Page:Samuel Gompers - Out of Their Own Mouths (1921).djvu/82

 56 and those guilty of sabotage were punished without mercy. The Extraordinary Commission threw its best forces into the fight against this manifestation, and is now working in various institutions. ''There is but one way to get rid of this pestilence—burn it out with a hot iron. And that is what the Extraordinary Commission is doing.''

We now come to another class of crime punished by execution without trial or any other process of law, viz., the crime of affiliation with the socialist and labor parties which think they have a right to a voice in the government in proportion to their numerical support. This is not the Bolshevist view. And the punishment for the effort to institute either a democratic or a non-Bolshevist socialist government of any character is likely to be death. We quote the following from Chapter 4 of the above mentioned official pamphlet:

But there is still another kind of counter-revolutionists—those who are such because they do not think. These are people who not seldom desire the triumph of the working class, but do not understand how this is to be accomplished. This is the whole Socialist Party, entering into agreement with the enemies of the working class, the bourgeoisie. There are several such parties among us; Social-Revolutionists of the Right, Social-Revolutionists of the Left, and the Mensheviks.

They do not believe in the strength of the working class and therefore desire to trade with their class enemy, the bourgeoisie. They forget that civil war is a war not for life but to the death; a war in which prisoners are not taken and no compromises made, but opponents are killed. As there can be no amity between wolves and lambs, so there can be no conciliation between the bourgeoisie and the workmen. You may beat the wolf