I was able to watch the propaganda in the 12th Regiment from near at hand. After the abortive July rising in Petrograd, an emissary came to the regiment direct from Lenin. His antecedents were interesting. He said he had been a schoolmaster, a prisoner of war in Germany, and had been put to work on the land near the Dutch border. He had escaped over to Holland and got back to Russia just in time to take part in the rising at Petrograd. After its failure he was sent to Irkutsk to prepare the ground for a similar rising. How much of his story was true I do not know, but at any rate he came from Germany and spoke German. He never made any secret of the Bolshevik plans--they were to bring the Government to its knees by spreading ruin and devastation. If nothing else would do, they would cut the railway line between Russia and Siberia, and so starve Russia out. If one told him tales of Russia’s miserable condition, he used to snap his fingers for joy and say, “You wait. It is going to be worse yet.” He used to murmur terrible prophecies of the catastrophes to come--every time with a Satanic glee at the prospect he was unrolling before us. Don’t let any of my readers imagine that this is a bygone tale of some old unhappy far-off thing. The Bolsheviks are at this moment applying the same methods wherever they can get a chance to work. The organization of disaster--that is their aim. They want to stir up such a fury of discontent as shall make the masses rise and sweep the capitalists off the face of the earth. Why these fires in London, destroying so much food? These strikes in the great grain-ports--New York, Buenos Ayres, Monte Video? Just as they were prepared to starve Russia out, so also they want to bring the whole world to its knees by famine. [SN: BOLSHEVIK METHODS]