Page:Through Bolshevik Russia - Snowden - 1920.djvu/134

 point of view all governments must be, especially highly centralised ones, this Government was better than the preceding one, and they would do nothing to add to its difficulties till better times came.

At the same time they deplored the restrictions upon liberty, which they declared were more and worse than under the Czars. They spoke with quiet dignity of the killing of conscientious objectors, of whom fifteen, personally known to members of this group, and certified by Tcherkoff's Committee as genuine objectors, had been shot, some of them in their cells. Nobody who has come into personal contact with Tcherkoff would believe for one moment that such a man could lie.

We talked much and long about peace and non-resistance, and our half-frozen minds melted again under the kindly, human tones of the voices of gentle dreamers who to the world would seem mad, but whose way, the way of personal gentleness and kindly toleration, the world will have to take ultimately if it is to be saved. They sent us away with cheers and words of blessing; and I, at least, and I think the others also, felt that we had indeed been blessed.

The Theosophical Society in Petrograd has had its headquarters closed as being a counter-revolutionary organisation; but in Moscow it