Socialists have for many years boasted of the perfect peace and harmony which would prevail when once they had established their state. Bloodshed, civil discord and strife of every kind would cease when the Marxian workers ruled the land, for, as they said, privately owned property, and exploitation of workers are the source of wars and the fundamental cause of the oppression of the people. Bolshevist Russia, however, the first Socialist country, appears to be an exception. Perhaps no nation has ever witnessed such scenes of violence, bloodshed, murder and cruelty, perpetrated by a government, not against a foreign foe, but against its own people, and this not after an existence of a hundred or several hundred years, but constantly from its very birth. So far only a few pages, comparatively speaking, of the history of the terrible outrages are opened to us, but from these we can form some slight idea of the dreadful condition of the land that is truly red, but red principally from the rivers of blood that flow in abundance over every section of the country. The "Izvestia," an official Bolshevist publication, on October 19, 1918, published the following news item under the heading, "The Conference of the Extraordinary Commission:" "Comrade Baky threw light on the work of the District Commission of Petrograd after the departure of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Moscow. The total number of people arrested by the Extraordinary Commission amounted to 6,220. Eight hundred people were shot." The "Northern Commune," another official Bolshevist publication, in its issue of September 10, 1918, stated: "In the whole of the Jaroslavl Government a strict registration of the bourgeoisie and its partisans has been organized. Manifestly anti-Soviet elements are being shot; suspected persons are being interned in concentration camps; non-working sections of the population are being subjected to compulsory labor." The same edition of the "Northern Commune" publishes the following despatch: "Tver, Sept. 9.--The Extraordinary Commission has arrested and sent to concentration camps over 130 hostages from among the bourgeoisie. The prisoners include members of the Cadet Party, Socialists-Revolutionists of the Right, former officers, well known members of the propertied class and policemen." From the September 18, 1918, edition of the "Northern Commune" we learn that in Perm, in retaliation for the assassination of Uritzky and for the attempt on Lenine, fifty hostages from among the bourgeois classes and the White Guards were shot. "Struggling Russia," March 22, 1919, supplies us with other details of Bolshevist rifle rule: