WHAT I SAW IN EUROPE

...Democracy, as we understand it, does not exist in Russia...

...The Communist leaders have yielded step by step to the inherent right of every human being to have dominion over his own home, and in so far as possible to direct his own life...

...Upon the basis of these independent investigations, prompted by a determination to accept no half truths, I have come to certain definite conclusions which I believe to be sound and warranted by the facts as I found them...

...But in the meantime other shipments have been held up or- "lost...

...It may come in a decade—it may be delayed—but this generation will live to see Russia take its place as one of the great democracies of the earth...

...Krassin, minister of foreign trade, and many other important leaders...

...However, when they do occur, punishment is directed against an entire city SCHOOLS ARE REQUISITIONED LAST Summer, during the most oppressive heat, a military ordinance was imposed upon Duisburg forbidding the opening of any window or window shutter from 8 p. m. to 5 a. m., in blind retaliation for some alleged act committed by an individual for which the community was not in any way responsible...

...The total number of evictions up to October are approximately 150,000...

...We have the technical skill and equipment which .Russia needs...

...It was my observation, and likewise that of other visitors in Russia with whom I compared notes, that a spirit of hope prevails in Russia...

...Buildings are being rapidly renovated anil refitted to meet this growth...

...the coal fields of Central Pennsylvania in permanent possession of the enemy just as the Saar is...

...RELIEF IS HAMPERED RICLIEF work in the Ruhr has been hampered in every conceivable way...

...On every hand I saw evidences that Premier Lenin is beloved by the Russian people and is regarded as one of the greatest statesmen Russia has ever produced...

...The will of the French officer presiding over the court alone determines the verdict and the sentence...

...These groups of peasants were under the guidance of industrial workers...

...Although many of the cities of the Ruhr are literally built upon coal, the population has not been allowed to store any for the coming Winter...

...Contrary to the popular impression that French propaganda spread over the "world, there was no general strike...

...The best school houses in the Ruhr have been requisitioned by the French for barracks and other purposes...

...The policy in brief is to make factories democratic community centers, where workers can maintain decent and healthful standards of living, provide themselves with homes and schools, libraries and theaters...

...There have been remarkably few acts of violence in spite of these terrible conditions...

...They are arbitrary beyond belief...

...I told Russian officials that I believe in democracy, but I would not attempt to force a democracy on any nation, except by the light of example, and that they would be better regarded by the other nations of the earth if they would cease their schemes of world revoWill You Help LaFollette's THIS YEAR is going to be of intense political and economic interest in this country...

...They might as well become accustomed to dying in the Ruhr...

...This project to overthrow the earlier Bolshevist government did not succeed, and In 1919 these American and allied troops finally were withdrawn from Russian soil.—News Editor.] NO WAR DECLARATION WE MADE war on Russia without a declaration...

...Tchitcherin impressed me as a wise and good man, and I found him to be the frankest diplomat I encountered in Europe...

...The French control of the Ruhr is something new in history...

...DEFY FRENCH BAYONETS INTO this great industrial population last January came the French troops and occupied it as if they were in the midst of war and were attempting to crush an actively hostile people...

...In addition, there were examples of peasants' houses, with their owners living in them, from every district of Russia ¦—from Archangel to the Black Sea, from Poland to the Pacific...

...What was the offense that was being punished...

...If you will send us four new subscriptions at $1.00 a year at one time, we will extend your own subscription one year free of charge, Better send in your renewal today...

...Milk is delayed in transit until it becomes sour...

...also as to the best methods of marketing their produce...

...The third degree is used with inquisitorial fury and many cases of insanity have been caused by its terrors...

...In many respects it was like a huge picture of all Russia spread out before the eyes, a marvelous exhibition of the enormous resources and possibility of this gigantic Country, which possesses more undeveloped territory than any other nation on earth...

...the most advantageous way of buying their farm supplies, and how to present their cases to the various government departments...

...They are stubborn almost to a fault and are direct and outspoken in all their dealings...

...Here were gathered together in large temporary buildings like those of a huge state fair, samples of all kinds of Russian raw materials and manufactures...

...It is only because the Russian dictatorship is one from the left that our state department has been so concerned about the anti-democratie features of the Russian government...

...James Causey, an American banker from Denver, whom I have known for years, informed me he had seen posters in the barracks of the French troops of the Ruhr depicting German soldiers in the act of committing horrible atrocities of the type long since proven to be deliberate fabrications of war propaganda press agents...

...Following the removal of the capital to Moscow the population of Petrograd fell from 2,000,000 to 500,000...

...Then," he said, "we were acting under orders from headquarters, and every railroad man in Germany joined in the general strike to preserve the republic...

...Occupation of the Ruhr by France violated the terms of the treaty...

...In many cases these schools, like other requisitioned buildings, have never been used by the French...

...But when the French soldiers took possession of a factory, a mine or a railway division, then the workers employed there walked out, resuming their jobs in the few instances when the French gave up control...

...Let us be friends...

...One of the reasons publicly assigned by Secretary Hughes for denying Russia recognition is that she refuses to meet her financial obligations...

...The French have not played favorites in their treatment of the municipalities...

...No interview sought with an official of the Soviet government or the Communist party was denied me...

...The wholesale deportations of workers and their families are another important part of the ¦French technique in breaking the spirit of these proud, liberty-loving Germans...

...CZARDOM IS GONE one that I talked with in Russia anticipated the return of czardom...

...In the past eighteen months it has reached over a million...

...When protest was made at this action, a young French lieutenant replied: "Most of these Germans must die...

...There are 160,000,000 people in Russia of whom between 80 and 90 per cent are peasants...

...week...

...These obstacles are thrown up by the under officers in the French army of occupation...

...I saw Lunacharsky, minister of education...

...The activity of the secret police fend the injustice of the courts-martial have terrorized the population and made each man suspicious of his neighbor...

...Copyright, 1923, by Hearst Papers...

...Upon this point the best authorities on international law are agreed...

...lution and seek to perfect their own government...

...No nation can make war without a formal declaration and not be liable in damages for every act committed by its troops...

...There is, however, little to indicate that these engineers are at all concerned about getting the Ruhr industries back to work and a great deal to indicate that they are not to be permitted to produce until the industrialists will make terms that give the French permanent control...

...There is said to be a system of rewards for denunciations...

...If I were a citizen of Russia I should resist this Communistic dictatorship as vigorously as I have endeavored to resist the encroachment upon our democratic institutions in America...

...We are asking you to help us because you are one of our loyal family...

...The property of thousands of Tories in the United States was confiscated and never paid for after the American revolution...

...This plan of solidifying the industrial and agricultural workers is being carried out permanently in the establishment of "peasant houses" in the cities and towns, whereby the factory workers aid the farmers to secure clean, comfortable lodging at a reasonable price...

...Whoever invests in a foreign land should assume the risks of his venture...

...Until recently men often faced the court without an opportunity to consult with counsel, and this situation has only been mitigated through the efforts of two neutral attorneys, one Dutch and one Swiss, who are now permitted to defend the prisoners in certain classes of cases...

...The granting of life tenure to land, the new economic policy which permits private trade and other departures from the strict Communist theory have been made in response to the demands of the masses of the people...

...Cars of clothing, food and other material are sent to the wrong destination or never arrive at all...

...I was afforded every opportunity to investigate, unhampered and unconducted, except as I requested guidance...

...where they may receive advice from experts as to scientific methods of agriculture...

...This was revenge for his arrest...

...Later in the same day the French would leave and the Germans would return to find that in these few hours the French had destroyed the telephone lines, wrecked the delicate electric signals, cut the uniforms to shreds...

...An important phase of this attempt to break the spirit of the population in the Ruhr is the action of the courts-martial...

...The Soviet government has adopted the czar's policy of exile as punishment for political offenses, or even the suspicion of opposition to the Soviet government...

...I spent four hours with Tchitcherin, minister of foreign affairs, and held conferences with Rykoff, the acting premier...

...No citizen who i3 not a member of the Communist party can raise his voice in criticism of the government and live in Russia...

...the democracy that two thousand years ago fell from the lips of Jesus Christ...

...School Houses Requisitioned by French Soldiers By ROBERT M. LA FOLLETTE I WENT to the Ruhr for two reasons...

...Petrograd was the center of the textile industry under the czar...

...It will be free and unfettered to tell the truth and will tell it...

...These courts operate under the code of an army in the field against the enemy...

...the coal fields of Illinois, the Gary-Chicago manufacturing district and a "corridor" of agricultural land reaching down the Mississippi Valley to New Orleans ceded to Canada, just as Silesia, parts of Posen and West Prussia, and Danzig have been given to Poland...

...Will you undertake this service in one or all the ways indicated and let us hear from you very soon...

...There is no question that the Communist leaders would have maintained a purely Communistic system had it been humanly possible...

...There rarely was that expression of absolute dejection and despair on the faces of the Russians that one saw so much of in Germany and in lesser degree among the English unemployed...

...Thus it happened sometimes that in the morning the French would take possession of a station and the Germans would walk out...

...Russia has the richest undeveloped resources in the world and her trade, in which we can have a large share with mutual profit, increases every day...

...I believe they will yield again and again to the democracy of liberty for all, equal opportunity for all, equal participation in government for all—the democracy of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln—the democracy of eternal justice...

...That is what concerns La Follette's most—the opportunity to serve the public...

...The great majority of the people of the Ruhr are Westphalians, who have the reputation of never having bowed to any conqueror...

...Medical supplies destined for the use of baby hospitals are held up at the French-customs on one pretext or another...

...Under such a treaty as has been imposed upon Germany, the United States would find herself in this position: New England, New York and New Jersey under the heel of the conqueror and occupied by black troops, like the Rhineland...

...I wanted to see as much as possible of .the actual conditions existing there under French occupation, and I wanted to find out as much as I could as to the purposes of France in seizing and holding this area in violation of the Versailles treaty...

...The traditional policy of the United States has been to recognize a de facto government strong enough to maintain itself and public order...

...When specific protests finally reach the headquarters of Gen...

...The troops are made up of young men, most of whom know nothing of the actualities of war, but have been highly trained in hate psychology against the Germans...

...They are given autocratic power in control of the mines, industrial plants and railroads as they are taken over by the French...

...I hold that government by one class, denying to other classes the right to participate, is tyranny...

...Permits have repeatedly been refused for tubercular, aged or infirm people to be taken out of the Ruhr to sanitoria, where they might have been cured, and in at least one case which I investigated permits issued by high French authorities have been torn up by subordinates...

...A new system of concrete sewers and water mains is being laid to replace the obsolete wooden structures built by the czar...

...They have no rules of evidence, no fixed procedure...

...It is uniform...

...The workers in the Ruhr simply refused to work under French bayonets...

...It is such actions as these that made Baroness Linder, a splendid Swedish woman, who has since February been doing relief work among the Ruhr children and the aged, as she did some time ago in Russia, say to me: "I have been in Russia and I have been in the Ruhr...

...If windows were opened they were shot into...

...The care of the children of factory workers and of women workers who are pregnant and of mothers who are nursing infants is a nota« ble feature of the new Russian industrial development...

...All this rebuilding is going on under the initiative of the Soviet government...

...Then because we had not been able to meet our payments of annual installments on a total reparations bill equal to three-fourths of our national wealth, we would have the Pittsburgh district invaded in violation of the treaty and every civilized consideration, as the Ruhr was invaded, in order ostensibly to compel us to "pay up" the impossible demands, but in reality to complete the splitting of the American Union to pieces and destroying forever American industrial supremacy...

...It was known to those officials that I had guides and interpreters of my own—American citizens with American ideals of government— who understood and spoke the Russian language...

...This elaborate machinery of troops, courts-martial, secret police and general policy of terror is said by Poincare to be for just one purpose—to protect and assist the engineer corps, which is supposed to see that the Ruhr rail-Ways, factories and mines are operated so that France may secure her quotas of coal and monetary reparations...

...The greater hi3 audience, the greater his influence for good...

...We would not work under German bayonets and we will not work under those of the French...

...As long as the French troops left their places of employment alone they continued work...

...It is not merely an occupation of territory by troops, it is also economic penetration and absorption...

...No opposition newspaper is permitted to be published...

...Up to the first of August 206 schools with 1,318 classes had been taken, depriving more than 120,000 school children of educational facilities...

...From January 11 to September 8, 27,119 railway men alone, together with members of their families numbering 68,821, have been deported from the Ruhr...

...So when the United States, through our state department, demands pay for the property and capital invested in Russia confiscated by the Soviet government, Russia properly replies: "Pay what you owe for life and property destroyed by your troops...

...Upon their orders men are thrown into solitary confinement on bread and water for indefinite periods for refusing to work under French bayonets or to give up information concerning the operation of the mines or plants under French control...

...But I was accorded every courtesy and permitted to seek the truth in my own way...

...FRANCE VIOLATES TREATY THE treaty of Versailles violated the terms of the armistice upon which Germany laid down her arms...

...The German government had arrested an alleged French spy on one of its "railways outside the Ruhr...

...The streets everywhere are torn up almost as if from shock of earthquake...

...You may help either by, 1. Extending your own subscription...

...Let us not be fools...

...The terrors of the courts-martial are increased by the underground activities of the secret police, made up in part of French detectives, but largely composed of the scum of Germany, who have become informers, stool pigeons and agents provocateurs for the sake of French protection and a few filthy francs...

...Elections are completely controlled by the Communist party, numbering less than 400,000...

...WHY I WENT TO RUSSIA IWENT to Russia because 1 believed that she was destined to play a large, if not a dominant, part in th" international development of the next ten years...

...In many other countries of Europe, I talked with the exiles who had been driven from their native land by the Soviet government and were therefore hostile to it...

...The Russian people love us...

...With the exceptional value that La Follette's has to offer for the coming year, we are anxiom to reach a still larger audience...

...The larger number are socialists of the revolutionary German type, but no one doubts that they will become violently and desperately revolutionary under threat of starvation and freezing...

...The relatively low production is due to shortage of raw materials, inability to get part3 to repair broken down machinery and to the scarcity of available capital...

...The Ruhr, probably the most concentrated industrial district in the world, is only about twenty miles square—no larger than an ordinary county in the United States, although it contains more than five million people...

...When I arrived in Essen I learned that four prominent citizens had just been thrown into jail as "hostages," and an order issued prohibiting the running of street cars or automobiles for one...

...For example, after passive resistance had been abandoned the miners were told that they could go back to work only on condition that none of the German superintendents and officials came back and that they would in future take orders from the French...

...Denunciation by a stool pigeon is sufficient for arrest and imprisonment...

...It covered many acres of ground...

...They are democratic, so much so that the Hohenzol-lerns never dared to quarter any troops among them...

...In their eagerness to carry out the Marxian theory, the leaders of the Soviet government have sacrificed the cardinal principles of democracy...

...As I reflect on what I saw in Russia, the first impression of Petrograd seems to typify the state of upheaval and extraordinary desire for reconstruction that characterizes the Soviet regime...

...Those I saw were producing at about 30 per cent prewar capacity...

...During my stay I spent much of my time inspecting these factories run under the Soviet system...

...Freezing as well as starvation is a part •f the French policy...

...These deportations often take place upon half an hour's notice...

...I believe now, as\I did before I went'to Europe, that the United States should recognize Russia and re-establish trade and commercial relations...

...La Follette's will continue to handle all subjects fully and fairly in the interest of the public...

...HUGHES AND ATTITUDE IT IS this intelligent attitude of the government toward building up an understanding and community of interests between the farmers and the city workers, together with further response to the needs and desires of the peasants fiat, more than anything else, ensures the existing Russian government stability and continuance in power...

...LENIN IS BELOVED RUSSIA is governed by men who must be numbered among the most able and conscientious statesmen in Europe...

...RUSSIA'S LAND POLICY IT IS my firm conviction that if we follow out toward Russia our traditional policy of recognizing de facto governments, we shall encourage and stimulate the aspirations of the Russian people for a genuinely democratic government...

...If these actions do not mean permanent possession, what do they mean...

...In order to understand what this treaty and the subsequent illegal action of France have done to a helpless and disarmed people, let us im-agitio similar conditions in the United States...

...That does not in any sense imply approval of either the form or the policies of a foreign government...

...Each one of its factory cities is substantially like all the others...

...I devoted much of my time in Moscow to the all-Russian exposition, which had been created within a few short months and was evidence of the constructive energies of the Soviet government...

...HATE OF THE GERMANS oNE of the officers of the railway unions with great feeling called my attention to the contrast between the action which they had taken during the occupation and the general strike that was put into effect all over Germany to block the "Kapp putsch" and coup d'etat that came so near restoring monarchy in Germany...

...Russia is one of the great nations of^ the world...

...A well trained army is behind the Communist party under the command of Trotzky, who combines the qualities of a military genius with those, of a great political leader...

...2. Sending the magazine as a gift to a friend, *r by 3. Securing new subscribers...

...Here we are simply following the dictates of our own conscience and acting as Germans, trade unionists and Christians must do to preserve their self-respect...

...The Germans would patiently restore order and begin work, *nd then, sometimes a week, sometimes a month later, leave again under French bayonets...

...To accomplish this there have been added in a region only twenty miles square 40,000 troops, equipped with tanks, machine guns, artillery and all of the other terrors of-modern warfare, an engineer corps, the courts-martial and thje secret police...

...INTEREST OF MASSES IN SPITE of all these handicaps, I found in the organization and conduct of these factories the best justification that I found anywhere of the Soviet claim that government was being run in the interest of the masses of the people...

...Under those terrible conditions deaths and illness, particularly among children, increased alarmingly in Duisburg This plan of punishing a town or the whole area for actions over which it had no control is a settled part of the policy...

...From all that I could learn, working conditions have improved greatly under Soviet government, as contrasted with conditions under the czar...

...I tell you sincerely and solemnly that I would rather be two years in Russia under the terror and famine than two months in the Ruhr...

...In 1918-1010 American troops formed a considerable part of an invading allied force, based on the coast of North Russia at Archangel and Murmansk, in support of an attempted anti-Bolshevist movement from that region against Petrograd...

...Prisoners are held in jail for months without trial or knowledge of what offenses they are charged with...

...The secretary of state has never, so far as I have been able to discover, displayed the slightest concern over the conditions of tyranny that exist in Italy, Hungary, Spain and the other European countries, (aside from Russia) that are now governed by dictators and continue to be recognized by our government...

...The Russians seem to feel, and often so expressed themselves, that however dreadful may have been the horrors of war, the revolution, the terror and the famine—all that now is be« hind—and however hard the conditions of today, they are better than yesterday, and will be still better tomorrow...

...This great exposition was thronged with groups of peasants from all parts of Russia whom the Soviet government had (furnished free railroad transp&rtation in order that they might learn from personal observation the great possibilities and achievements of the new Russia...

...A man is forced to leave his home, his furniture and clothing behind, and with his wife and children start from the Ruhr under French bayonets, bound for parts of unoccupied Germany— he knows not where...

...It is not generally known, but the fact is the Russian government lias demanded that the damage caused by our invading_army to life and property in Russia be offset against the claim of the state department for the property of Americans confiscated by the Russian government...

...The system operates just as the Russian Cheka did during its worst days...

...The railwaymen were required if they were to return to work to take an oath of allegiance ef unlimited duration to the French Regie (the n»e under which the railways of the Ruhr are new operated), and to swear that they would do everything in their power to promote the interests of the French and Belgian governments...

...Degoutte, after weeks of delay, the particular case in question is settled and the medical supplies or other relief is permitted to go en to its destination...

...They are sincere in their belief in the Communist form of government...

...There is no free speech, no free press and no freedom of assemblage...

...There was general acceptance of the fact that the Communists were in control, and were likely to retain their hold for a period of time for somewhat the same reason that the Republican party remained in power following our Civil War...

...ARBITRARY BEYOND BELIEF THE engineer corps is cero posed almost entirely of young men just out of college...