Morals AND RAYMOND T FEELY. S J •3 The Case Against Communism ii. Morals and Moscow By Rev. Raymond T. Feely, S.J., M.A., LL.D. University of San Francisco THE PAULIST PRESS New York, N. Y. Communism is a materialistic philosophy of life which advocates the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat in all countries throughout the world, by violent revolution or by any means which may be deemed necessary in order to ultimately arrive at and preserve a classless society, in which there shall be no private ownership, and in which all property shall be vested in the community as a whole, and all labor and human activities organized for the common benefit by a centralized group of workers’ representatives. (From the author's pamphlet , “Just What Is Communism ?”) »nu« lmprimi Potest: Zacheus J. Maher, S .J., Prce. Prov. Californice. Nihil Obstat: Arthur J. Scanlan, S.T.D., Censor Librorum. Imprimatur: Patrick Cardinal Hayes, Archbishop of New York . New York , October 12, 1935. OeacfdM The Case Against Communism II MORALS AND MOSCOW Wasted Time A few weeks ago, a friend of mine cynically laughed, when in response to his query, I told him that the next pam- phlet in the series, “The Case Against Communism,” would be titled “Morals and Moscow.” “A catchy title,” he scoffed, “but if you’re serious about combating Communism in Amer- ica, you won’t waste your time on the moral issue. People today are concerned with jobs, not with the Ten Command- ments. Why pen off a lot of stuff about marriage and di- vorce, abortion and loose sex relations. Twenty years ago these things might have shocked America; today, it’s just life, whether in the U. S. S. R. or the U. S. A.” I started to protest. For answer he walked over to the files. “Here’s something you showed me the other day. Why talk about legalized abortion in Russia? Here’s a clipping from Time of February 18, 1935, in which Margaret Sanger claims that four million U. S. women have themselves aborted every year. She ought to know. What is the difference be- tween legalized abortion in Russia, and the law winking at dozens of abortion centers in this very State? You talk about easy divorce. You know what a farce a divorce action is down at the City Hall. The only extra difficulty here is to get together the lawyer’s fee. “Here’s a document you showed me last week covering vital statistics for this city for the past year. Marriage li- censes, 5,611; annulments, 245; divorces, 2,813. A ratio of three to five broken homes. You or no other anti-Communist dare claim conditions are worse in the U. S. S. R. “You’ll probably write indignantly about sex education in Russia. Recall the document you showed me a few months ago. A Third High Class, wasn’t it, of mixed boys and girls in a public school in this city, and they were required to define ‘autoeroticism, sadism, masochism, hemosexualism’ ! You can’t sink lower than that for depravity, so why pick on the Soviets ? “I suppose,” he jibed on, “you’ll write about no sense ‘of 4 MORALS AND MOSCOW moral responsibility’ for crime in the U. S. S. R. Recall this,” and he reached for a book out of a nearby case; “yes, here it is. Here’s one of your most prominent professors at your State University having the following to say in his latest textbook, 'it is obvious, therefore, that any serious attempt to understand crime and to revive its basic causes must begin by discarding the theory of moral responsibility.’ “You are paying taxes to teach the young people that they have no moral responsibility for murder, or theft, or graft, or kidnaping, or any other crime. Why get apoplectic about Stalin’s gangster methods?” My friend paused. I picked up the file, stuffed it back into the steel case, and snapped the lock. My friend grinned, “now are you going to waste time on that pamphlet ?” he shot at me. The answer to his challenge is this pamphlet, damning though his attack appears to be. Sexsational Shena, Kollentay’s heroine, speaks: “Sexual life is noth- ing more to me than a physiological pleasure. I change my lovers according to my mood. At the moment I am pregnant, but I do not know who my child’s father is and, moreover, I do not care . . . you must have leisure to fall in love, and I have no time.” If the reader expects to find this pamphlet filled with “sexsational” excerpts like the above, he or she will be dis- appointed. The question of sex and the legalized shattering of the traditional moral codes by the U. S. S. R. will, of course, be treated frankly and bluntly. However, the reader must realize that morality as used in the title “Morals and Moscow,” covers a far wider field than the relationship of the sexes. Morality deals with the right or wrong of human conduct. Ethics deals with the entire field of volitional activity. There- fore, it is a warped viewpoint to limit morals to the abuses of the generative powers of man. It is a violation of morality to pay a laborer unjust wages or to force a workingman to labor under unhealthy condi- tions. It is immoral to destroy an employer’s property or to violently attack a workingman who replaces you. It is im- MORALS AND MOSCOW 5 moral to murder, whether it be an individual or millions of peasants. It is also immoral to sow class-hatred and to de- liberately stir up violence and bloodshed. Therefore, when it is asserted that Communism is essen- tially immoral the term is used in its technical significance and is not restricted only to sexual matters. A Mutual Understanding Let the reader and the writer, before we progress farther, have a clear understanding of the aspect from which this booklet is written. It is presumed that you believe in, even if in practice you may not live up to, some code of right and wrong: that you maintain certain human actions to be eth- ical, certain unethical. You and I may disagree as to the morality of this or that specific act, but at least you concede that certain acts are wrong, certain right. Secondly, it is not the purpose of this pamphlet to estab- lish any particular code of morality or to prove any partic- ular act wrong or unethical. It will calmly, authentically, set forth communistic beliefs and practices. If these clash with your code, then you must condemn Communism : if not, then Communism can be and will be condemned on other points, economic, political, etc. However, if murder, unjust im- prisonment, confiscation, violation of family and personal rights, scrapping the sexual code of the ages, any or all con- flict with your beliefs and accepted code, then you cannot in intellectual honesty pose as a believer in or sympathizer with the U. S. S. R. Let us then proceed logically. First, let us examine the philosophy of Communism, its ideology, and see what Marx- ian doctrines, as interpreted by Lenin, really hold in theory on this question of morality. Secondly, let us from authentic sources briefly outline the practice of Leninism in the U. S. S. R., in so far as it has affected personal, domestic and so- cial ethics. Pig-Sty Morality Let us be fair. There is a vast difference between the logical consequences of communistic teaching and what in- habitants of the U. S. S. R. carry out in practice. Thank 6 MORALS AND MOSCOW God, there is a fundamental morality in humankind despite what modern “ideologies” teach. Not every student who at- tends classes in our universities in the “new psychology,” carries into practice its logic. What is about to be written, therefore, is what Commu- nism teaches—not necessarily what a Communist may carry into practice, much less what inhabitants of the U. S. S. R. practice, of whom only a few million out of upwards of 160 million are members of the Communist Party. Logically, no Marxist, Leninist or Communist can even talk of morality or ethics. Logically, for them they are non- existent. That is a strong statement, but provable. Those of you who have read the writer's first pamphlet, or better still the communistic authors from which he quoted so free- ly, will recall that Marxism and Leninism are by their own admission essentially materialistic. For them there is no soul, no free-will. If there is no free-will, then there is no moral- ity. If there is no morality, then one is no more to blame for murder or theft or rape than for catching a cold. Therefore, human beings become automatons in action, and “pig-sty morality” is a kindly term to apply. Ethics and “The Flu” Perhaps the full import of the above is not clear on first reading. If the writer may be pardoned for narrating a per- sonal incident, the following story may emphasize the point. He happened a short time ago to be in the home town of a well-known State university. A unit of an international organization of business men was holding its weekly meet- ing, and since this particular luncheon fell on St. Patrick's Day, the writer, as a Catholic Priest, was invited as the speaker of the day. He accepted on the condition that being Irish descent, he might be permitted to start “a fight.” This was cheerfully agreed to. The organization had just adopted a code of business ethics of which it was justly proud. After the customary bantering remarks, the speaker took the business code and tore it up, advising the members to do like- wise. “To adopt a code of ethics and then to pay taxes to have your sons and daughters taught that there is no such MORALS AND MOSCOW 7 thing as ethics is an absurdity. Professor after professor at the ‘State IT teaches that there is no soul. If there is no soul, then man is just a body—a material body. That body is sub- ject only to necessary laws as inflexible as the law of gravi- tation. Human conduct is therefore a necessary reaction to external and internal factors. “Putting your State university teaching in other words, a man who robs your store, who murders your child or per- petrates any other crime you name, is no more responsible for his act than for contracting ‘the flu/ ” The speaker went on developing this thought, and at the end for over twenty minutes, some eight of the university professors challenged not the fact of their teaching there was no soul, but that such a teaching scrapped the idea of ethics. They insisted on “academic freedom” and when it was pointed out that freedom, “academic” or otherwise, implied a power to do this or that, a power which was not subject to necessary laws as in a mere physical body—that to clamor for academic freedom and deny a free will were contradictions—the uni- versity professors became irate, but not convinced. Lenin’s Ethics It is perhaps asking too much to expect Lenin or Stalin or any of their propagandists to be more logical than many college professors. All of us are familiar with Ph.D.’s who teach materialism and prate about “academic freedom,” who term free will “nothing in a vacuum,” etc., and then speak of “moral values,” “ethics,” etc. The absurdity and contra- diction of such doctrines, we have seen above. Little wonder then that we find Lenin and other Soviet leaders discussing “spiritual value,” “ethics,” etc. “Red-baiter” is contemptuously hurled at you if you as- sert that Communism scraps all human rights, that it destroys personal liberty, political liberty, liberty of speech and as- sembly, economic liberty, religious liberty, and that it wan- tonly destroys the home. Yet the following excerpts prove that such is Soviet doc- trine even if the brutal testimony of eighteen years of the U. S. S. R. had not scribed its ghastly history. 8 MORALS AND MOSCOW The bourgeois Ten Commandments have been junked, and but one norm is the measure of human conduct, viz. : Does this act help or hinder the Soviet Republic? Let us now read into the record the confession of guilt to the above accusation. “Law, morality, religion, are to him (the proletarian) so many bourgeois prejudices behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests. ,,—(Karl Marx, Manifesto, p- 20-) “But is there such a thing as Communist ethics ? Is there such a thing as Communist morality? Of course, there is. It is frequently asserted that we have no ethics, and very fre- quently the bourgeoisie make the charge that we Communists deny all morality. That is one of their methods of confus- ing the issue, of throwing dust into the eyes of the workers and peasants. “In what sense do we deny ethics, morals? “In the sense in which they are preached by the bour- geoisie, which deduces these morals from God’s command- ments. Of course, we say that we do not believe in God. We know perfectly well that the clergy, the landlords, the bour- geoisie all claimed to speak in the name of God, in order to protect their own interests as exploiters. Or, instead of de- ducing their ethics from the commandments of morality, from the commandments of God, they deduced them from idealistic or semi-idealistic phrases which in substance were always very similar to divine commandments. “We deny all morality taken from superhuman or non- class conceptions. We say that this is a deception, a swindle, a befogging of the minds of the workers and peasants in the interests of the landlords and capitalists. “We say that our morality is wholly subordinated to the interests of the class-struggle of the proletariat. . . . “That is why we say that a morality taken from outside of human society does not exist for us ; it is a fraud. For us morality is subordinated to the interests of the proletarian class-struggle.”— (N. Lenin. Third All-Russian Congress of Y. C. L., October, 1920. Quoted in Religion, by N. Lenin, pp. 47, 48.) “What coincides with the interests of the Proletarian MORALS AND MOSCOW 9 Revolution is ethical/’— (E. Yaroslavsky, Red Virtue, p. 12.) The reader, if interested, will find in chapter two of the above book, Ella Winters’ interview with Yaroslavsky—as clear and crude an exposition of Communist ethics as the writer has run across. The reader will seek in vain an official pronouncement of the U. S. S. R., or an objective commentary on Soviet Rus- sia which disproves this attitude. The deprivation of any right, the destruction of an institution is warranted, nay, de- manded, if it helps to perpetuate the so-called Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Gangster Ethics Perhaps this subtitle is peculiarly apt, as Stalin’s earlier life is a perfect illustration of the doctrine we have been examining. Money was needed for the work of the revolu- tionists. He turned gangster and robbed a bank to supply the necessary funds. “The end justifies any means” is the commonplace phras- ing of Communist ethics. “The end” is the perpetuation of Lenin’s or Stalin’s dictatorship: “the means” — “whatever is necessary.” Most readers who are interested in the subject of Russia have read W. H. Chamberlin’s Russia's Iron Age— the classic on this subject. He recounts there the well-known incident : “When Lady Astor, in company with Bernard Shaw and Lord Lothian, met Stalin in the summer of 1931, she blurted out the unconventional question: ‘How long are you going to continue killing people ?’ And Stalin, possibly taken a little off his guard, shot back the retort: ‘As long as it is neces- sary.’”— (P. 152.) There you have bluntly the whole ethical system of Com- munism. The criminal who kidnaps a babe, the gangster who mows down a fellow gangster with a machine gun, the pervert who ravishes a child, all are practicing the same phi- losophy. “The end”—money, or power, or satisfaction of lust ; “the means”—murder or theft or rape. In “bourgeois” countries like the U. S. A. we stigmatize and punish such philosophy of life ; in proletariat U. S. S. R., 10 MORALS AND MOSCOW such philosophy is called “class consciousness/’ or briefly Leninism. In the U. S. S. R. it displays itself more in wholesale form, mass murders as in the Ukraine, mass theft as in the collectivization of land, mass immorality as when it teaches young boys and girls they are simply male and female animals. Let us now study this ethic, “the end justifies the means” from another aspect. A Suggestion Never in the history of printing has such a vast amount of literature covered the world to propagandize a single cause, as the unending flow spewn from the Soviet press. Most of it is a waste of time and money. Some of it is invaluable, especially to those who seek to stem the red tide. Such a booklet is Problems of Leninism, by Joseph Stalin, an offi- cial publication of the U. S. S. R. Everyone interested in this subject should possess this cheap arsenal supplied by the enemy. If the writer were one of the “reds” or “pinks” or “blushes” who infest this country, he would suggest that the above booklet be suppressed. One is called every name from such withering communistic epithets as “Fascist” or “Capi- talist,” to the more vulgar barroom expressions, if one dares say that Communism does not believe in popular elected gov- ernment sanctified by the whole people ; that the Red Army will be used for offense, instead of the muchly advertised “only for defense” ; that violence is of the essence of Commu- nism; that the U. S. S. R. political set-up is just a rubber stamp for Stalin; that equality in the U. S. S. R. does not exist and is never intended to exist; that Communism de- liberately plans to foment strikes and revolts in other lands and to help in violently overthrowing their form of govern- ment, etc., etc. Every one of the above statements and dozens of others equally damning to our “bourgeoisie” minds is set down in black and white in this little booklet. What makes it so ut- terly fatal is that its author is Stalin and practically every statement is substantiated by quotation? from the Communist god—Lenin. MORALS AND MOSCOW 11 Red Ruthlessness In this brazen booklet, Stalin quotes twice with approval the well-known words of his master, Lenin. “The scientific concept, dictatorship, means nothing more nor less than power which directly rests in violence, which is not limited by any law or any absolute rules. Dictatorship means, unlimited power resting on violence and not on law.”— (P. 25 of above booklet, quoting Lenin. Collected Works, Vol. XXV, pp. 441, 436, Russian edition.) This simple quotation—the code of Lenin and Stalin — renders this pamphlet almost unnecessary. It crystalizes the Soviet policy, it is a frank confession of guilt of every act of Red ruthlessness you have read about. Let the Reds screech about the lies and slander of an im- perialist press. Here is the worst crime and most damnable infamy of Communism boasted of by Stalin and published and circulated by the official Communist press. Boldly, brazenly, the man of whom even Lenin said, “he was too brutal to rule,” boasts that the government we Amer- icans are asked to imitate, “directly rests on violence and is not limited by any laws or restricted by any absolute rules.” Why should Stalin and Troyanovsky, the Ambassador of the U. S. S. R. to the U. S. A., deny the slaughter in the Ukraine, the murders of thousands of Russians by the O. G. P. U., the conditions in prison camps, the slave labor, the sup- pression of freedom of the press, of speech, of assembly, the destruction of religion, the attempted destruction of the home, the deliberate stirring up of class-hatred, strikes and rebellion in other countries ? Communism, by its own admission, knows no law. Might and not right is its sole bulwark. This is Communism stripped of its pretense of being the friend of the poor and the laborer: this is the brutal Stalin idolized of American “reds” ; this is the man and the doctrine with which these United States besmirched their honor when recognizing the U. S. S. R. and granting ambassadorial immunity to the propagandists of the law of the jungle. “Not limited by any law”—do you wonder that a few pages back, it was stated that logically no Communist can 12 MORALS AND MOSCOW even speak of “morals.” But Communists never quote such statements of Lenin and Stalin. Instead, in an oily, slimy way they seek to evade the issue, as the following incident well illustrates: John Strachey and Grave-Diggers Not so long ago the writer was one of a number of dupes who paid $1.65 to hear John Strachey, the English propa- gandist for the U. S. S. R., speak in this city. After lec- turing for an hour (in the latest London evening clothes on behalf of the poverty-stricken proletariat), he answered writ- ten questions. One dealt with the use of violence. Knowing that even the apathetic department at Washington might be forced into action, if he went too far, he fell back in the naive response characteristic of the evasive Communist. “Of course, violence depends on the capitalists,” was the essence of his reply. “In other countries the capitalists have resisted, and violence was necessary. I do not know what American capitalists would do under the circumstances.” Strachey avoided deportation by such an answer, but stripped of its evasiveness, it comes to this. If a thief invades a man's home or a criminal attacks a woman, the victim will not be shot if he or she does not resist. Remember, and this is all important, the Communist jibes at and denounces Wall Street and the Mellons and the Mor- gans as “capitalists,” but by “capitalist” the Communist of the U. S. S. R. (and that is the only reality we are dealing with) means as well the corner grocer, the laborer who owns his own home, the farmer who employs a helper, etc. Against these as well as the millionaire, “violence” will be used to strip them of their property, “if they resist.” Such was the oily doctrine of the stiff-shirted Strachey, and the bejeweled corpulent women sitting about me ap- plauded vigorously. I was thinking of Russia, the fate of the intellectuals, and of the old adage, “Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make insane.” At the close of the meeting, this richly dressed group, calling one another “Comrade,” entered a nearby fashionable cafe, probably to enthusiastically discuss the coming “Rule MORALS AND MOSCOW 13 of the Proletariat.” Perhaps Marx was right and “Capital- ism is creating its own grave-diggers.” Unsavory Facts Thus far we have outlined the theory of communist morality. What does the record show as to facts? In a pamphlet of this size, only a few major but typical illustra- tions can be recounted. Ethics covers the entire field of vo- litional activity of man, and consequently space necessarily forces us to select but the principal issues wherein Commu- nism clashes with traditional civilization. The reader, if interested, may peruse with profit the books listed at the end of this pamphlet. However, the caution is again repeated both to reader and traveler to remember that there is a vast difference between the depravity which logically results from the theory of Communism and conditions as they actually exist in the U. S. S. R. Not every Russian is a Stalin, a Yaroslavsky or a Kollontay! Slaughter in the Ukraine Inured as we Americans are to gangster murders, “love” murders, etc., yet one would needs be calloused and inhuman not to grow indignant over the cold-blooded murder, not of dozens nor thousands, but millions in the U. S. S. R. Pre- scind from the men—war is supposed to take its toll of men (although this was peace time)—and just try and picture to yourself a minimum of two millions of women and children condemned to die of starvation. No novelist, no historian, has dared depict more than the fact: such suffering, such diabolical cruelty defy the barriers of speech. The cold-blooded historical facts are these. In the winter of 1932-1933 the Moscow government having seized the crops of the fertile Ukraine, deliberately permitted millions to die of starvation. Not even the Communists dare contend that the U. S. S. R. was short of foodstuffs, for the official fig- ures show that tens of millions of bushels were exported dur- ing the famine. Moscow prefers the other alternative, and denies the deaths. Yet correspondent after correspondent, eyewitness after eyewitness has now so cumulated evidence 14 MORALS AND MOSCOW that history is forced to incorporate the fact. W. H. Cham- berlin, the most objective of commentators, records the story in Russia's Iron Age. The writer heard him in a public lec- ture retell the gruesome facts, and when heckled by Commu- nists at the conclusion of his talk, he fortified his accusation by names of towns, villages, Soviet officials, etc. He re- counted that evening, the typical Russian type of censorship. No foreign correspondent was allowed to leave Moscow for the Ukraine during the famine, and the laconic reason given was, “it would interfere with the harvest.” The next year with that adroitness which made him the peer of foreign newspaper men, Chamberlin pieced together the facts from natives, Soviet minor officials and his own observations in the Ukraine. The Logic of Stalin's Slaughter To Stalin and the orthodox Communist, the slaughter in the Ukraine was a logical move, in fact a necessary move. “The end justifies the means” is the Soviet norm. The U. S. S. R. needed foreign credit to keep industry alive, to build up the Red Army and munition factories. Stalin had his choice between a less efficient war machine and starving several mil- lions. As Stalin, the criminal, he had murdered and robbed to keep Bolshevism alive under the Tsars; as Stalin, the Dic- tator, the same philosophy guided his actions. It was just a question of numbers. If the cause of Communism justified murder and robbery for the individual, for a greater reason Communism justified murder and robbery for the dictator of the State. The death sentence was issued. The story is an ugly one. Stalin spoke, millions writhed and perished whilst the grain these condemned ones had slaved to produce was sold to “bourgeois” countries. Bourgeois gold poured into the U. S. S. R., munition factories hummed, the Red Army grew into the world's greatest fighting force, a force sworn to destroy those whose gold equipped and sus- tained it. The skeletons are ploughed under in the Ukraine. Capi- talist rulers still coddle and entertain the Ambassadors of Stalin—still grasp in friendship the hands that “are thicker than themselves with brothers' blood.” One nation's ruler MORALS AND MOSCOW 15 recently stated “what doth it profit a nation if it gain the whole world and suffer the loss of its soul,” but the pen that wrote these words was scarce dry from signing an offi- cial recognition of the slaughterers of the Ukraine. Was Marx right when he wrote, “What the bourgeoisie therefore produces above all, are its own grave-diggers.”— ( Mani- festo .) There is just one more point to note concerning this “mass murder.” Sincere writers may differ as to the num- bers, but all honest historians concede the fact that the Ukrainians were deliberately starved, chiefly to gain foreign credit. Numbers do not alter the principle. The Communist philosophy we Americans are asked to accept is that the State has absolute dominion over the lives of its citizens. Here then is no question of the death penalty for heinous crime, here is dictatorship “in the raw.” Life and death are at the whim of the State. The individual possesses no rights save those conferred by the State, and one of these is sufferance to exist until the State decrees otherwise. Brute tyranny, men called it of old, “the totalitarian State,” the Ph.D. terms it in our universities, but whatever name you give to State murder makes little difference to the skeletons in the Ukraine. Communism and the Home Before entering into any details as to the laws governing marriage and divorce, or giving a brief summary of marital life in the U. S. S. R., it is necessary to again stress a funda- mental doctrine of Communism. Whatever interferes with the establishment of the Dic- tatorship of the Proletariat (viz.: “Dictatorship of Stalin”) is to be destroyed—this as we have seen is the sole norm of “communist ethics.” Human society as we know it, although stigmatized by the Soviets as “bourgeois,” is builded about the family unit. In the nature of things the individual comes first. The mating of individuals brings about new life and this union of man and woman, monogamous and permanent as the tradition of the race over the ages has decreed, is, to- gether with the offspring, termed the family. The State or civil society is a collection of families or heads of families 16 MORALS AND MOSCOW united together for the protection of their mutual rights as families and individuals, under some form of authority. The essential element of human society is the family. The individual springs from it and in turn is normally des- tined to perpetuate it. Civil society but protects and de- fends it. The theory and practice of Communism are violently and unalterably opposed to such a philosophy of life. To the Communist, the State is supreme. All rights flow from the State, all individuals, all human institutions must be subordi- nated to the State. All authority is concentrated in the State and as Communism exists in the U. S. S. R., this authority is concentrated in a self-appointed and ruthless dictatorship. The home, possessing as it does authority of its own, teaching love and loyalty to one another, moulding the ideas and characters of its members, is, in the Communist concept, not only a danger but a menace. For Communism there is but one authority, Stalin; but one loyalty, Stalin; but one moulder of ideas, Marxism and Leninism as interpreted by Stalin. Independent units can never coexist in the Dictatorship of the Proletariat Tyrant. The traditional home, as you and I know it and have lived it, must be liquidated (destroyed), even as the nobility, the independent farmer, and the Ortho- dox Church. If, therefore, you would understand the oft-substantiated stories of children betraying their parents, of legalized abor- tions, of women hodcarriers, of cohabitation ranking legally with marriage, of creche instead of cradle, of the various other abuses (at least in our “bourgeois” minds),—you have the complete explanation in the Communist fundamental pol- icy, viz.: “the end justifies any means.” The old family in Russia as throughout the ages, stood as a bulwark for civili- zation. Communism would remake the world, it must there- fore “uproot humanity,” and destroy humanity’s stronghold —the home. Mating in the U. S. S. R. In the following paragraphs the factual data as to laws and practice will be set forth from the best available sources. MORALS AND MOSCOW 17 Within the last few weeks announcement has been made of radical changes to be made in the U. S. S. R., particularly as to divorce. However, many months ago announcement was made to the effect that secret and equalized suffrage was to be introduced into Russia. The world still waits. It was rather interesting, if not comforting, to read in New Masses (July 16, 1935) the article entitled “Love in Two Worlds,” by Ella Winters, High Priestess of Commu- nism on the Pacific Slope and best known as the mate of Lincoln Steffens. Speaking of marriage laws, she says, “Legislation in the field is constantly changing and some of these legislative details may already be changed.” There- fore, if any of the following facts are now obsolete, blame the breeding experiments of Moscow, not the writer. Marriage Laws The first marriage code of the U. S. S. R. (1918) aimed more at secularizing marriage than destroying this race-old institution. The controversies over the rights of the “new woman” which raged through Russia during War Commu- nism and the N. E. P. 1 period make interesting, although at times unsavory reading. In 1927 the new code came into being. The fundamental facts which interest are as follows : Women are placed as far as possible on an equality with men, the only limitations being imposed by biological laws which even a Stalin could not alter. Marriage is a purely personal contract. Some erroneous- ly call it a “civil contract.” This latter is scarcely true for unregistered or factual marriages have the same status as registered ones. Cohabitation, not transient relations, must be proven, whereas registration gives prima facie proof of marriage, a handy point in questions of alimony. Registration takes place at the S. A. G. S., popularly called “Zags.” The wife may retain her maiden name, or the husband may even take the wife’s name. Interesting descrip- tions of this substitute for a marriage ceremony—less formal than our registering to vote—can be found in any of the l New Economic Policy. 18 MORALS AND MOSCOW standard propagandists, e. g Halle or Winters. The details are incidental here. The basic Soviet ideas on mating are best summarized in the words of the Communist, Ella Winters : “If two comrades are in love, they go to the home of one of them. If there is no child and either finds the association unsatisfactory, they part. It is really a nation-wide system of companionate mar- riage.”— (Pp. 124, 125.) Divorce is more simple than marriage. Whereas both parties appear at the Zag to be registered as mates, divorce can be obtained by one party so declaring at the registry of- fice and the other party being notified by post card or publica- tion in Izvestia. No grounds need be given for obtaining the divorce. The care of the children and the payment of alimony to a spouse are regulated in detail, the main point of interest being that the woman as well as the man is equally liable. “Adultery/’ and all the terminology with which bour- geois nations stigmatize transgressions of the marriage code, are unknown in the Soviet Law. Marriage, sex, are matters limited only by the social obligations referred to above. Abortion and Birth Control In November, 1920, the U. S. S. R. became the first na- tion in the history of the world to legalize abortion, and inau- gurated the Abortus-Troyka, a State commission to which a woman must apply for a license to be aborted. Only State- managed “arbortaria” are permitted. Halle exults. “It was the first legal recognition of woman’s right, demanded by the feminist movement, to possess her own body, and ought doubtless to be designated as one of the great achievements of the Soviet Russia’s constructive will.”— (P. 139.) If one desires a detailed description of the “arbortaria” of Moscow, he will find it in its full realism on pages 141, 142 of the propagandist’s, F. Halle, book. This only need be quoted here. “There are some, so one of the women doctors in this institute told me, who have undergone the operation fifteen times. But the average is seven times and with some women two or three times a year.”—(P. 142.) MORALS AND MOSCOW 19 Nevertheless, as all commentators and especially Winters and Halle note, the policy of the U. S. S. R. is now “preven- tion not abortion/’ Russia has likewise become the first na- tion in the world to erect and maintain a State “Laboratory for Preventatives.”— ( Cf . Halle, p. 138.) The claim has been made that after seven years of research it has discovered and perfected a safe contraceptive and yet one cheap enough to be within the reach of a poverty-stricken people. Babies and Bourgeois The bourgeois nations prophesied, perhaps half hoped, that between promiscuity, abortion and birth control, Rus- sia would destroy itself. This has been far from the case and off-hand it would seem that atheism and sexual freedom have not wrought the havoc that moralists and religious lead- ers have always claimed. The picture is complex, but a few outstanding features need be presented. The birth-rate in Russia (although all U. S. S. R. statistics are woefully inaccurate or misleading), is variously placed at the ratio of 30 to 40, whilst the ratio in bourgeois countries is for the most part below 20. In other words, annually at least three to four million young Bolsheviks are bom in Russia. The explanation de- mands that one keep the complete picture of the U. S. S. R. before one. Here is question of one-tenth of the world’s peoples scattered over one-sixth of the globe’s surface. The inhabitants are divided into over one hundred and fifty racial stocks with varying habits and traditions. Communism with all its tremendous growth is but eighteen years in operation, and of one hundred and sixty millions of people, perhaps not three million are Communist Party members. Finally, we are dealing with a preponderate^ agrarian people and to a vast extent of primitive culture. The above summary gives the key to much of the solution. Among Communist Party members immorality has been noto- rious, and abortion and more recently birth control widely practiced. The bulk of the population, however, have en- joyed little of the “civilizing culture” of legal abortions and scientific contraception. 20 MORALS AND MOSCOW Add the fact that parenthood and especially motherhood is the second most powerful instinct of humankind, and un- less a woman has sunk to just a lustful animal, at least lim- ited motherhood is craved. We are dealing with sturdy stock and a primitive people. Physically, except for disease, there is little of natural sterility and very little of “civilized” re- pugnance to maternity. Lastly, we are still dealing with the intermediate stage of Communism. It was not until 1930 that pagan education of the entire childhood of the nation was proclaimed. It will be another decade at least before a generation steeped in athe- ism, materialism and contempt of the traditional home comes to the fore. If Communism has done its work well, then Communism will have created its own grave. However, as in all these problems, whenever Communism fails to function, the same old tactics will be offered. From one end of the U. S. S. R. to the other will go up the cry, “not to have children is bourgeois.” “Laborers and soldiers are needed to protect the ‘Workers’ Government.’ ” Abortion and contraceptives will be discouraged and young Soviets will again be born by a fertile and servile race. Let our bourgeois nations feel no complacency in the hope that the wrecked homes of Russia will weaken the Red Army. At any time Russia’s women may by the order of State or Stalin (the terms are synonymous) return to the status which has been crudely termed “beasts of burden and brood mares.” Free Love Unfortunately, some overzealous anti-Communists have depicted Russia as a vast brothel. Recently the president of a national organization had the ignorance to utter the follow- ing: “Until a few years ago, the Communists practiced the nationalization of women which means that the woman was the property of the government to be handed about and used under a system of permits.” Such statements are as harmful as they are false, for falsehood never permanently helped a cause. Before pass- ing on the real facts, it might be well to quote Karl Marx, MORALS AND MOSCOW 21 High Priest of Communism. The following citation prob- ably forms the basis of many of the accusations bandied about : “But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the whole bourgeoisie in chorus. “The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of pro- duction. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and naturally can come to no other conclusion than that the lot of being common to all will like- wise fall to the women. “He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere intruments of production. “For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the vir- tuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women ; it has existed almost from time immemorial. “Our bourgeois, not content with having the wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seduc- ing each other’s wives. “Bourgeois marriage is in reality a system of wives in common and thus at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legal- ized community of women.”— (Karl Marx, Manifesto, pp. 27, 2S;) With full realization of the abuses existing in modern “bourgeois marriage,” the writer prefers to pass over in si- lent contempt this slander. However, it is perhaps the foun- dation of much of the accusations leveled against Commu- nism by overzealous opponents. To properly appraise the results of communistic doc- trines upon sex, we must in the field of morals, as well as in the economic field, distinguish the three great periods of Rus- sian Communism, viz.: War Communism (1917-1921), New Economic Policy (N. E. P., 1921-1928), the Five-Year Plans (1928 to the present date). 22 MORALS AND MOSCOW Living as we do in a country whose courts have practical- ly held that there is no such thing as obscenity in literature, the writings of the able and notorious Alexandra Kollontay have stimulated but passing interest. Her Love in Three Generations candidly tells the story of youth during War Communism, and gives a fairly accurate portrayal of un- bridled passions in the early stages of the U. S. S. R. Many students of the problem we are discussing, main- tain with a show of truth, that such conditions are the con- comitant of all violent revolution. Doubly so, must one ex- pect a moral chaos when a new human society is being born. The old institutions, economic, political, religious, domestic, were not only undergoing change—they were being scrapped and a new order of life was coming into being. Particularly was woman being emancipated from the slavery of Tsarist days. The bourgeois dam of inhibitions crashed, pent-up passions flooded into murder and lust and promiscuity. The builders of the Communist order finally channeled human nature into a new course. Plausible and oft-repeated ! Yet the writer contends that the moral chaos of the so-called “War Communism” days is the necessary resultant of Communism if lived logically. The attempts made to modify the attitude of youth on sex relations is as noneommunistic as the economic policies of the N. E. P. period were capitalistic. Why should not male and female animals react to urge if they have no free will to resist? Rather, how can they help such conduct if their reactions are necessitated, as Marxism maintains ? Logically Kollontay’s heroines are the only real Commu- nist women. The doctrines preached now in the U. S. S. R. are a concession that bourgeois morals are needed to preserve economic Communism. Glass of Water Theory No professor ever lived in practice his denial of free will. No nation can survive sex promiscuity. This is not the preachment of some celibate monk but the grim testimony of entombed nations which have flaunted moral codes. One by MORALS AND MOSCOW 23 one, profligate civilizations have withered, and withering, died. Lenin knew this. Unadulterated Communism could not survive. Communism in its economic phases could only be preserved by reviving bourgeois morals, at least in the realm of sex. So the Founder of Communism resorted to his fa- vorite trick of damning the logical effects of Communism as “bourgeois,” and gave vent to the following illogical but powerful pronouncement : “Naturally the changed attitude of the young people to sexual questions is fundamental and appeals to a theory. Some call their attitude ‘communist’ and ‘revolutionary.’ They honestly believe that it is so. I at my age am not so impressed. Although I am far from being a somber ascetic, the so-called new ‘sexual life’ of the young people—and sometimes of the old—seems to me to be often enough wholly bourgeois, an extension of the good bourgeois brothel. All that has nothing to do with free love as we Communists un- derstand it. You are doubtless acquainted with the capital theory that in Communist society the satisfaction of the in- stincts of the craving for love, is as simple and unimportant as ‘the drinking of a glass of water.’ This ‘glass of water theory’ has driven some of our young people crazy, quite crazy. It has been the destruction of many young men and women. Its supporters declare that it is Marxist. I have no use for such Marxism, which deduces all the phenomena and transformations in the intellectual superstructure straight from its economic basis. Things are not quite so simple. “I consider the famous ‘glass of water theory’ to be utter- ly un-Marxian, and moreover un-social. ... Of course thirst cries out to be quenched. But will a normal person under normal conditions lie down in the dirt in the road and drink from a puddle? Or even from a glass with a rim greasy from many lips? But what is most important of all is the social aspect. Drinking water really is an individual concern. Love involves two, and a third, a new life, may come into being. That implies an interest on the part of society, a duty to the community. “As a Communist I have not the slightest sympathy with ‘the glass of water theory,’ even when it is beautifully labeled 24 MORALS AND MOSCOW 'Love made free.’ Besides this liberation is neither new nor Communist. You will remember that it was preached in literature about the middle of the last century as ‘the emanci- pation of the heart/ As practiced by the bourgeois it was revealed as the emancipation of the flesh. . . . Healthy minds, healthy bodies. Neither monks nor Don Juans, nor yet that half-and-half product, the German Philistine. “The revolution calls for concentration, the augmentation of our powers, on the part of the masses and the individual. It cannot tolerate orgiastic conditions such as are normal with d’Annunzio’s decadent heroes and heroines. Unbridled sexual life is bourgeois, a phenomena of decadence. The proletariat is a rising class. It does not need intoxication either as a narcotic or a stimulus. No more the intoxication of sexual excesses than that of alcohol.”— (N. Lenin, quoted by F. Halle, Women in Soviet Russia , p. 112.) Despite the efforts of Lenin, attempts to instill or rather revive a code of decency proved extremely difficult. Women had been “freed”—to many this meant the freedom from God’s law, social convention, or taboo, depending on how one viewed the virtue of chastity. Industrialization further ag- gravated conditions. Living quarters were at a premium and the State authorities paid no attention as to whether a man or woman were both assigned a single dwelling room. Their conduct was their concern. Fortunately, Russia was predominantly a rural country. The vast farming regions, accustomed to home life and the simpler virtues, remained as fundamentally decent as in our own land, once the brutality of war conditions subsided. Communism can claim no credit for this bourgeois virtue. Men and women in the country districts clung fairly well to the old moral standards, and in this they were more success- ful than clinging to their land and their personal liberties. Among members of the Communist Party, however, the situation remained bad in the cities and industrial towns. De- tails have no place here, but it was chiefly at members of “the Party” that the “Glass of Water” statement was levied by Lenin. The universal Soviet remedy, viz.: to stigmatize conduct as “bourgeois” proved a poor bulwark against pas- sion. Another plan was formulated. MORALS AND MOSCOW 25 The New Psychology In America we are too inclined to think of Communists in terms of radical labor leaders, strike violence, and in brief the sections of a city where culture and collars are unknown. We miss the picture that directing all this movement are brilliant brains, keen students of human nature, men seeking to remold humanity. Age-old institutions were to be uprooted—the home, reli- gion. The relationship between the sexes was to be more free than among animals for man’s urges were not subject to the same cyclic laws as the animal kingdom. Such was the theory of the Soviets, but after “the moral holiday” of War Communism, they realized that a nation rots as the morals of its women rot. History brutally attests the fact. The most dangerous element in the U. S. S. R. was a “liberated womanhood.” Not White Armies or capitalist in- vasion but internal corruption was the crisis of “the great experiment.” The Kremlin was satanically shrewd. Fear would inhibit the cravings for true liberty; sex would be channeled by “the new psychology”—which in passing should be noted is as old as human nature, except for its new labels. “Compensation and sublimation”—every college tyro has studied the terms, which briefly mean that a dangerous urge can be compensated for by an outlet along similar lines, or can be sublimated or raised to a higher level. Thus athletics release physical energies which compensate for dangerous sex tendencies, whilst other emotions can sublimate or elevate physical cravings into a higher plane. These doctrines were vigorously applied to the sex problems of the U. S. S. R. Woman became a “sex-free” animal only to become a slave of labor. Her physical energies were to be diverted into machine shops and factories. Woman was not to be set free to seduce men from labor, she was to become man’s competitor in labor. Sturdy and powerful physically, their strength unsapped by the luxuries of bourgeois society, the women of Russia have become a tremendous productive fac- tor in its industrialization. To be hodcarriers and tractor-drivers, ditch-diggers and bricklayers, skilled and unskilled laborers has become the lot 26 MORALS AND MOSCOW of women. Propaganda, novels, screens, magazines, lectures have screeched the necessity of woman's physical energy be- ing absorbed by industry and not by lust. Has the experiment succeeded? Well, woman is still woman, and the fanatical zeal of the Five-Year Plans is as yet too difficult to appraise. True Communism in this as in almost every other doctrine seeks to compromise. It has allowed and encouraged com- panionate marriage, it has legalized abortion and is now seek- ing as we have seen, to popularize contraceptives. If birth occurs the woman may stop laying bricks or carrying hod for eight weeks before and eight weeks after delivery. Nurseries are being provided so that the mother may labor at the factory, nurse the child at its appointed intervals, and lose a minimum of industry time. To mention a crude de- tail, in some places the child is suckled at one breast, the other being drained artificially, so that the mother can remain at work during every other nursing time and the babe not be deprived of natural milk. The vaunted liberation of woman ! This is motherhood one would not find at the zoo, and yet it is but another appli- cation of the fundamental law of the Soviet, viz.: there are no rights or morals save the carrying out of the plans of the Dictator. American Women and Moscow Lest the women of America think the communistic pro- gram is limited to the U. S. S. R., let them recall that Com- munism is essentially an international movement. The proof of this is to be found in every official book or pamphlet issu- ing from Moscow and especially in communistic activities in this and other bourgeois countries. If this charge is too vague, the following excerpts taken from Toward Soviet America , by William Foster, the Amer- ican leader of Communism, will clinch any argument : “The so-called freedom of the American woman is a myth. Either she is a gilded butterfly or she is an op- pressed slave. . . . The boasted American home, enslaving the woman through her economic inferiority and her chil- dren, makes her dependent on her husband. On all sides she MORALS AND MOSCOW 27 confronts medieval sex taboos, assiduously cultivated by the Church, State, and bourgeois moralists. . . . “The proletarian revolution will profoundly change all this. The American Soviet government will immediately set about liquidating the elaborate network of slavery in which woman is enmeshed. She will be freed economically, polit- ically and socially. The U. S. S. R. shows the general lines along which the emancipation of woman will also proceed in a Soviet America. “The Russian woman is free economically, and this is the foundation of all her freedom. Every field of activity is open to her. She is to be found even in such occupations as locomotive engineer, electric crane operator, machinist, fac- tory director, etc. . . . “The Russian woman is also free in her sex life. When married life becomes unwelcome for a couple they are not barbarously compelled to live together. Divorce is to be had for the asking by one or both parties. The woman's children are recognized as legitimate by the State and society, whether born in official wedlock or not. The free American woman, like her Russian sister, will eventually scorn the whole fabric of bourgeois sex hypocrisy and prudery. “In freeing the woman, Socialism liquidates the drudgery of housework. So important do Communists consider this question that the Communist International deals with it in its world program. In the Soviet Union the attack upon house- hold slavery is delivered from every possible angle. Great factory kitchens are being set up to prepare hot, well-balanced meals for home consumption by the millions; communal kitchens in apartment houses are organized widespread. . . . “To free the woman from the enslavement of the perpet- ual care of her children is also a major object of socialism. . . . The free Russian woman is the trail blazer for the toiling women of the world. She is beating out a path which, ere long, her American sister will begin to follow."—(Pp. 306- 309.) Omissions In a pamphlet of this size, it is impossible to completely cover the field of morals, involving as it does every phase of 28 MORALS AND MOSCOW life. The terrorism of the “Gay-Pay-Oo,” more brutal than the secret agents of the Tsars, has been entirely omitted. No student of this subject should fail to read “Government by Propaganda” and “Government by Terror,” two of the out- standing chapters of Chamberlin’s Russia's Iron Age . Soviet denial of freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly is es- sentially immoral, for it deprives the intellect of truth, just as “government by terror” deprives the will of legitimate freedom of action. The intellect and will differentiate man from the beast, and to cripple these faculties is heinously im- moral. One may also read with profit and interest the books of the Tchernavins listed in the bibliography. No mention either has been made of the relations of par- ent and child. Logically, Communism demands that the creche replace the cradle and that the mother bear but not rear the child. No honest Communist can hold any other theory. Fortunately, partially through housing conditions, chiefly through the God-implanted force of mother love, Leninism has for the most part retreated from this inhuman policy. Tractors and dynamos and propaganda have thus far failed to uproot the “bourgeois” love of parent and off- spring. No mention has been made of the immoral activities of the Komitern, the International of the Communist Party. The deliberate sowing of class hatred among the peoples of the world, the deliberate advocating and inciting to violence, the malicious fostering of social ills in foreign countries—all these and more might form a separate treatise. Perhaps no more damning indictment need be levied against Communism than that it is motivated by hate, the basest of human emo- tions. Omitted likewise has been any discussion of the boasted abolition of prostitution in the U. S. S. R. Communists have less to say on this subject of late for reasons which are ob- vious from the foregoing pages. With a sex standard as out- lined above, few need pay for an outlet for their passions, as this so-called “oldest of professions” follows the law of sup- ply and demand. Witness certain American university towns ! MORALS AND MOSCOW 29 Summary In the first pamphlet of this series, the nature of Com- munism and its materialistic philosophy of life was discussed. In this second booklet, “the use of any means necessary” to preserve the Dictatorship of the Proletariat has been set forth. The final pamphlet will deal with the economic phases of Communism and especially the status of the workingman under Communism and under Capitalism. The reader of these lines will note that no attempt has been made to treat morality as a religious issue. “Sin,” viz . : a deliberate offense against God, has not been so much as mentioned. Irrespective of one's “Credo” or unbelief, every American worthy of the name, adheres to certain funda- mental moral principles, without which personal, domestic and social rights cannot exist. Starting with that premise, the writer has sought to establish two main facts : First, Communism essentially denies all morality, for in theory it maintains that man is necessitated to do this act rather than that—a conclusion which follows essentially from Marxian materialism. If man is necessitated, “right and wrong” become empty terms, for murder, dishonesty, lust must follow natural laws as undeviating as the law of gravi- tation. Therefore Communism essentially undermines the very foundations of morality. Secondly, realizing that no nation can exist without a moral code, Communism in practice has reduced the ancient decalogue to one commandment, viz . : “any act is ethical which aids the U. S. S. R.” The application of this ethic of social consequences has been treated as applied to personal liberty, the relationship of the sexes, the home, etc. Eighteen years of facts in the U. S. S. R. are left to speak for them- selves. The Challenge of a Waste of Time The reader will recall the conversation with a friend which formed the introduction to this pamphlet. Briefly, his challenge was to the effect that it was a waste of time to write a pamphlet for Americans about moral conditions in Russia. Murders, divorces, abortions, sex promiscuity among 30 MORALS AND MOSCOW youth in America—all rival and were alleged to exceed the accusations leveled against the Communists. Dictatorship, deprivation of economic and political rights might cause America to shy away from the tenets of the Communists, but morals—why a State without the outmoded taboos would be welcomed in the U. S. A. Such was the tenor of my friend’s challenge backed up with rather damning facts. The writer, however, vigorously disagrees with his friend’s conclusions. He is no idealist in the sense of ignoring or being ignorant of reality. No one can have mingled with youth for decades, have shared its secrets, have seen university life in classroom and in frat- house, have mingled with life in hospital, in classroom and above all in the confidences wherein souls are as exposed as bodies in a surgery, no one, who has led the normal life of one of the Society to which the writer belongs, has any delu- sions about life. Yet despite all its paganism and its frailties, America is still soundly honest and decent. The tabloid and the cinema, the best-seller and the theater are still not true cross-sections of American life. One can look upon life as mournfully and as despairingly as the symposium of Will Durant On the Meaning of Life , one can stigmatize the morals of modern girls as those of an “alley cat,” one can look upon changing husbands or wives as nonchalantly as changing clothes, one can depict Amer- icans snuffing out life, born and unborn, as they would snuff out a cigarette, one can point to graft and greed, to selfish- ness and sensuality, to lust and lawlessness. These are all facts, the ever present sewerage of life. True, filth is no longer hidden underground but is served with breakfast by our press, defiles our stage and our literature, and is cor- rupting the private lives of our capitalist leaders as they piously lament to their mistresses the moral degradation of the Soviets. Bear in mind this fact, however, any of you who may cynically agree with the friend who challenged the writer; you may paint public life as corrupt and dishonest as a polit- ical demagogue, you may judge others by yourself, and be- lieve domestic life and womanhood is as degenerate as Paris MORALS AND MOSCOW 31 post cards, you may sneeringly look upon morality and im- morality, as so many university professors who make us out simply male and female animals, yet—American democracy does not teach these things ; America does not legalize these things ; American parents still teach their sons and daughters to respect honesty and decency. Communist Russia in theory approves and legalizes the evils treated of in this booklet. America, despite its frailties, recognizes these evils as abuses, seeks to alleviate or destroy them. In brief, America attempts to protect the rights of the individual and the home and recognizes the obligations which men owe one another as members of society. Americans as a group recognize further their obligations to God. Communism bluntly rejects all rights of the individuals, deliberately scraps the home and reduces all rights and duties to the will of the State, which in practice is the will of Stalin. Herein lies the clear-cut cleavage between democracy and Communism. Herein my friend is wrong. Morals and Moscow Briefly, and at times necessarily bluntly, we have reviewed the essential facts of the so-called Communist ethics. The recital of strange and crude moral codes of foreign peoples has been a favorite theme for spicy travelogues and at times of serious research. The Russian situation is peculiarly unique in this, that it seeks to internationalize itself. Other peoples and other nations we read of or visit and are inter- ested in—but Moscow is interested in us. The Russian ethic is at this time scheming to impose itself on our lives and our families. It is no longer a question of curious interest, it is an issue of resistance. Does America still respect the decency of women, the sacredness of the home, the fact of moral responsibility based on a free will and a moral code? The writer, for one, still has faith in humankind and especially in the fundamental soundness of American character. Poverty, unemployment, the bitterness of youth “at strength denied an arena”—all are facts, lamentable facts. 32 MORALS AND MOSCOW Class hatred never healed the wounds of society. The Amer- ica we seek to preserve was not builded by male and female animals but by men and women of valor and virtue who treas- ured and still treasure the home and its “bourgeois” code. If decency has no appeal to certain Americans, at least they must live in order to lust, and a study of the O. G. P. U. might change their pink into pallor. America will never ac- cept a red flag, crimsoned by the gory application of Lenin’s and Stalin’s boastful words that the Dictatorship of the Proletariat “means nothing more nor less than power which directly rests on violence, which is not limited by any laws or restricted by any absolute rules.”— ( Problems of Leninism, J. Stalin, p. 25.) BIBLIOGRAPHY Woman in Soviet Russia, Halle (The Viking Press). Red Virtue, Winters (Harcourt, Brace & Co.). Factory, Family, and Woman in the Soviet Union, Kings- bury and Fairchild (G. P. Putnam’s Sons). Toward Soviet America, Foster (International Publishers). Problems of Leninism, Stalin (International Publishers). Religion, Lenin (International Publishers). The Last Stand, Walsh (Little, Brown & Co.). Russia's Iron Age, Chamberlin (Little, Brown & Co.). The Soviet State, Maxwell (Steves & Wayburn). Escape From the Soviets, Tchemavin (E. P. Dutton & Co.). I Speak for the Silent, Tchernavin (Hale, Cushman & Flint). Just What Is Communism? , Feely (The Paulist Press). n 1 r f IJ S Hr Read this series of three pamphlets on THE CASE AGAINST COMMUNISM Just What Is Communism? Morals and Moscow by RAYMOND T. FEELY, S.J. The third pamphlet in this group will be pub- lished and orders may be placed in advance Single copies 5 cents; $3.50 per hundred $30.00 per thousand (carriage extra) THE PAULIST PRESS, 401 W«»t 39th St., Now York, N. Y. —<$>—