THE BOLSCHEVIKS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1762, 8 December 1917, Page 2

THE BOLSCHEVIKS.

WHAT is a Bolsehevik 1 ? Many people reading the recent cables from Russia must have asked themselves the question, Mr W. G. Shepherd, the United Press staff correspondent at Petrograd, writing at the end of August, supplies the following description of this one of Russia’s many warring factions: —As a general thing he is an unmarried man, with no home of his own, no responsibilities to children or family. He has no personal affairs, of his own to look out for, wherefore he sets out to regulate the world. In any of the good-sized towns of the United Slates you can see Bolscheviks. They usually have (lowing ties, wear their hair long, do not shave overmuch, and spend their time showing how wrong things are in the world. A woman Bolsehevik bobs her hair, if she ever touches it at all. I have seen them in studios in Washington Square, and in the basements in London, I have always considered it a thrilling thing to know an anarchist of the Bolschevik type; they are generally considered picturesque, even if they are smelly. But, lying on the pavements of the Lctenie the other day, with Bolsehevik machine guns pouring a rain of bullets down the canon of the buildings, killing and wounding helpless men, women and children, my former opinion as to the Bolschcviks w;is abruptly changed. Opinions of Bolschcviks are picturesque, when they are only opinions. When they are translated into deeds they are deadly. There were women Bolschcviks in that massacre on the Letenie.' The last tiling- I saw before 1 threw myself to the side-walk was a bob-haired woman, standing in an automobile beside a machinegun which rested its muzzle on the folded top. It was leading the parade of Kronstad sailors who, fully armed, were marching toward the Duma building; she stood erect like a goddess of madness, with a wild light in her eyes. Half a mile down the street, oven as I was looking at her, I heard three shots. They were the signal for the massacre. The shots ran up along the line of the parade, like fire along a fuse. 1 saw a -movement of persons in the automobile, I did po( see what became of thp woman, but suddenly, from the machine-gun beside which she had stoyd a drum-lire of death was poured into the crowds. Here was all (he wild talk I had over heard among the anarchists of London, New York and Chicago, come true —translated into a massacre. I was seeing Bolschcviks nt their best; they were showing us all they had; all the theories they had stowed away in their black minds through the times of peace; all thebeliefs they had cultivated in their conferences around coffee tables or beer stains; all that they had gained from the wild and sometimes contraband books that anarchists write amf read; all those things were being spoken now by these guns that were killing us bystanding folks in the street. These Bolscheviks of Russia —apd (hey include the Bolschcviks of o(lipr countries —have strange beliefs, . fhey w;ip( the wap (o epd because, (hey say, the war is interfering wifi l (he l|po r therhood of men. That is just Dm sort of doctrine the Germans want to have preached just now, through the earth. The Germans, therefore, who seem to exist in great but subtle strength in Russia, have used the Bolschcviks to such an extent that it’is impossible in Petrograd "these days to .distinguish between a Bolsehevik and a German. In their turn fhp Bolschcviks have used the common people of Russia, both in the army and opt of if. By their speeches apd (heir newspapers (hey have half eopvince.d jthe working people and (he tired Russian sol*|iers that, if they would only -top helping along (he .war, their tyopbr les would gome to ap end; (he food shortage woplff yppish; the bread lines would disappear; might return (o (h.eir families, apd everything would b.c ps before —betr ter than ever before —with thp Russian common folk. The Bolscheviks believe that folks throughout the world are like a baby bulk dog, that, when its tail is pinched, will not turn round to bite the pineher, but will bite the nearest Jiving object in front °f if Some one of them explained the matter to jpe. “The capitalists of the earth started'this war,” he said, “and they’re keeping it up. What we common folks must i biting each other, we jjtust

turn ami bite the capitalists ami make them end the war.'’ It only shows the topsy-turvydom of the world when I say that this very man was one of those who was out on the sereet.s witlr machine-guns the other day, killing women and children, to prove his theory, that all men are brothers and that capitalists ought to be killed. I don't attempt to analyse Bolscheviks. I’ve only tried to describe their indescri bable madness; talking is bad enough, but their Petrograd massacre was an insane orgy. Side by side with the Germans, side-by side with the friends of the ex-Czar who want to see,him reseated on the throne, they fought unarmed people and killed them with a ruthlessness that only a bear would have used.