_Russian Army_,
as correspondent for this labour mission. She fastened on to each
question in turn and gave instance after instance of how the suggestions
they contained had worked out in practice, to the total destruction of
all that was good and honourable in Russia. Then with magnificent play
on the words "the new order" in the last question, she drew a picture of
this _new order_ as exhibited in practice in that part of Russia under
Bolshevik control. The influence of this little lady upon these simple
Russian workmen was really remarkable. It was quite evident that the
workmen would prefer the old regime to the new if Bolshevik tyranny is
the only possible outcome of the new order.

Our next stop was Imokentievskaya, where the head of the works looked as
though he would have preferred execution rather than take part in a
workmen's meeting. The professionals had been left behind, and the
audience was composed entirely of the railway workers. They presented
many characteristics of the average English workmen and hungrily
received information relating to the methods of the best organised
English trade unions. They had no idea of the things we had done and the
progress we had made in bettering the working conditions of labour
generally. Their professional leaders had disposed of the British
movement by describing our organisation as "bourgeois trade unions," and
always referred to our trade union activities as though we were
organised and internally managed by the capitalist. They were surprised
to learn that we were the only exclusively working-class organisation in
the world; that the officials must have worked at the trade whose
society they managed; that we did not, like themselves, allow doctors,
lawyers, and mere politicians to manage our affairs, but insisted upon
having our trade unions in our own hands. One real old "Russky"
engine-driver asked: "If the English workmen found it so advantageous to
keep their organisations exclusively working-class, why did not the
Germans do the same?" I answered, "When a movement starts wrong it is
very difficult to put it right; that outsiders all over the world
struggle for a place in the trade unions, and if once they get in they
either break themselves or the union rather than get out, and those who
can't get in hang on outside like limpets and refuse to be kicked off;
that the Russian workmen in organising their trade unions must start
right and keep them free of every el