THE REAL BOLSHEVIK.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 16448, 29 May 1919, Page 8

THE REAL BOLSHEVIK.

In an open letter to the Bolsheviks, “A Curse Upon You .Bolsheviks,” has been published in Paris by AL. Vladimir Bourne ft, “known (says The Times) to all students of the Russian revolution as its devoted historian.” He escaped last year from a Bolshevik prison. In the letter, ho says;—

“The Bolshevik’s conscience is a party conscience, their honour is a party honour. In matters outside their party, the Bolsheviks arc completely amoral; they are men without a conscience, without honour, without a sense of responsibility for their crimes. They are n.c-n without hearts; the sorrow of .liters does nut exist for them. .Right and justice are for them only empty words. In political matters outside their party, the Bolsheviks are above ail thiugi liars. No trust can be put iu'tlieir words. For months they were hot adherents of the Constituent Assembly ; they made it the principal ground of their whole conflict with the oilier parties; but afterwards they - .■ddeniy turned their backs on the Constituent Assembly, and dispersed it after its first meeting. They always shrieked against capital punishment, but afterwards they themselves introduced it as ;i system, and preached lynch-law 1 igb amj low—nearly every one of their decrees end with a throat to shoot somebody. They have covered all Russia with corpses. 'they stood for the freedom of the press, but they have proved themselves such censors and repressors of the press as Russia has never known -before. They were against prisons, but they changed into passionate lovers of the prisons, and began, brutal gaolers ,to imprison people by hundreds without trial or examination. The spoke of peace, but gave u.s war over the length and breadth of Russia. They spoke of bread, but gave, the people a stone. They spoke of tne weight of •taxation, but ihomsolvos have ruined the country to the tune of milliards, They inveighed against secret diplomacy, but they bare introduced into their own diplomacy such secrecy as even the Czardom never knew; wc have, for instance, no certain knowledge to this day of what really happened at that accursed and fatal conference at Brest. The Bolsheviks spoke volubly against the army, they destroyed it and the navy irremediably; they took away the o/licers’ authority and mur dcre'd them: but now they themselves are attempting, in words, it is true, to create a now army. In short, every act of the Bolsheviks is full of lies! lies! lies! conscious lies!

“Of the Bolshevik’s programme, of the essence of all the theory by winch they have hitherto lived,, even of the name of their party, nothing any longer remains. In your press, at you; meetings, in all your relations with other -parties, you Bolsheviks have never done but one, thing—you have lied, lied, lied. You have remained true only to this—by the path of demagogy, by crude flattery of the mob’ of soldiers and sailors you have ever sought at ail costs' to keep your power in the' country and to preserve your ‘councils. ’ ”