[276] Frankfurter Zeitung, February 28, 1919.

[277] A succinct but interesting study of this question appeared in the Handels-Zeitung of the Berliner Tageblatt, over the signature of Dr. Felix Pinner, July 20, 1918.

[278] Cf. Bonsoir, July 29, 1919.  The price was not fixed, but the minimum was specified.  It was one hundred thousand kronen.

[279] Cf. Der Tag, Vienna, August 13, 1919. L’Echo de Paris, August 15, 1919.

[280] By Dr. F. Pinner, H. Vorst, and others.

[281] The condemned man is tied to a post or a cross, his mouth gagged, and the execution is made to last several hours.  It usually begins with a slit on the forehead and the pulling down of the skin toward the chin.  After the lapse of a certain time the nose is severed from the face.  An interval follows, then an ear is lopped off, and so the devilish work goes on with long pauses.  The skill of the executioner is displayed in the length of time during which the victim remains conscious.

[282] Cf. Le Figaro, February 18, 1919.

[283] I do not suggest that these crimes were ordered by Lenin.  But it will not be gainsaid that neither he nor his colleagues punished the mass murderers or even protested against their crimes.  Neither can it be maintained that massacres were confined to any one party.

[284] This pre-Bolshevist movement is described in an interesting study on the socialist movement and systems, down to the year 1848, by El.  Luzatto.  Cf. Der Bund, August 16, 1918.

[285] Hung Sew Tseuen.  The rebellion lasted from 1850 to 1864.

[286] The superb city of Nankin, with its temples and porcelain towers, was destroyed.

XII

HOW BOLSHEVISM WAS FOSTERED

The Allies, then, might have solved the Bolshevist problem by making up their minds which of the two alternative politics—­war against, or tolerance of, Bolshevism—­they preferred, and by taking suitable action in good time.  If they had handled the Russian tangle with skill and repaid a great sacrifice with a small one before it was yet too late, they might have hoped to harvest in abundant fruits in the fullness of time.  But they belonged to the class of the undecided, whose members continually suffer from the absence of a middle word between yes and no, connoting what is neither positive nor negative.  They let the opportunity slip.  Not only did they withhold timely succor to either side, but they visited some of the most loyal Russians in western Europe with the utmost rigor of coercion laws.  They hounded them down as enemies.  They cooped them up in cages as though they were Teuton enemies.  They encircled them with barbed wire.  They kept many of them hungry and thirsty, deprived them of life’s necessaries for days, and in some cases reduced the discontented—­and who in their place would not be discontented?—­to pick their food in dustbins among garbage and refuse.  I have seen officers and men in France who had shed their blood joyfully for the Entente cause gradually converted to Bolshevism by the misdeeds of the Allied authorities.  In whose interests?  With what helpful results?