2. These kings defile us with their powder,
We want no war within the land;
Let soldiers strike: for peace call louder,
Lay down arms and join hand in hand.
Should these vile monsters still determine,
Heroes to make us in despite;
They’ll know full soon the kind of vermin
Our bullets hit in this last fight!
CHORUS: Then comrades, etc.
CHAPTER V
The Communists
Accompanying the British Delegation were two British journalists, one
representing a great Liberal daily and the other a well-known Radical
weekly journal. At Reval we were joined by an American writer. Later
a French and an Italian journalist were added to the number. Later
still came a German writer on the scene; and in addition a considerable
number of Swedes and Norwegians who had come to Russia to make a
special study of industrial life, with a view to organising assistance
from Sweden of the various big constructive plans contemplated by the
Russian Government. We were all housed under the same roof, fed at
the same tables, carried about in the same fleet of automobiles and
subjected to the same supervision during the visit to Petrograd and
Moscow.
Radios sent out by delegates and journalists were censored by the
Authorities, who have sole control of all the means of communication
with the outer world, a very natural state of affairs in a country at
war with so many enemies. Very natural, also, is it that in this, as in
other ways, the Russian Government should exactly copy the methods of
other Governments in selecting for world-distribution those messages
which tell in its favour. It must certainly be conceded in their behalf
that never in the history of mankind has the public Press been used to
pervert the truth and exaggerate the evil more than for the purposes of
destroying the detested Communist régime.
But of this monopoly of the wires by the Government we were ourselves
occasionally the victims, the smiling and amused victims I may say; as
when a fiery speech on true Bolshevist lines by an eloquent Britisher,
unable to resist his atmosphere, was flashed around the world, whilst a
more sober utterance was treated with contemptuous disregard.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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