Page:Through Bolshevik Russia - Snowden - 1920.djvu/107

 for religious propaganda, at the same time helping the working class actually to liberate its mind from religious superstitions, and organising on a wide scale secular and anti-theological propaganda. It is, however, necessary to avoid offending religious susceptibilities of believers which leads only to the strengthening of religious fanaticism." The last phrase explains, doubtless, why there is no interference with attendence at church; and it is certainly to be noted that the churches are crowded to the doors and, apparently, most of the time. Some hope and believe that the separation of State and Church and the obligation placed upon believers to maintain their own churches out of their own pockets will have this good effect at least: that the quality of religious preaching will improve and the standard of the ministry be raised. If the poor duped populace can be successfully delivered from the brigandage and trickery of unscrupulous and avaricious priests, of whom there has been a great host in the past, it will be a benefit not only to the suffering people but to the cause of true religion itself. And what I describe as "true religion," the living spirit of goodness in the hearts and minds of men, is growing in the very land where God is regarded as counter-revolutionary and banished, officially, as a traitor to mankind. Not by the decrees of Lenin nor of