It is absurd to consider the Extraordinary Commission in any but an objective way. The little border states of Finland, Lithuania, Roumania, and even Poland, have just as elaborately developed Chekas, searching just as diligently for Bolshevik plotters as Russia does for anti-Bolshevik plotters. Finland, for example, has a much more cruel revolutionary record. The division of the Red and White forces there was more equal; therefore, the struggle was intensified and the terror magnified accordingly. Only, in this case, it was White Terror instead of Red. Even we ourselves have a Cheka, but we call it a Department of Justice, and we have a thousand little independent Chekas known as private detective agencies. And now that America is in a happier state of mind we like to forget how our “intelligence” departments grew into formidable institutions during the short period of our participation in the war. Very soon after the declaration of war we began to suspect one another on a wholesale scale, all sorts of innocent persons were “trailed” and otherwise humiliated. If we remember those days, we can better understand what happens when the very life of a nation is at stake. Ours never has been. No one claims that the state electrician who pushes the button for the electric chair at Sing Sing is a criminal, or that his private life need necessarily be immoral. Yet the Sing Sing executioner is paid something like three hundred dollars for each life taken and one might almost imagine him having more than a routine interest in a good crop of homicides. If Peters and Dzerzhinsky were dismissed from office to-morrow, they would have nothing but the clothes on their backs and broken health with which to begin new careers. I give this example for the sake of comparison or contemplation, not as a justification for either the American or the Russian official conscience. The temptations of St. Anthony pale beside those of Peters and Dzerzhinsky. They have been flattered and offered every sort of bribe. I know of a single instance where Peters was offered what amounted to a cool million dollars. He did not refuse it, however, until he had all his tempters enmeshed beyond retreat.