Colonel John Ward, the Labour Member for Stoke, who has
just returned home after serving in Siberia, confirms the accounts of the Bolshevik Terror with which we are all familiar. Bolshevism, he says, is sheer despotism maintained by control of the food supply and by espionage. A man who is not a Bolshevik has to beg his bread, if he escapes being shot. Colonel Ward attributes the military successes of the Bolsheviks to their control of the central manufacturing districts, and to their possession of the immense supplies of munitions with which the Allies provided Russia for the campaign of 1917. He says that, contrary to the general belief, the Germans did not obtain more than a small part of these supplies, though British guns sold or abandoned by the Russians were used against us on the Western Front last year. If the Bo]. sheviks are well equipped, the recent defeat of Admiral Koltchak is fully explained, for the Siberian armies are known to be very badly armed. General Denikin has done better because he has received British munitions through the Black Sea porta.
