However, the T.U.C. men went to Georgia. The only roads across it were blocked with snow at the time. But they put their noses into Vladikavkaz and Tiflis, smelt no blood, saw that there were some live Caucasians walking about there still, and at once wired off their approbation of Soviet rule there in a statement which was reproduced all over the world. It said, in brief, that Georgia is all right; it spoke of the "devotion of the immense majority of Georgians to the Soviet Government ".

Somebody told them that. It reminds me of a statement of a Labour delegate after he came back from Russia in 1917. "The Tsar was about to sign a separate peace," said he. Kerensky told me himself."

If some one tells a pro-Bolshevik what he wants to hear, that is confirmation to him as good as holy writ.

Curiously enough, the trade union delegation not only accepted what was told them about conditions in Russia and Georgia, but also about conditions in Egypt. They could not claim to have any special knowledge about Egypt over and above that of the fur-clad Muscovites and Semites of the Kremlin. Almost as if they understood themselves as servants of the Communist

International, they undertook to form a Handsoff-Egypt Society when they got home.

We awaited their return. John Bull had something to say to them. But they came home quietly, without bands or flags. Their advisers warned them not to open their mouths. Their advisers, at the same time, provided them with a preliminary statement of their activities and opinions, and issued it to the Press. It said that the delegation was of opinion that millions of British capital could now with safety be invested in Russia, as conditions were so greatly improved.

It said not a word about the united trade union front. Certainly trade union funds are not designated for investment in Russia. On the contrary, the Communists, if they can raise money from the British capitalists, would be ready to pay over a certain proportion to the political funds of the united unions. The important moves in Moscow's game will not be made public. They were not to be found in the larger report of the delegation. The objective in view is the capture of the trade unionist political movement for the Third International. That cannot be done by posting notices, but rather by changing the course of the ship in the night.

But what do the British trade unionists think

of it? Some million of them voted Conservative at the last election, and more still would have voted that way had the election campaign lasted another week and the Zinovief letter had time to sink into their minds.

But what will be their attitude towards the new Moscow conspiracy? Personally, I am inclined to

think that if Labour is to make sure of its future in this country it will have to purge itself of those of its representatives who are capable of being unfaithful to England, and it will have to return to its own domestic problems rather than concentrate upon Russia, of which it knows, and can know, very little.

The final report of our trade union delegates, issued in February 1925, had, it seemed to me, little to do with the real object of the mission. Its object, it states, is to educate the British electorate. Did the delegation go out to get educative matter for us? The report is a volume of propaganda beginning with a picture of "Bloody Sunday January 1905 ", and it contains little that is damaging to the cause of revolution.

It would be unfair to seize upon the damaging

admissions, as they are not representative of the book. There are, however, some interesting opinions; one is that in time the "Living Church" may canonise Lenin. I should not be surprised. It is a fitting comment on the activities of the "Living Church" that it should be capable of canonising an atheist. Now that Tokhon the Patriarch is dead it is possible we may see some surprising developments in the power of the "Living Church".

The publication of the report was followed in April 1925 by the arrival of delegates from Soviet Russia and a Trade Union Conference in London. At this conference it was decided to unify the Anglo-Bolshevik trade union front under an international banner inscribed "Workers of the World Unite" and "Long Live the WorldWide Federation of the Trade Union Movement." Thus the first step in the program announced by the Fifth Communist Congress was achieved.

VI

THE PEASANTRY AND THE

REVOLUTION

COMMUNISTS frequently employ the terminology of the War when speaking of their affairs. It is common to speak of an external and an internal front. The external front of Bolshevism is in Paris and London, or in the Border States; but the internal front is the village at home, the peasantry, the peasants' church, their language, their lore. From time to time the weight of the Red attack is thrown from one side to another. Now the external campaign is regarded as the more important; now the internal one. There are externalists and internalists, just as in the Great War there were Easterners and Westerners, some holding the War would be settled in France, others in Russia. After the set-back experienced in London and Paris, the attention of the Russian Communist Party was switched to the internal