Page:Through Bolshevik Russia - Snowden - 1920.djvu/73

 But for many of these bitter men, much excuse may be made when the facts of their lives are known. Many of them have been the greatest sufferers from the tyranny of the Czardom. Many of them have had long terms of imprisonment or exile, have suffered from the knout or the bayonet, have been sentenced to death and escaped, or have lost health and happiness in Siberian wilds. Six years in solitary confinement does not tend to sweeten a man's outlook on life. Fourteen years in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, with the daily terror of being taken out of his cell and shot, does not make for sweetness and light. Outrage and torture of women very naturally hardens them and forms into a thin cruel line many of the lips made to press tender kisses on the foreheads of little children. Very few of the Communist leaders of Russia there are who have not had to endure one or all of these hideous experiences. That they should be infected, unconsciously to themselves, by the virus of cruelty is not to be wondered at. And the greater part of the blame for all that has happened and is happening to the opponents of unadulterated Communism must be laid upon the shoulders of those who, by promoting wars, civil and; foreign, have made their task of government impossibly hard.