Page:Pavel Ivanovich Biryukov - The New Russia - tr. Emile Burns (1920).djvu/12

 unjustifiably, because there was no other alternative than this peace open to Russia at that time, as her army had demobilised itself of its own accord. The next stage was the publication in America of authentic documents (although the so-called documents were only photographs) which showed beyond the possibility of doubt that Lenin had received German money. But this little mountain of lies tumbled down when Scheidemann, one of the supposed signatories to these authentic documents, publicly denied the authenticity of his signature.

There is one other subject of which I am well qualified to speak, and that is the Tolstoian Movement in Russia. There again a little mountain of lies has been built up. We were told in the Press that Tolstoi's home had been pillaged, and in spite of the formal denial by Tolstoi's Secretary, which I published, this lie was repeated again and again, and it was added to by the story of the destruction of Tolstoi's tomb. Well, a few months later I went myself to Jasnaia Poliana and spent a few days in the hospitable house now inhabited by the widowed Countess, and I visited the tomb and found it intact in its imposing simplicity, just as I had left it five years before.

We have all probably heard the lie about the socialisation of women, which on investigation proved to be based merely on a ridiculous manifesto of an anarchist group in the provinces; a manifesto which attracted so little notice in Russia that during my stay there last winter I never heard the subject even mentioned.

You can see from these examples what credit is to be placed in the news which appears in the European Press. It may be that terrible crimes have been committed by the Russian authorities; but they are certainly not guilty of the crimes of which they are accused by the Press. It was such considerations as these which gave me courage