Work in Russia: The Installation

(With instructions to install the Committee on Public Information's service in Russia, Mr. Edgar G. Sisson left the United States on October 27, 1917, and arrived in Petrograd November 25. His report follows:)

The Bolshevik-Proletarian revolution had begun November 7, and the city was still under the closest Red Guard military control. I was told by the Americans on the scene that there was no possibility of any open governmental activity. This did not seem logical to me, but it necessitated a careful preliminary survey.

In a week's time I had convinced myself not only that it was possible to go ahead, but that the best way was to go ahead openly. This plan, however, required the use of the mechanical facilities wholly in the control of the Bolshevik Government — telegraph agencies, printing shops, and, to a lesser degree, distributing agencies.

As an example of the chaotic condition of affairs, the Bolsheviki had suppressed all the existing and opposing Bourgeois newspapers, leaving for the chief publications in Petrograd their official newspapers, the Isvestia and the Pravcla. Such other newspapers as appeared were being obliged to change their names almost with each issue, so fast did the suppressions come.

When I left the United States our cable service was supposed to be ready to begin to feed into the Rusian governmental distributing organization, the Petrograd Telegraph Agency, which in Russia corresponds to the Associated Press in the United States. The revolution, however, had broken the service. Efforts to replace it had been made by the use of the wireless station at Lyon, France, the receivingstation being at Moscow. The project failed because the Moscow station itself was almost immediately put out of commission. In Kussia we would not have known of the effort had not a few sentences of one garbled message been picked up a few days before inefficient operators (or intent) finally wrecked the instruments at the station.

The first job, therefore, was to restore the cable service. This was done after an interchange of cables with Washington, and after finding that the Petrograd Telegraph Agency desired to have and would use the cables.

I called Arthur Bullard up from Moscow, where of his own initiative he had been acting as a volunteer in the consul's office in preparing a mail service for provincial papers, and made him the Director of the Russian News Division of the committee. I also commandeered Graham Taylor, jr., who had been engaged on work in the German prison camps in Eussia until we went to war, and put him in charge of the Petrograd office. This was done in order to enable Mr. Bullard to return to Moscow and organize an office there.

We opened an office at 4 Gorokovaya for the receipt of cable messages, and put in a translating force. The messages, as soon as translated, were fed into Petrograd Telegraph Agency in Petrograd and theoretically were telegraphed all over Eussia, as well as released to the Petrograd uewspapers. Such was the disorganization of the telegraph lines, however, that in practice we found it at once necessary to install a courier service to Moscow, and to make the lai'ger part of the national distribution from there. In both phices we also released direct as exigencies required.

In Moscow each week we assembled the cable material in pamphlet form, added to it educational mail and article material and distributed the pamphlets to the provincial piess, and to organizations where we deemed it useful.

We adopted for ourselves the Eussian name, Amerikansky Kiireau Pachata (the American Press Bureau), and at- 'Mched a governmental symbol to indicate its official nature.

l')oth the British and the French did 'their publicity work ^'s ()rivate organizations, and it was a matter of interest to j-i:-' i : 1 me that the head of the French department came to me before I left Petrograd and said that ours was the right way. The British organization, Cosmos, was raided and closed by the Bolsheviki the last week in December. The French never put out anything openly. We were not seriously interfered with throughout the winter.

The middle of December found our news organization in operation. One of the first impressions I had got of Petrograd was of its billboard possibilities. Every street, including the Nevsky, was papered up and down with placards and proclamations, mostly emanating from the Soviet. The first of President Wilson's Russian messages came in early December. As I feared, after reading it, the official newspapers refused to print it in full, and misused and misinterpreted such parts as they did print. Other papers also used it insufficiently, so I made up my mind to put it on the billboard. I was advised this would be regarded as a challenge by the Bolshevik Government, but this view did not appear reasonable to me. I went about the matter openly, gave the job of printing to the biggest Government printing establishment in Petrograd, a plant that would compare favorably with all but a very few in the United States, and negotiated with a billposter agency to put up the message. The bill-posting man was the only person to show any fear of the outcome, but he heeded the business and decided to take a chance. He played " safety first," and hired soldiers to do the posting. The result was that 50,000 copies of the President's message were posted one morning throughout Petrograd without any hindrance whatever. This posting was followed by a street hand distribution of 300,000 copies^ in the street cars, in the theaters, hotels, stores, and to the street crowds.

Similar plans were started in Moscow, but rioting broke out and prevented success. The third process of printing, the turning of the speech to pamphlet use, was done at Moscow.

The experience on this message enabled us to do the big job on the President's message of January 8 with its statement of terms of any possible peace. We had learned the machinery. The January 8 speech began to reach us January 10, but did not come complete mitil January 11. It was used in full in the Isvestia, the direct organ of the Soviets. This in itself gave a complete all-Russia circulation among the Soviets. There was liberal use of the message ift nearly all of the newspapers.

The Petrograd posters were up January 13. The street distribution, again of 300,000, followed a few days later. The Moscow distribution was done almost simultaneously.

On this message German distribution was essential. One million copies were printed in German. Of this quantity 300,000 were put across the northern line into the German line, and 200,000 similarly at the central and the southern front. A half million went to German prison camps in Russia, for the reason that these prisoners were expected soon to return to Germany.

The German distribution was done by an organization of soldiers through the help of Jerome Davis, of the Young Men's Christian Association, who had used them for package distribution. The Young Men's Christian Association as a body had nothing to do with the work. This soldiers' organization was later made a part of our own machinery, and was used with high effectiveness in the distribution of German and Hungarian versions of President Wilson's speech of February 11. It worked along the line of the German advance into Russia, and fulfilled its instructions to scatter the messages in territory about to be occupied by the German Army. The head of this organization was B. Morgenstern.

The details of the distribution of the message of January 8 will show the general method :

President Wilson's Message of January S, 1918.

Petrograd :

Russian posters printed, posted np along streets 100, 000

Russian handbills printed —

Distributed to theaters, etc 300, 000

To Davis-Morgenstern for Russian soldier line 600, 000

German handbills printed ^ 1, 000, 000 2, 000, 000 Fiom Petrograd : Text telegraphed to —

Chita : Representative of International Harvester

Co., from vphom no word has come. Omsk : Gray, of International Harvester Co., who reported that he was pushing distribution. Ekaterinburg : Palmer, of International Harvester

Co., who reported that local situation prevented an immediate start, but that now the work was progressing well to distribute 10,000 posters and

150,000 handbills ■100,000

Kiev : To Jenkins, American consul ; text in Ukranian ; letter from Jenkins said he planned to distribute 50,000. American consul at Vladivostok reported that he received uK^ssjigt; by direct cable from United States. Moscow :

Posters printed —

Pasted up along streets 45, 000

Pasted up in rooms of house committees 20,000

Sent to Voronesch 1, 000 Handbills printed — Gonetz to theaters, etc . 235, 000 Young Men's Christian Association 286, 000 To Voronesch 10, 000

To Lubertzi (International Harvester) 2,000

To town in Tamboff 1,000

Factories within 150 versts . 300, 000

Manufacturers' Association for its 30 branches in

Russia 18, 000

All-Russian Trade and Industry Association for its 450 branches in Russia 45, 000

To^ 700 cooperatives in Russia 150, 000

To 2 individual soldiers who wanted them for their regiments ^ 2, 000

Muir and Mirriles • 1,000 Committee of escaped prisoners To Kharkoft 50,000

To houses throughout Moscow, distributed by the

Society of Municipal Employees 125,000

I»aniplilets printed, in bulletin No. 3 12,000

Total 3, 403, 000 From Moscow :

Text sent with order to print and distribute to — American consul at Odessa. American consul at Tiflis. American consul at Kiev. American consul at Rostov for— Rostov. Taganrog. Novocherkassk, and district north of the Caucasus.

Had the Germans entered Petrograd in late February they would have been greeted by posters in German, both of the President's messages of January 8 and February 11. One hundred thousand copies of the former were run the middle of February to provide for this contingency.

In the last week in February we encountered our first definite Bolshevik stoppage. The colored cartoon poster, showing the arm of German force stabbing the people's hand, and tramping upon the people's banner of liberty, was confiscated on the press by order of the Bolshevik Government.

Why?

Smolny laughed at us when we asked it.

We asked in order to see whether Smolny would laugh. .

The News Division moved into larger quarters on the Nevsky the last week in February, the week that saw the exit from Petrograd of the embassies, consulates, and the missions, including the American Embassy, the American consul, the American Military Mission, and the American Red Cross. The change had been planned for weeks earlier. We concluded to be found going ahead until we could go no farther. So large American flags were draped across the windows, and the division moved in.

The Film Division headquarters were on the Kazansky, half a block from the Nevsky, facing the cathedral. It was in charge of Guy Croswell Smith as director. The machine stood ready to receive new films by January 1. The failure of Hart, of the Young Men's Christian Association, to bring through a quarter of million feet of film intended for us kept us from saturating Russia with American films in the early winter. The second allotment of films given into the custody of Bernstein had reached Stockholm when the Finnisli Revolution of the last days of Janiiarj^ closed the gates into Russia. No couriers came into Petrograd after February 1.

Smith and I found both the Hart and the Bernstein films still in Scandinavia in April.

With such films as he had — the Uncle Sam Immigrant film and the Presidential Procession in Washington — Smith did fine work. The Uncle Sam Immigrant film was put out with a camouflage title "All for Peace." The finished title would have read "All for Peace Through War," but we left it to the audiences to find that out for themselves. The biggest moving-picture theater in Petrograd ran both films, and they fed rapidly throughout the whole of Russia. We traced them from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea and far into Siberia.

I arranged for an option on a Petrograd theater, and the purpose was to lease similarly in Moscow and after a run for advertising purposes, to turn the films into trade channels, to add incentive to circulation. It is the method to use in Russia and, in general, nearly everywhere.

In my opinion, the best individual work done in Russia for the United States was that of Arthur Bullard in writing the pamphlet " Letters to a Russian Friend," an interpretation of the highest order of America. We published it in Russian as a Red, White, and Blue book. Three hundred thousand copies were distributed.

The Moscow office continued the distribution of the January and February messages in the remote sections of Russia after March 1. The total distribution, including the Hungarian and German text, was more than four million. Three hundred thousand handbills containing both messages were distributed ahead of the German advance in Ukraine. The President's Baltimore speech was printed in Irkutsk, Omsk, Samara, Petrograd, Moscow, and Ekaterinburg.

An American Bulletin was issued weekly. By issue No. 6, the Bulletin had reached a circulation of 40,000 in all parts of Russia. It went to all newspapers, zemstvos, schools, Soviets, commercial and manufacturing associations, and universities. It was also sent to 10,000 cooperative societies which form the backbone of the practical liberal element.

Edgar Sisson. Work in Kussia — Summer of 1918. [Report of Read Lewis.]

Stockholm, Seftemher 2Ii-^ 1918. Mr. Edgar G. Sisson,

Director Division of Foreign Work.,

G omifnittee on Public Information.^ W ashing ton .^ D. G. In accordance with your instructions, I returned from Archangel to Moscow June 30. From then until August 26, when I started for Stockholm, I had charge of the Compub work centering in Moscow and Petrograd. During these two months I was busy in building up and revitalizing the organization which we had left on May 4 and in extending the work. Despite the absence of American associates, our inability to communicate with the outside world, and the entire failure of news cables and publicity material to reach us, as well as the handicap of an acute political crisis threatening daily the future of the work, we were able to reach a steadily increasing public. After the consulate general on August 5 placed American interests under the protection of the Swedes, it seemed more than ever important to continue Compub as the only agency which remained to express President Wilson's affirmed policy of friendship and helpful cooperation with the Eussian people. There was need for even more vigorous effort by us to offset the assiduous anti- American German propaganda, and to interpret in democratic fashion the Entente policy at Archangel and in Siberia. As long as the work was permitted by the Soviet Government, I believed it should be carried on. The possibility that Americans might be held as hostages seemed to me no reason for withdrawal. On the western front the chance that a soldier may be taken prisoner has never been a reason for keeping him from the fight. It was accordingly under protest that I left Moscow with the consulate staff. I left Moscow reluctantly, but with the hope that if the wor]^ could be continued I should receive authority to return. Following my arrival in Stockholm, however, I learned by cable through the Swedish consulate general at Moscow, as I have already cabled you, that on September 2, a week following my departure, the Soviet had closed our offices and that the work was being liquidated.

During July and August the principal work of the Russian Press Division was the publication and distribution of the American Bulletin. This 16-page pamphlet, designed for the general reading public, was issued weekly and distributed free of charge to a mailing list of 40,000 names. Its cost, including printing and paper, was 10 kopecks, or 1 cent, al a cost (according to the second-class mailing rates first obtained in August) of only 7 kopecks per month for each subscriber. The Bulletin contained the cable news dispatches, so long as they were received, and articles and paragraphs descriptive of the different phases of American life. The Bulletin mailing list included all newspapers and publications, 800 cooperative unions and their more than 10,000 constituent societies, thousands of schools and libraries, all the Soviet and Government institutions of the country, trade-unions, teachers' associations, the old zemstvos, commercial and manufacturing associations, many business houses and individuals. The building up of this mailing list was a matter of continuous and careful work. Our attempt was to reach not only the sources of public opinion but at least some part of the people themselves. Lists of their cooperative societies, representing in their membership the great substantial and forward-looking masses of the Russian people, had in response to our letters been sent- us by the cooperative unions. In response to letters to the educational divisions of provincial and district governments we had secured lists of local schools, people's houses, libraries, etc. Every mail brought many letters from persons and organizations v^^ho had seen the Bulletin and asked to be placed on our mailing list. Not a day went by without at least one letter from a provincial Soviet, or one of its departments, expressing interest in our work, forwarding names of local organizations, and requesting sometimes as many as 50 copies of each issue for its use. Thus despite the territory impossible to reach on account of civil war, we were distributing 50,000 copies of each issue of the Bulletin.

In addition to the American Bulletin the bureau also issued during the summer a translation of " How the War Came to America," and a pamphlet collecting several of the speeches of President Wilson, principally those of January 8 on terms of general peace, of February 11 repljdng to the Central Powers, and of April T at Baltimore. Of each of these two pamphlets 100,000 copies had been printed and were being distributed. We continued to print and distribute the very successful " Letters of an American Friend." Of this 400,000 copies had been printed and distributed and a new order was on the press. It is interesting to note that these letters were reprinted in full by one of the Astrakhan newspapers, and the inability to report similar instances may be due to the very few provincial papers it was possible to obtain. In the form of leaflets we issued and distributed 100,000 copies of both the President's Eed Cross speech of May 18 in New York, and his speech of June 11 to the Mexican editors. To the earlier speeches more general distribution had already been given. Four million copies, indeed, of the speech of January 8 were distributed throughout the country and at the front. Copies of it for posting had been sent to all railroad stations in Russia. In default of a greater variety of literature for general distribution we printed of the last several issues of the Bulletin a second 50,000 for distribution outside of its regular mailing list. To pampMets like " Letters of an American Friend " and the speeches of President Wilson, the bureau aimed to give a far more general distribution than to the weekly bulletin. Copies of such pamphlets were of course sent to the Bulletin mailing list. In addition the bureau maintained a staff of 11 couriers and messengers for the work of distribution. Two, foi; example, devoted their entire time to daily distribution at the railroad stations in Moscow ; two more to distribution at the factories and cooperative societies in the Moscow district. A special effort was made to reach personally with our literature each of the many congresses and conferences held in Moscow (and even in some of the provincial cities) with their delegates from different parts of the country. To these meetings and conventions our messengers carried subscription lists and in this way were able to add to the Bulletin mailing list. The rest of our courier staff, were employed in making regular trips to the Provinces. The complete breakdown of the transportation system in Russia made it essential, if we were consistently to reach the provincial cities and districts with our literature, that we should have our own system of distribution. The trips for our provincial messengers were carefully planned, each man being given a list of the organizations, factories, persons, etc., to which he was to distribute literature in the several cities which he was to visit. Nearly all men engaged in this department of our work were members of the Society of Escaped Prisoners; that is, they had been common soldiers in the Russian Army and subsequently prisoners in Germany, from which they had escaped. No little part of the success of the distribution work was due to their loyal interest in it and their ingenuity in dealing with the difficulties of transportation and the obstacles in the way of opposition from some local authority with which they had frequently to contend. The bureau was also arranging at important points on the Volga like Nizhni j -No vgerod and Saratov to have a regular employee who would distribute bits of literature on all boats stopping at the port.

Through its department of distribution the bureau had thus distributed, during the month from July 15 to August 15, 10,112 pieces of literature at congresses and conventions; 51,600 at railroad stations in Moscow; 55,951 at factories, to works' committees and trade-unions; 38,007 to cooperative societies and shops in Moscow and vicinity ; and 167,950 in the Provinces by the bureau's couriers. This, in addition to a small miscellaneous distribution at the offices of the committee in Petrogracl and Moscow and in addition to the distribution of the Bulletin by post, made the total distribution for the month 479,333.

It is obvious, of course, that if we could have supplied to arid had published by the Eussian newspapers the same or jnaterial equivalent to that which we ourselves printed and distributed, we should have employed a far more economical and extensive method of publication and distribution. The publication of our own pamphlets, and especially of our weekly paper, however, seemed essential, not only because of the utter demoralization of the Russian press, but as a concrete evidence and expression of America's policy of friendship and helpful cooperation with the Russian people. Following the assassination of Ambassador Mirbach early in July all of the bourgeois press were permanently closed, and until I left Moscow none but a few Bolshevik newspapers appeared. The same condition was true in the provincial cities except for a few left S. E. papers. The editorial offices of these papers, particularly in Moscow and Petrograd, were definitely unfriendly to America.

The bureau, on the other hand, not only was without the American staff but entirely lacked the material which would have enabled it to furnish these Bolshevik papers with news and a special press service which, I am convinced, would in large part have overcome their hostility and intolerance. On the contrary we were cut off from communication and most of the material needful to counteract the anti-Aiiierican German propaganda in the Russian press. Following the nonreceipt of our own cable dispatches, much of the American neAvs in the press showed unmistakable evidence of having been made in German3\ Most of it was cleverly selected in order at the same time to appeal to the particular sympathies and prejudices of the Bolsheviks and to discredit America. As an example of the chief American news items published widely throughout the country I may cite stories of Negroes hung in Iowa, a cage for cowards in Alabama, the sentence of Lochner, a reported scandal in the Quartermaster's Department of the Army over supplies and contracts, ammunition explosions in Syracuse, the persecution and judicial brutality exhibited toward Socialists and pacifists, the occupation of two towns in Panama by American troops, the story that the French were dissatisfied because one-half of the American troops in France were Negroes, a Socialist in Washington sentenced to 10 years because he had in his room a placard " Don't be a soldier, be a man," etc.

This shows the supreme importance of the communication to Eussia by us of American news. But from early in July we were cut off from all cable and telegraphic communication with the outside world. The last Compub cable received was No. 10144, of July 2, describing the preparations for Independence Day. Subsequent Compub cables up to 10183 were dispatched but none of them except for 10155 were ever received. Although I tried to send you word of our situation, first through Archangel and later via Petrograd and Stockholm, I presume my cables never reached you. One indeed sent by neutral courier early in August has overtaken me in Stockholm. While we were thus without cable news, we also lacked, the necessary general material. Our latest American newspapers dated from December and January. Since the first 400 numbers of the Foreign Press Bureau's service we had received none of its material except for two installments early in July, one dating from December and the other the first week of April. These proved of great assistance but were speedily exhausted. After the Compub cables stopped the contents of the Bulletin was limited to general informative articles about America, its life and war activities, and to such news notes as I could get from the few English and French papers at hand. Nearly all of this material had to be personally prepared by me.

While our work with the newspapers was thus actually so limited, I was convinced of the supreme importance of establishing a special and exclusive service for the newspapers quite apart from the Bulletin, and to this end preparatory work was carried on. We had thus in practically all the 20-odd Governments with which it was possible to communicate secured a local correspondent. This was some person who was known to us or who had expressed his wish to help in the work and who as a result of correspondence seemed suitable. These agents were employed at nominal salaries. It was their duty to send us the names and addresses of all newspapers in their Government or district, to keep us informed of the local newspaper situation, to supply us with clippings showing the attitude of these papers toward Ameiica and their use of our material, and to send us names of local persons and institutions for the Bulletin mailing list. We thus tried to keep on hand ready for use an up-todate list of Russian newspapers. If the cables had started to come through again it had been my intention to send them either by post or artel to each of these newspapers, forwarding them sufficiently in advance of their release in Moscow so that they would reach the provincial cities ahead of the Moscow papers publishing them. I planned also to send out semiweekly as soon as the necessary material could be accumulated to start the service, two or three galley sheets containing notes, articles and paragraphs and fillers suitable for reprinting by the newspapers.

Concerning the A, B^ C book, the primai y^ book which the committee had planned to issue and distribute as a gift from American to Eussian school children, 3,000 advance copies were printed. A meeting of educational experts representing the leading teachers and educational organizations was held under the bureau's auspices and a plan worked out for the most effective method of distribution. These advance copies were never sent out for two reasons. First, there was delay due to the necessity of obtaining the consent of the authors to the substitution of the old by the new spelling in the final edition, a change which was judged expedient in view of the attitude of the Government. In the second place as the cost of the A, B, C book would have been 120,000 rubles per 100,000 copies, I hesitated with limited funds at hand and the xlifficulties of communication and obtaining more funds, to use the money which might be needed for more general propaganda.

Up to the time of my departure from Moscow August 28, there had been no interference by the Soviet authorities with our work.^ All publications had to be licensed by the commissar of the press, but all permissions for printing and distribution which we asked for, had been granted.

There was, however, in the face of the threatening attitude of the Entente in Siberia and Archangel toward the Soviet Government, indications that our work might be regarded as hostile propaganda. In the latter part of August various articles appeared in the Moscow press calling attention to the propaganda character of our work. There were also one or two fantastic tales published ia a paper unmistakably German in its ownership suggesting that our employees were engaged in our offices in making bombs and explosives. The commissar of education had before my departure communicated with the university where we had our offices since April on the question of our removal and we had been trying to find and move to new quarters. The commissar's position that as the university was supported by Government funds the presence of the press bureau of a foreign Government .was improper, although we had been invited by the university management, seemed an entirely correct one, and did not in itself, I believe, indicate any animus against us. In regard to the events humediately lead-

^ The office was raided and closed by the Bolsheviks Sept. 6. ing up to the closing of our work by the Soviet and that event itself, I have received no information except that the work of liquidation has been moved from the university to our original offices opposite the consulate general.

When I left Moscow I placed Mr. Lebedev in charge of the work under instructions to continue it. In the event that the work should be stopped Mr. Lebedev was under instruction to retain such help as he required to complete and place our accounts in proper shape, to put our files in order, and to have our mailing list ready for future use, but to pay off all our other employees with two months' salary in advance in accordance with the Russian custom. I have since sent word to Mr. Lebedev that if possible he and two other of our Russian staff in Moscow should, if they could secure the necessary passports, proceed to Stockholm in order that they might join me in Archangel. It seemed likely that under present conditions I would otherwise be unable to obtain the . experienced and competent Russian help in Archangel so essential to the success of our work. In regard to the PetrogTad office I have sent instructions that it should be given up and our property stored in the embassy. During the summer the Petrograd office served only as a distributing point, with a staff limited to Mr. Younger and a couple of messengers. It was my wish to organize there a local distribution service similar to that which we had in Moscow, but the urgency of the political situation was such as to prevent me from going to Petrograd to accomplish it.

All through July and part of August while the Russian press was fuming at Anglo-French imperialists, never a word was said about America, although it was well known that we w^ere also parties with England and France to the treaty with the Murmansk Soviet. The different attitude which the Russian newspapers and Government have taken toward America, as distinguished from the other Allies, has been due not only to what America is, but also, I believe, to our propaganda, and the efforts we have made to make America understood. It has been clue to the fact that our propaganda was distinguished from that of the English and French, has aimed at reaching the broad masses of the Russian people. We have tried to make friends with the people themselves. That we have at least in a small measure succeeded is attested by many letters of appreciation received from simple people, often from scarcely literate peasants and working-men. I quote the following foreword to several pamphlets we were preparing to issue when I left Moscow, as showing the spirit not only in which I tried to carry on the work, but also in which I believe it must be carried on to be permanently successful.

This little pamphlet is printed and given to you by the Government of the United States of America. You may well ask v^^hy it should take the trouble to go halfway around the world to give it to you, a citizen of the new Russia.

The Government of the United States of America, which is only another word for the people of America, believe in democracy, in government by and for the great masses of the people. It believes that only when such government exists everywhere will its own democracy, and democracy throughout the world, be safe. So at a time when you are forming the institutions of the new Russia, it wishes to extend "to you the hand of good-will, and to bear witness to its faith in democracy. It wants you to believe in democracy, in making and keeping democracy for Russia.

Probably you already do. Perhaps, further, you think that the Government and people of the United States, who are even now speaking to you, are undemocratic, imperialistic, and hostile to the ideals of equal opportunity, industrial democracy, and internationalism, which stir so much of Russia to-day. We see, indeed, the faults • of our democracy, the many places where we have failed, but in our hearts we believe- in those ideals, and we know that we are struggling toward them. Because we are fighting for them we believe that they are the most real thing about us.

Even now we are engaged in a great war, not one of enmity to any people, not to gain any material thing, but to bring nearer the realization of those ideals. We do not see how there can be any guarantee of political, let alone industrial, democracy, any lives of free and equal opportunity, any brotherhood of mankind in a world where one government seeks to dominate other nations and refuses to acknowledge the right of other peoples to self-determination.

But whether or not you agree with us about the war as a necessary step toward their realization, we want to work together with you for those ultimate ideals of equal opportunity for all, industrial democracy, and internationalism. Hoav can we work together if we do not believe in each other's good faith? How can we trust each other if we do not know each other? So the purpose of the following pages is to tell you a little about ourselves— to show you that we are working with the same problems, striving toward the same goals as yourselves. The solidarity of mankind can be built not out of wishing, but only out of actual friendships. By helping to establish a common understanding between us we want to lay the basis for sucli a friendship and mutual helpfulness between the peoples of Russia and America — ■ a friendship that will be one of the bulwarks of that future world of peace and liberty in which we both believe.

If you are interested in reading more about America than is contained in the following pages, in which we print some articles already published in the American Bulletin, please write to the Amerikansky Bureau Petchate and it will be glad to send you the future issues of the Bulletin and its other literature.

Respectfully, yours,

Read Lewis.