The Labour Party has sent a number of delegates to
inquire into the condition of Bolshevik Russia. We trust that they will be more fortunate than the deputation of Russian Co-operators living abroad which went in February and has just returned. According to the Times, these Co-operators, who are Russians, were isolated like victims of the plague, and were forbidden to meet their fellow-Co-operators, except under Bolshevik super- vision. They found that industry, under despotic control, was still declining, and that the towns, ravaged by famine and disease, were going from bad to worse. If thg Bolsheviks did not fear exposure, they would surely have permitted these native experts to inspect for themselves the Communist Utopia which Mr. Lansbury, for instance, professes to have found in Moscow. We fear that the British Labour delegates will not be allowed to see more than Lenin thinks good for them.
