all, but one which they have accepted as a compromise for
temporary political advantage. "Claim everything in sight," said a noted
American politician on one occasion to his followers. Our followers of the
Bolsheviki, taught by a very clever propaganda, seem to be acting upon that
maxim. They claim for the Bolsheviki everything which can in the slightest
manner win favor with the American public, notwithstanding that it involves
claiming for the Bolsheviki credit to which they are not entitled. As early
as May 18, 1917, it was announced by the Provisional Government that the
"question of the transfer of the land to the toilers" was to be left to the
Constituent Assembly, and there was never a doubt in the mind of any
Russian Socialist how that body would settle it; never a moment when it was
doubted that the Constituent Assembly would be controlled by the
Socialist-Revolutionary party. When Kerensky became Prime Minister one of
the first acts of his Cabinet was to create a special committee for the
purpose of preparing the law for the socialization of the land and the
necessary machinery for carrying the law into effect. The All-Russian
Peasants' Congress had, as early as May, five months before the Bolshevik
counter-revolution, adopted the land policy for which the Bolsheviki now
are being praised by their admirers in this country. That policy had been
crystallized into a carefully prepared law which had been approved by the
Council of Ministers. The Bolsheviki did no more than to issue a crudely
conceived "decree" which they have never at any time had the power to
enforce in more than about a fourth of Russia--in place of a law which
would have embraced all Russia and have been secure and permanent.

On July 16, 1918, Marie Spiridonova, in an address delivered in Petrograd,
protested vehemently against the manner in which the Bolshevik government
was departing from the policy it had agreed to maintain with regard to the
land, and going back to the old Social Democratic ideas. She declared that
she had been responsible for the decree of February, which provided for the
socialization of the land. That measure provided for the abolition of
private property in land, and placed all land in the hands of and under the
direction of the peasant communes. It was the old Socialist-Revolutionist
program. But the Bolshevik government had not carried out the law of
February. Instead, it had resorted to the Social Democratic method of