ine ... and Trotzky ... wield a more absolute power than any
Czar.... They are the only really strong men detectable among the
Bolsheviki or anywhere else in Russia. That their strength is
greater than ever is demonstrated by the amazing program for the
militarization of labor that they have just entered upon; a
programme which when first proposed aroused the Communist Party's
instant antagonism, but which in a few days the dictators easily
persuaded their disciples to support."

We shall return to this astounding conscription of labor a little
further on. It is referred to here merely to show who actually does the
"ruling" in the widely advertised "labor" government of Russia. Eyre
continues:

"There is iron law and order all over Russia, neither anarchy nor
chaos being visible.... With the recent abolition of the death
penalty the Red terror, long since bleached to pale pink, came to a
definite end. Such is the omnipotence of the Soviets that it is no
longer necessary for them to terrorize their opponents into
obedience."

Thus horrible butcheries are no longer necessary because no one longer
dares to resist. All liberty, all self-government, all self-initiative
have been crushed in the iron vise of dictated policy. This is the case,
as Eyre says, "twenty-seven months after the social revolution gripped
the nation in a clutch of steel that never has been relaxed since." Is
not such mental, moral and spiritual death a greater calamity than
physical death?

Sixthly, the common people, crushed under this experimental Socialist
Juggernaut, are starving to death. In the article last cited, in the
"World" of February 27, 1920, Eyre says:

"The food problem is hideously acute, yet not quite so critical as
at the outset of the winter. In Moscow, Petrograd and other
industrial centres some 8,000,000 human beings, of whom only a tiny
fraction are Bolsheviki, are slowly but surely starving to death.
There are abundant food stocks in the south and east, but they
cannot be carried in sufficient quantity over the semi-paralyzed
railroads....

"Trotzky himself defined the industrial situation as a race between
economic reconstruction and reversion to savagery."

Seventhly, craving for food is one of the things which make it
impossible to shut out the food speculator, whose extortion at least
helps to prolong life. A