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Timaru Herald, Volume CVIII, Issue 16798, 31 March 1919, Page 7

An interesting visitor to America a few weeks ago was Catherine Breshkovsky, known as " the little grandmother of the Russian Revolution," who has been making something like a triumphal progress of the United States. In the days of the Czar she was a Terrorist. The best part of forty years of her life was spent in Russian prisons and Siberian exile. When the end of the Czar's autocracy was brought about she was hailed as one of the foremost of Russian deliverers. Then came the Bolshevik iutocracy, and at the age of seventythree, with a warrant issued for her arrest, "Babushka," as she is fondly called, had to hide for months and ride scores of miles on horseback till her friends could get her first to Vladivostok and then to the safe shelter of the United States. "I'm a Socialist, a Social Revolutionist, and I will be till I die—but God save us from the Bolsheviki," was her statement to interviewers. And that, so far as we have seen, is the prayer of all Socialists who escape from Russia in these Says.'..'"...

.■'.'..'".': .■"'■%- -. ■ -■ ;T '■■'' . 'i The Soviet| system, as a method' of the greatest! possible decentralisation in.- government, has seemed attractive to some people who would hesitate to approve the [Bolshevists' savagery. In practice, however, the local committees had to be linked Tip almost from the beginning to a central organisation, to provide any general government at all, and the .chief power was ■wielded by the centre. But this natural weakness, according to " Babushka," is not the worst defect of the Russian Soviet- system. For the most part, she declares, the Soviets are not elected locally or 'by the people. "Their members are sent from Petrograd and Moscow— Bolsheviki, who act as dictators, and nobodv can oppose them. They are Bod Guards and Letts and German prison. ers. Magyars and Chinese, who came in during the war to work in the industries, are still there, but they no longer work, and thov make up' the troops m Moscow. The workers and peasants are. against the Soviets—alt except the armed groups composed exclusively of Bolsheviki. And that armed group is made up of, men .out of work, who can get no food unless they 30m the Bolshevik army, which, will give food only to it* members." I It is an attractive picture I