Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/14

 The five weeks that the Belgian Socialist Mission spent in Russia allowed of our seeing much and questioning many persons. We visited the Workmen's and Soldiers' Committees, as well as the Ministers, Socialists as well as "Cadets." We met the representatives of all the different political opinions from Polish nationalists to the anarchists installed in the Villa Dournovo. In Petrograd, as in Moscow and Kieff, we saw the Labour Organizations, interviewed members of the Belgian colony and the leaders of Employers Associations. We came into contact with the masses—we must have spoken to at least a hundred thousand persons—as well as their leaders. We listened to the pessimists as well as to the optimists. We had an opportunity of observing the enormous difficulties existing in Russia to-day. But we never lost sight of the many reasons that, in spite of everything, justified young democratic Russia's belief in her future.

We share this belief and we give our reasons hereafter.

My thanks are due to my two collaborators, Louis de Brouckère and Lieutenant