M. Vandervelde, the veteran Belgian.Socialist, went to Moscow to defend
the Social Revolutionaries on trial there, and has returned completely disillusioned. He found that the defendants were denied justice. The charges against them were false, and the so-called court was as much a mockery of law as the French revolutionary tribunal of 1793-94, of which Fouquier-Tinvffie
was the guiding spirit. The Bolshevik' judges browbeat the prisoners, and at intervals went outside to harangue Bolshevik mobs who • demanded the death-sentence. The promises made to M. Vandervelde before he went to Russia were all violated. He had to resort to a hunger-strike in order to get permission to leave • the country. Such is the Communist Paradise which some foolish people would have us imitate—a barbarous tyranny more disgraceful because more efficient than that of the Turks.
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