Seeing an advertisement in a local paper that at a local hall two Russian trades-unionists who had escaped from the Bolshevist tyranny would answer Prof. Goode's articles, it appeared advisable to try to get some first-hand evidence from the other side.
At the time billed for the lecture to start, there were 43 people in the hall not counting the two Russians, the chairman and the translator—a professor from the local university—who occupied the platform. The two Russians were very dissimilar types, one had a square, sallow, flat-nosed face, the other was pink, with a long narrow face and a wild expression. The chairman oneried with a long story of! atrocities, in fact the whole portion of his speech dealing with Russia was nothing but atrocities. How the Bolsheviks had murdered mil-ions of working men. how whole} streets were found with the families in the houses crucified with nails to the tables and walls. He asserted that while in the French revolution the guillotine only cut off one head at a time the Bolsheviks had a machine that chopped off 60 heads at a time.
A CataLocve oF Atrocities.
The Russian with the Mongolian cast of feature then started his get a bag of flour for which she had given her last bit of clothing was returning with it to feed her four starving children, her husband hav. ing been killed by the Germans. when she was stopped by a "Red" soldier: refusing to give up the flour. her brains were beaten out. A river was full of the murdered bodies of people slain by the "Reds." The only atrocity the Russian had seen himself was a school in a village from which the "Reds" had been driven. He said the furniture was broken and the class books. were destroyed, he used this as an argument against Prof. Goode's assertion that the Bolsheviks were concerned with education.
Sceptican Lavouter-
The audience, seven-eighths which appeared to be pro-Bolshevik, greeted each atrocity with a louder burst of sceptical laughter, which invariably provoked from the Russian the assertion that history would prove the truth of his allegations against the Bol. sheviks.
His compatriot had a more pastionate delivery and provoked much more laughter. He seemed des berately impelled to find some atrocity that would shut the audience up. port trade because they work harder and get less wages in Russia and Germany than I pay here. No, Mister Churchill, if you want another blinking war you go and fight Javan; only this time you go ani fight it, and I'll stop home in bed with a glass of water and a_ great thumping fat cigar in my gob and direct operations when you get knackered, why then I shall turn to the blooming censor and say: 'You can't have a perishing war without casualties.'
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.