“I’ll put it to you bluntly, Ross. I spent all I had saved on relief work in Europe and came home broke. Now I am educating a young sister, and they are paying me the munificent salary of thirteen hundred a year. I am due to get a rise of two hundred next year, and the matter of contracts comes up this month. If it is reported that I am defending Bolshevism to my students, I won’t get a contract, either here or anywhere else.” “Oh, but Mr. Irving, I wouldn’t dream of reporting you!” “You wouldn’t need to. You’d only need to tell your parents or your friends what I think is the reason our troops are in Siberia, and they would consider it their moral duty to report me.” “Is it as bad as that?” said Bunny. “It’s so bad that I don’t see how it could be worse,” said Mr. Irving. “I will answer your question provided you agree that I am talking as a friend, and that you won’t mention the conversation to anyone else.” And you can see how deeply Bunny had fallen into the toils of Bolshevism, when he was willing to agree to a proposition such as that! VI What Mr. Irving said was that our troops were in Siberia because American bankers and big business men had loaned enormous sums of money to the government of the Tsar, both before the war and during it; the Bolshevik government had repudiated these debts, and therefore our bankers and business men were determined to destroy it. It was not merely the amount of the money, but the precedent involved; if the government of any country could repudiate the obligations of a previous government, what would become of international loans? The creditor nations—that is to say America, Britain and France—maintained that a government debt was a lien, not against the government, but against the country and its resources. The total amount of international loans was one or two hundred billions of dollars, and the creditor nations meant to make an example of Soviet Russia, and establish the rule that a government which repudiated its debts would be put out of business.