cloud for so long over the peoples of Europe. To leave things now where they were before the outbreak of the war would be the most deplorable confession of human weakness, the most dismal surrender of human hopes, that has ever yet been seen. We must, therefore, earnestly desire that the American people, who have now begun to realize that they cannot stand aloof from the dangers and trials of the Old

The Manchester Guardian

World, and who have in a nobly disinterested spirit given their invaluable help in saving that Old World from ruin, will support President Wilson by giving their adhesion (perhaps subject to certain amendments in details) to a scheme which has been framed in the interest of all mankind, and which can hardly succeed without the coöperation of their own great, free, and powerful republic.

I WAS sent from Kharkov to Moscow on January 4, 1919, in company with six comrades, and conducted by the Bolshevik commissioner, Alexander Spunde, to treat with the Russian soviet government for the transportation of the remainder of the 1st Army Corps through the Russian territories. We arrived in Moscow on January 9, and were quartered in the Kremlin. We were allotted to the mess of the government representatives, and in the forenoon were served tea and simple, rather unpalatable bread, without butter or jam. Our noon meal consisted of a thin soup in the thinnest sense of the word, with a little canned meat (about 100 grammes). During my entire stay of fourteen days in Moscow, we did not have potatoes a single time. Sardines were served nearly every day but they were hardly required as an appetizer. We frequently had no sugar for our tea and often lacked bread. The evening meal was very scanty, consisting of some unheated canned meat. I may remark as an interesting episode that, while visiting the opera, I chanced to become

acquainted with a telephone girl employed in Lenine's own office, who had to leave the theatre after the first act, since she was too faint from hunger to wait until the conclusion of the play. When I commented upon the inadequate supply of food we received to representatives of the soviet government, they told me that there were large supplies at certain places which were entirely unfamiliar to me, but that difficulties of transportation made it impossible to distribute them. In spite of this assurance I never once saw, during my whole trip through the Russian territories, any evidence of these supplies. I never once saw a freight train that showed any indication of carrying provisions. The population gives evidence of ghastly starvation. The four-class system has been introduced in distributing rations. The first class embraces manual workers employed by the State; the second class, the government clerks; the third class, the radical bourgeois, which it is hoped to win over entirely by better treatment; and the fourth class, the former

nobility and higher social classes, who receive nothing. The daily allowance of bread for the first class is 200 grammes, but they get this only when there is an adequate supply on hand. It happens not infrequently that even this ration cannot be furnished. There is no longer any trade in provisions.

Moscow itself gives the impression of an absolutely dead and ruined town. The damage caused by the fighting and disorders in the early days of the revolution has never been repaired. Buildings that were started in 1917 remain unfinished. On the streets you see nothing but pale, famished, panicstricken faces. There is not a public place of business to be found. For instance, during my fourteen days in Moscow, I was not able to buy a little memorandum book, or to have some broken spectacles repaired or replaced.

Before my departure I asked for provisions for myself and my two companions. I had already sent two of my men ahead to Vilna and two others to Kovno. On account of the lack of provisions I was not able to get any and, consequently, was mighty glad to come upon a German transport train at Smolensk, which readily furnished us with a supply of food. Indeed we had enough to feed Commissioner Spunde, who had no provisions of his own, although he was abundantly provided with Communist propaganda literature.

The prices of food in Moscow ran as follows: A rotten apple, 18 rubles; a Russian pound, or 400 grammes, of butter, 120 rubles; a pound of pork, 70 to 80 rubles. We must remember that the Russian peasants prefer to feed their grain to their hogs to giving it to the Russian Government, which pays nothing for it. A pud or 16 kilogrammes of flour costs from 700 to 800 rubles. Bread of the unpalatable character already mentioned costs

from 10 to 12 rubles a pound. Condiments, alcoholic drinks, and tobacco are not to be had. You pay a ruble for a little box of matches, if you have a card from the soviet entitling you to it. However, they are not to be got through legitimate channels and you pay three rubles for a box to a smuggler, and find the box only half full of the poorest quality matches.

Quite in contrast with this general shortage of provisions was my experience during an evening when I was entertained by the commander of the automobile division at the Kremlin, Comrade Konopka. I found on the table a plate with at least six pounds of the best caviar, a plate of good sausage, the best quality of white bread, fruit, brandy, white wine and champagne, Holland cigars, cigarettes, and coarse-cut and fine-cut German tobacco. The wife of the commander, by a Communist ceremony, earnestly urged us to eat well, and the commander confided to me that these rarities came from the capture of Riga, whence he had brought them, without the knowledge of the Russian Government, in an extra train. The gentleman made no attempt to conceal that this was the only way a man could live, so long as the Bolshevik government continued, for no one could tell what would follow. He stated that he had heard from the mouth of Lenine himself that the revolution in Russia had come twenty years too soon. While visiting this commander of the automobile division in the Kremlin, I overheard the following telephone communication to the commander of the Kremlin: "The secretary of Lenine ordered an automobile for this afternoon for the purpose of visiting his brother, who was seriously ill. However, the real employment he made of the vehicle was to bring certain women of uncertain character to the Kremlin.

Since the streets are no longer cleaned in Moscow the automobiles have to follow the street-car tracks. However, the snow was so deep that the auto was stopped, whereupon the secretary drew a revolver and pointed it at the head of the chauffeur, charging him with sabotage.'

The nationalization of all factories has stopped every form of production. You do not find a single thing being made. Seventy per cent of the former population of Moscow has left the city. The withdrawal of the working classes into the country and the general dissatisfaction with the rates of wages fixed by the soviets and the numerous mass meetings that debate these grievances give abundant evidence of the attitude of the working people toward the government. In Moscow there was one textile factory running. A Pole employed as a superintendent there told me that it was neither profitable nor capable of operation. This enterprise, socialized ostensibly for the welfare of the people, did the people themselves no good, as its small output was used entirely for the Red Army. Such establishments as have government contracts demand continual advances without carrying out their contracts. For instance, one establishment received 800,000 rubles in advances and when the government asked for some deliveries, two months later, it received the answer that nothing had been made as yet. There was another case where a socialized factory received 2,500,000 rubles in advances, with identically the same results. The inspectors of the government banks report that they find no entries in the books explaining very large payments. Defalcations, the enrichment of individual commissioners by unjustifiable means, arbitrary regulations, controversies between the different soviets, lack of any sentiment

of responsibility, and a wild scramble of every man for himself make it impossible to reestablish order or to accomplish anything in the way of fruitful economic reform.

The present method of election illustrates the manner in which the gentlemen at Moscow apply their widely-heralded respect for the wishes of the people. Every man participating in the government is supposed to be chosen by the free will of the people. The practice is just the reverse. There is not a single government chief who owes his position to the popular will. Every man has pushed himself up to influence by main force. All the people in charge are well aware that a fair vote would throw out the present government.

The sentiment of the people toward their rulers is indicated by what a working woman said to the Russian commissioner who accompanied me. to Vilna just as we were entering the car reserved for us at Moscow: 'The gentlemen travel around the world finely with our money. We are not able to get a single place on a train for ourselves, while they always go about in a special car. I thought we were to be comrades and equals.' The same commissioner learned from another working woman how the Vilna people regarded the Bolsheviki. She thought that he was a German because he spoke German excellently and said to him: 'You better stay here. As long as the Germans were here we had at least bread and employment, and could buy what we needed. The Germans were kind to us. What do we get today? There is no more bread. (This was eight days after the Bolsheviki captured the city.) The stores are closed. No one knows where we are to get anything. The Red Guards are not human beings; they are wild animals.'

When I addressed some of the peasants at Loddinosk as comrades, which is the usual term in Russia, they became furious at the insult, which was sufficient evidence that they had no sympathy with Bolshevism. The territories which the Bolsheviki are occupying will soon be in as bad condition as Russia itself and the same things will happen. The peasants will refuse to deliver their grain, first, because the Russian government pays nothing; second, because the Russian peasants are bitterly discontented with the present mismanagement and are no longer Communists. I visited some of the public institutions. One was a tuberculosis hospital. It was a small two-story building in the middle of the city. Seventeen tuberculosis patients were packed in a chamber having an air space of about 130 cubic metres. They produced a frightful impression on the visitors. The walls were covered with statistical tables, the contents of which were explained to me by the superintendent of the institute, who was himself in an advanced stage of consumption and tried to suppress his constant coughing by continually smoking cigarettes. One chart represented the method of treatment to be employed systematically. When I asked what the practical results were, I was informed that, unhappily, lack of resources had prevented their going beyond a theoretical project. The lack of trained nurses and the actual prevalence of famine make Moscow the victim of innumerable epidemics, such as spotted fever and typhus and infantile diseases, which have become a plague through lack of means to check them. The high mortality rate is suggested by the fact that coffins are so scarce they are merely rented for the funerals.

Soviet Russia is the victim of a relentless reign of terror. Any man

who does not agree with the Bolsheviki is suppressed by main force. The Bolshevik doctrine is inculcated with machine guns and bayonets. Any free and frank expression of opinion is called counter-revolution and causes a man to be shot. The extent of the terror is indicated by the fact that in Vilna even a workingman does not dare to enter a café unless he possesses an identification card indicating that he is a member of the Communist party.

The Russian Government proclaimed, on the day that it became known that Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg had been killed, that none of the present members of the German Government must be allowed to live, since they had instigated the crime. Comrade Spunde told me that he was personally willing to assassinate the present government representatives in Germany. The next day a proclamation was posted on the walls of Moscow in which Lenine called for 100,000 officers and 3,000,000 soldiers to 'revenge the insult to the international.' When France permitted the Russians to send a sanitary commission of five members to inspect the Russian corps stationed in France, the soviet government employed the opportunity to send five of its ablest Communist agitators to France. These people did not belong to the sanitary corps. That is characteristic of the political honor of the Bolsheviki. They employ the international Red Cross to cover up a movement in their party interests.

During our negotiations in Moscow we were assured that the railway to Vilna via Kursk was in operation. The statement did not prove true. Fourteen days after signing the treaty I passed over the road and had to leave the train forty-five versts before reaching Vilna. It is a false assumption to fancy that the soviet government

let us through for humane reasons. It did so for political expediency. They expected us to rebuild the bridges and to change the road from Vilna to Wirballen to Russian gauge. When we refused to do this, they attempted to procure from us a German train of fifty cars and a locomotive.

The Russian Government hoped that the German troops at Kovno would prevent our crossing the boundary. In this case they promised us a full equipment of arms and the assistance of the Red Army under a German commander, so that we could force our way back home. Their

The Kölnische Volkszeitung

purpose was obvious. It would have helped the Russians get control of Eastern Prussia.

While the railway stations in Greater Russia used to have restaurants with great quantities of excellent food, and the stations in the part of the Ukraine not yet occupied by the Bolsheviki still are thus provided, everywhere in Russia proper these places are now deserted. The inhabitants and the station officials came to our train to beg for food. Russian war prisoners who had just come back from Germany begged us to take them home with us.

WE ask nothing for Japan but those things which appear to us just and equitable, and of the justice and equity of which we may be able to convince not only the representatives of the nations in the Peace Conference, but the people of the countries they represent. We have no demands to make; we merely advance certain matters for the same consideration by other nations as we have ourselves given to them in the light of our own position and the future of the Far East. It may be necessary to go back through the history of some years in order that we may arrive at what we regard as a fair and equitable conclusion.

After the events of 1905, the situation created was delicate, and, at times, difficult. The South Manchurian Railway runs through Chinese

territory as far as Chang Chun, and is the only rail transportation outlet for the productions of the Chinese peasants, farmers, and manufacturers. The Chinese population of that part of the province through which the line runs numbers many millions. The present Japanese population there is very small not one half of one per cent. Quite naturally this penetration by a Japanese railway of Chinese territory, or 'invasion,' as it was called, while within the rights granted to us under the terms of the Portsmouth Treaty, added fresh fuel among the Chinese to the fire of antagonism. As a result, the opposition already existing in China against Japan was considerably intensified. From time to time the resentment showed itself in quarrels between local Japanese and