June 13, TureRe ave some words which appear to have the power of driving those who use them demented. When we say that at the word "imperialism" anybody of Soviet tendencies at once loses whatever reason he may still have in him, it is, of course, open for him to retort that the word "Bolshevism" has the same effect on its antagonists. Against this, nobody yet has exactly defined "imperialism," while on the contrary the world sees in Russia itself the clearest example of what Bolshevism means. When, therefore, Mr. Karakhan invites the professor and students of Peking Unive sity, as he is reported on another page to-day to have been doing Inst Saturday, to contemplate the blessed freedom in which his country is supposed to be basking, the said professors and students have a miass of facts by which to test the reality of ture Mr, Karalhan liberty under a Bolshevist Government.
It is, of course, the great glory of Bolshevism, on which it never tires of pluming itself, that it has thrown off the tyranny of Tsarism. We have no wish to defend the Tsarist. regime: it was no doubt guilty of much misgovernment and Political oppression, But at least, so long as men and women refrained from political in they were free to live their own lives, free to trade as they pleased, to enjoy the fruits of their labours, to practise the religion which is so deeply a part of the Russian nature. None of these things is allowed by Bolshevist standards of freedom. The bed of Procrustes was not more ferociously rigid than the Communist scale of measurement to which all Russians must be lopped or stretched. For example: during the last months of his life, Lenin clearly perceived the impracticability of Communism, at. Toast from the economic point: of view, and private trading had been permitted once more to raise its head. With Lenin dead, the extremists who have replaced him in government discover that private trading is the enemy of the State and, although apparently it cannot be forbidden altogether, we have lately "been told of special taxation designed pple! private initiative and restrict all advantage to State commerce and industry. Again, as already. said, Russians are deeply and instinctively religious. The Bolshevists, finding in religion 'a rival to their own supremacy, have stripped the churches bare, persecuted and imprisoned the priests, and preached atheism in the schools., Finally, because the Russian is not to be robbed of his beliefs, the Soviet has formed a Red church and, in order to give it prestige with the multitude, has invented the lie that Archbishop Tikhon, the great apostle of the Orthodox Church in' Russia, has joined their revolutionary priesthood. Even the law courts must administer law according to Red ideas or not at all. At the end of last month, seventeen judges, magistrates and others of the Supreme Court in Petrograd were sentenced to death for blackmail, extortion, illegal release of prisoners and accepting bribes from houses of ill-fame. At once the central execittive of the Soviet telegraphed from Moscow ordering these sentences to be suspended, That the Soviet budget this year shows a deficit of gold roubles 400,000,000 is further evidence of the fruits of freedom which may be commended to the notice of the Peking University. Also, the fact that Moscow voluntarily promised so long ago aus in 1919 to give back Mongolia to China and as yet has not shown the faintest sign of Keeping its promise proves that, whatever else Bolshevist freedom implies, it certainly includes complete liberty to be forsworn. Finally, the" professors and students of Peking may bethink them that, among all the victims of the Russian Revolution, nobody has suffered more than the intelligentsia, the people of their own class, ' Just as in the French Revolution, the model middle classes of the Gironde were the peculiar object of the fury of the extremist Mountain, so in Russia it has been even more fatal to be a member of the bourgeoisie than a prince or peer. In a word, Bolshevism, which prides itself on liberty, is the greatest tyranny that the world hi To-day it seeks to stir up the intellectuals of China against the world, How Jong will it be before it calla upon the proletariat to turn upon the professors?
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.