To turn to commerce and finance. The Bolsheviks call themselves Communists, and aim at the abolition of private property. Land may neither be bought nor sold. When you die all your property goes to the State, and while you are alive the State may take from you what it pleases. Nothing is yours; all is the State’s. The effete Parliaments of the West generally estimate their expenditure for the coming year, and plan their taxation accordingly. Not so the Soviet. They do indeed levy taxes, but they are always in want of money. Their plan is simple; they go to the nearest rich man, and “touch” him for the amount. From one man alone at Irkutsk they had obtained £15,000 in three months. In many towns they had bled the rich white, and were beginning on the middle classes. Whatever they wanted, they took--houses, furniture, cattle, horses, motor-cars--without any compensation. If you were ruined, you were brutally told to go and work with your hands. In one town, where they took a house with all that was in it, the lady had just got in a stock of underclothing for the summer. Not conceiving what use these things could be to the Soviet, she petitioned that they might be handed over to her. She was told that it was impossible, as the articles in question had already been “nationalized.” [SN: EVERYTHING NATIONALIZED] Everything was nationalized. It began with the banks. You could get money to pay your workmen with, but if you wanted it for anything else you needed the licence of the Soviet. You became the slave of the Soviet, and could spend nothing except as they directed you. This power was mercilessly used to crush opponents. All mines and factories were nationalized and passed completely into the control of the working-man. They lived on the capital of the firm, gave themselves high wages, and did no work. Most of the undertakings had to be closed, and I did not hear that the working-men made a success of it in a single case. And they were far greedier than the capitalist. One Petrograd factory was making overshoes at a price to themselves of four roubles a pair. They put them on the market at forty-five roubles a pair. At the Cheremhovo coal-mines the miners voted themselves fifty roubles a day--whether they worked or not. As a result, all those public services which depended on Cheremhovo coal either showed a great deficit or had to put their prices up, while private enterprises dependent on Cheremhovo coal could not continue. Munition factories, after peace was signed, simply refused to be shut down. They insisted on orders being given them to keep them at work. Where will you find things as bad as this in the worst days of Capitalism?