Page:Through Bolshevik Russia - Snowden - 1920.djvu/106

 parent or both, it is a sad reflection on modern civilisation, and should be an added spur to the resolve to make peace as soon as possible so that no more children may be orphaned.

The State has taken religious teaching out of the schools, which, to men and women in England who have seen in the quarrels of sectarians a real barrier to progress in education, may have some merit in it. But the Communists have gone further. The use of the word God is forbidden to the teachers. Holy pictures and ikons are not supposed to be used, but actually are used, and the authorities do not think it wise to interfere. At the head of almost every little bed in the children's dormitories was a picture of Jesus or of the Holy Mother; in the Putiloff Works large ikons stood, some covered up it is true, but others undraped. The view of the Communist leaders on this matter is well-expressed in their manifestos. They declare that "religion was one of the means by which the bourgeoisie maintained their tyranny over the working masses; that the Russian Communist party must be guided by the conviction that only the realisation of class-conscious and systematic social and economic activity of the masses will lead to the disappearance of religious prejudices." They declare that "the aim of the party is finally to destroy the ties between the exploiting classes and organisations