The Rev. F. W. North, the chaplain of the British
Church in Moscow, returned home last Saturday with a party of refugees. As Mr. North has lived in Moscow for the past fourteen years, and as he has been in constant communication with the Bolshevik teapots since they usurped power in November, 1917, he should know the truth about conditions in Russia. It is well, therefore, to note Mr. North's opinion that Russia cannot begin to recover until she frees herself from the Bolsheviks. There is no transport in Russia; only four or five of the factories in Moscow are working. The Church has to obtain permission to hold services on festivals. Seventeen bishops have been murdered. Mr. North saw Mr. Keeling, who is still in prison, after Mr. Lansbury's visit. We are in no way surprised to know that Mr. Keeling utterly repudiated Mr. Lansbury's assertion that the unlucky prisoner regretted his " disloyalty " to the Bolsheviks. Mr. Lansbury told his readers what he thought that Mr. Keeling ought to have said, just as he described the wretched famine-stricken Moscow as the Com- munistic paradise that it ought to have been, if theories were facts.
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