have our own Socialist
Militarism. We must win over to our side 90 millions out of the 100
millions of population of Russia under the Soviets. As for the
rest, we have nothing to say to them; they must be annihilated.'

"The program of annihilating ten million of the opponents of
Bolshevism in Russia (Mr. Zinoviev has considerably underestimated
their number) began to be executed by the Bolsheviki from the first
moment of their coming into power. In the beginning of March, 1918,
they held mass executions in Rostov-on-the-Don, killing, among
others, many youths. The Moscow 'Russkiya Viedomosti' (Russian
News) in its issue of March 23, 1918, reported that the president
of the Rostov Municipal Council and the Chairman of the Don
Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Party, B. C. Vasiliev,
the mayor of the city, P. Petrenko, the former Chairman of the
Rostov-Nakhichevan Council of Workingmen's and Soldiers' Delegates,
P. Melnikov, and even M. Smirnov, at that time Chairman of the
Council, have handed in a petition to the Bolshevist
War-Revolutionary Council asking them to shoot them 'instead of the
innocent children who are executed without law and justice.' A
group of women, horrified by what was going on, also asked that
they be shot instead of the children. In their petition they wrote
as follows:

"'If, according to you, there is need of sacrifices in blood and
life in order to establish a Socialistic state and to create new
ways of life, take our lives, kill us, grown mothers and fathers,
but let our children live. They have not yet had a chance to live;
they are only growing and developing. Do not destroy young lives.
Take our lives and our blood as ransom....

"'We, mothers, have served the country by giving our sons, husbands
and brothers. Pray, take our last possession, our lives, but spare
our children. Call us, one after the other, for execution, when our
children are to be shot! Every one of us would gladly die in order
to save the life of her children or that of other children.

"'Citizens, members of the War Revolutionary Council, listen to the
cries of the mothers. We cannot be kept silent!'"

Charles Dumas, a French Socialist, on his return to France from Russia,
wrote a book in which he warns his fellow-comrades on the dangers of