These are all very subtle and difficult to answer briefly at a meeting of Russian workmen, not one of whom can read or write.  It was wonderful foresight which placed Madame Frank, the editress of the Russian Army, as correspondent for this labour mission.  She fastened on to each question in turn and gave instance after instance of how the suggestions they contained had worked out in practice, to the total destruction of all that was good and honourable in Russia.  Then with magnificent play on the words “the new order” in the last question, she drew a picture of this new order as exhibited in practice in that part of Russia under Bolshevik control.  The influence of this little lady upon these simple Russian workmen was really remarkable.  It was quite evident that the workmen would prefer the old regime to the new if Bolshevik tyranny is the only possible outcome of the new order.

Our next stop was Imokentievskaya, where the head of the works looked as though he would have preferred execution rather than take part in a workmen’s meeting.  The professionals had been left behind, and the audience was composed entirely of the railway workers.  They presented many characteristics of the average English workmen and hungrily received information relating to the methods of the best organised English trade unions.  They had no idea of the things we had done and the progress we had made in bettering the working conditions of labour generally.  Their professional leaders had disposed of the British movement by describing our organisation as “bourgeois trade unions,” and always referred to our trade union activities as though we were organised and internally managed by the capitalist.  They were surprised to learn that we were the only exclusively working-class organisation in the world; that the officials must have worked at the trade whose society they managed; that we did not, like themselves, allow doctors, lawyers, and mere politicians to manage our affairs, but insisted upon having our trade unions in our own hands.  One real old “Russky” engine-driver asked:  “If the English workmen found it so advantageous to keep their organisations exclusively working-class, why did not the Germans do the same?” I answered, “When a movement starts wrong it is very difficult to put it right; that outsiders all over the world struggle for a place in the trade unions, and if once they get in they either break themselves or the union rather than get out, and those who can’t get in hang on outside like limpets and refuse to be kicked off; that the Russian workmen in organising their trade unions must start right and keep them free of every element except the working class.”

We stopped at Zema, the scene of a sharp encounter with armed strikers a few months previous.  The meeting in the works was a great success.  It was remarkable to find that though in my previous meeting with these workmen I took the attitude of a military dictator, they showed no resentment and had rigidly observed the agreement which had been entered into at the point of the bayonet.  They were delighted to find that I, too, had performed my part of the contract in not forgetting their interests when opportunity presented itself.