Page:Ossendowski - The Shadow of the Gloomy East.djvu/207

 CHAPTER XXV

T must be clear to everybody whose eyes have seen and whose ears have listened that Russia is lost morally, and that she now stands on the edge of the abyss of physical perdition.

The policy of the Soviets, which was always and is still directed towards the ruin of family, Church, morality, and society, has conquered.

The women, cast into the whirl of a ruthless struggle for the day that is, have ceased to be wives and mothers.

The men, young or old, working hard, have drifted away from the family and are not in a position to assure its existence, to give it protection and moral influence.

The children, corrupted by Bolshevik agents, have become their parents' enemies. They do not see much of them, but they often serve as secret agents of the "Cheka," spying upon their kin, overhearing their conversations, which they report to the blood-stained judges of the "Cheka" and other institutions of a similar character.

The tribal bonds of the peoples and races consti-