The following article was recently contributed to the "Morning Post" by Captain Francis Mc-Cullagh, 'a British officer who was captured by the Bolsheviks in Siberia early last January. In order to be in a position to help his comrades, the British officers and soldiers captured at the same time, he registered himself as a civilian and, as such, was able to travel along the Trans-Siberian railway and to live for over a month in Moscow.
How can I convey a just idea of what present-day Moscow looks like to an Englishman who has never been there? It is a town of mys tery and misery; of secret executions and a lawless Government; of freedom to wave red flags and preach free love and use language which would ensure one's instant arrest even in Hyde Park, but at the same time of an iron tyranny which will not allow a word to be said against itself. It is an inconceivable topsy-turveydom. You can do almost everything which would get you arrested in England, but if you do almost anything which we would consider praiseworthy the Extraordinary Commission will at once get hold of you. You may stand on the altar of the Cathedral and deny that there is a God. You may advocate the murder of Kings, Dukes, Cabinet Ministers, Members of Parliament, foreign officers and officials of every kind, mill-managers, bankers, merchants, and Bishops; but if you dare to suggest, on the contrary, that murderers of these different classes should be arrested and tried, you are sure to get into trouble with the police. If you try to start a purely religious revival you will certainly be arrested, as Mr. Plekhanoi was in Petrograd. If you advocate the principle of private property, the right of trial by jury, the claims of the middle classes, you will soon be hauled before a revolutionary tribunal, In London we have doubled the postage rate. In Moscow they have abolished it, and you can drop letters into a postal box without any stamp at all, but also, unfortunately, without much chance of ever getting an answer, for half the letters are never collected or delivered. In London they have increased the tramway fares. In Moscow they have abolished them but, unfortunately, the trams do not run any longer. In England the railway fares have been raised. Tu Russia they have been abolished and you can travel free, if you are able to discover an ordinary passenger train running, a discovery which I was never able to make.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.