One of the few avowed British Bolsheviks has been sent
to gaol for six months. This man, Harold Percy Burgess, the manager of Miss Sylvia Pankhurst's organ, the Workers' Dreadnought, was convicted at Bow Street last Saturday of trying to cause dis- affection among the Irish Guards. He had given money and drink to some Guardsmen and had supplied them with pamphlets, advocating " Soviets for the British," which they were to dis- tribute in the barracks at .Caterham. The Guardsmen. drank Burgess's beer, took his money, and burnt or threw aside his seditious pamphlets. But it was clearly his intention topromote a mutiny, in the interests of Lenin, who doubtless knew the source of the funds which Burgess was distributing to chance acquaintances in public-houses. As the magistrate said, it is difficult to imagine a more .serious offence. Burgess may, thank the leniency of what he would call a " bourgeois" court. Had he tried to corrupt a " Red " guard in Moscow, he would have been shot, out of hand.
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