, it is no part of my business as a Socialist to search out and strive to discover material for criticism or denunciation : I did not go to Russia as a cold-blooded investigator seeking to discover what there was of evil ; I went as a Socialist, to see what a socialist revolution looks like at close quarters ; and, above everything else, to look at the faces of those who made the revolution. It was the spirit moving the men and women responsible for the revolution I wanted to discover, for all else is of no importance.
The Russian people have a long and difficult path to tread before they reach their goal : there will be much more agony and bloody sweat. I am confident, however, that from this young, mighty people new life will come. In the meantime we who live in lands where the people are much older and more experienced in the methods and ways of the devil, and where enthusiasm is frowned upon, must look to it that we put no obstacles in the way of this young people ; instead, we too should cast away the works of darkness and join them in their march toward the dawn. 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 but the power which economic forces bring them. I disagree, and beheve that, in spite of their theories, in defiance of their creed, they are actuated by purely moral and religious motives ; that they of all men, in their work for Russia, are doing what Christians call the Lord's work. My own faith and belief in “ pacifism ” is unshaken. I still think that salvation comes not from without, but from within. Yet when I look at England, I am not sure that if I had the power I should at once abolish the police. And, when I know that the overwhelming mass of my Christian friends defend bloodshed, violence, and horrors, wherever these are ordered by Governments ; when I realise that the high dignitaries of the Church in the House of Lords are like dumb driven cattle when men like Connolly and Pearce are shot in Dublin, or when Dyer in the sacred name of order slaughters unarmed Indians in the streets of Amritsar; and, finally, when I see and hear no protest from Christendom against the wicked vicious treaty which has brought suffering and death to millions of our fellow creatures, and will bring further terror and misery to millions yet unborn—when I think of these things, I am constrained to ask, who is there amongst the Churches and Governments of Europe and America that dare cast the first stone at the Soviet Government of Russia ?
Above and over everything else we need to understand that personal success is of no account. The one and only thing that matters is we should be true to the highest that is in us.
Through long weary ages men and women have struggled toward the golden age. Again and again they have found themselves disappointed, cast down, because the higher they reached, the more severe their struggles, the farther off appeared their goal. In Russia, indeed throughout the world, this struggle for the highest has assumed a new guise. We are understanding that from within comes salvation, and at the same time we understand what appears to be a paradox, that in modern life we cannot be socially saved alone. We understand clearer than ever the meaning of the cry, “ Am I my brother’s keeper ? ” for we know “ our brother is our keeper.” Look where we will, go where we may, the old theories of life have proved themselves valueless, and to-day the hope of the world is the cry of the ages—“ Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” Liberty is life, Equality is the realisation that life for all is of value, Fraternity is Love and Comradeship.