The Cheka was really the beginning of law and order; it marked the beginning of the first government which showed real strength and purpose. There was no doubt something very definitely nationalistic about the growth of the Cheka, in spite of the fact that it was established by Communists. It had all the hardness of purpose and the narrowness possessed by the maximum of patriotism. Any student of history will remember what Carlyle said of those terror-ridden days when the guillotine ruled France. “Tigress nationale! Meddle not with a whisker of her! Swift rending is her stroke; look what a paw she spreads--pity has not entered her heart.” Such acts Carlyle claimed would some day be known as the “Crimes of the Revolution,” when they should rightly be recorded as the birth pains of the republic. Very naturally, conduct of open and avowed suppression will always be hated and condemned by liberals the world over, and used as campaign ammunition by political opponents. One of the highest officials of the Cheka said to me, “Most foreign correspondents write about the Extraordinary Commission as if we had no right on our side. Now I will give you two examples of the sort of problems continually confronting us, and if you would submit them to any American police official, he would tell you very promptly that the Cheka had no other course than the one which it pursued. “First, there is the case of Marie Spirodonova. She is a woman with an honored revolutionary past. Naturally, we don’t want to have her behind bars. But she was for years a terrorist, she killed the Governor of Tambov and she still believes that individual acts of terror are justified. As you know, the Communists were always against such a policy. We believe in mass action and not individual violence. “Marie Spirodonova is a highly-strung, sensitive person. She makes a splendid agitator but we have gotten to the point of reconstruction, of building, not tearing down. Russia was forced to sign the Brest-Litovsk treaty. You may agree with me that that was a bad thing to do or you may disagree with me, but as an American, understanding and believing in government, you will certainly agree that we had to protect the representatives of Germany after the peace was signed. “When Mirbach came to Moscow, it was very bitter for any of us to receive him. But it is another matter to go to his house and kill him with a bomb. This was the plan of Marie Spirodonova. Now what could we do? Were we to allow her and her associates to kill any foreign representative who came here? How could we ever hope for relations with other nations if we could offer their representatives no protection? Then why are we criticized because we put Spirodonova in a sanatorium? And we allowed her to escape. I confess that we have kept a watch over her. The woman in whose house she stayed used to report to us. That was merely to prevent any repetition of the Mirbach affair.