speak more eloquently than any words that could be used to
amplify them in portraying the hideousness of a system of government
that, if permitted to continue, must inevitably crush out the home in
large part by the flippancy with which marriage and divorce are
regarded, by the refusal of permitting the land to be held in private
ownership, and by refusing the parent the right at death to pass on to
his wife or to his children the fruits of years of toil.

"What, then, is my arraignment of sovietism according to the soviet
constitution?

"1. The people have no direct vote or voice in government, except the
farmers in their local rural soviets and the city dwellers in their
urban soviets.

"2. The rural, county, provincial, regional, and All-Russian soviets are
elected indirectly, and the people have no direct vote in the election.

"3. The people have no voice in the election of executive officers of
the highest or lowest degrees.

"4. There is no mention of independent judicial officers in the
constitution.

"5. The people are very largely disfranchised.

"6. The farmer of Russia is discriminated against.

"7. The system raises class against class; the voters vote by trade and
craft groups instead of on the basis of thought units.

"8. The system strikes a blow at the church and the home.

"9. The system is pyramidal and means highly centralized and autocratic
power.

"The soviet system of government can not be defended. It is against the
interests of the very men for whom it is supposed to have been
established--the laboring man. He is the man most of all who must suffer
under any kind of government or system that is wrong. He is the man who
would be out of bread within the shortest time. He is the man whose
family would be destitute of clothing in the shortest time. He is the
man whose family will suffer through disease, famine, and pestilence in
the shortest time.

"As it is against the best interest of the laboring man, so it is
against the best interest of all the people, and, as a matter of fact,
the overwhelming mass of people of this country and all countries is
made up of laboring people.

"Finally, the soviet government, as foreshadowed in its constitution, is
obviously unjust, unfair and discriminatory. This fact will appear at
once to any mind trained to the American manner of thought, which takes
the trouble to investigate sovietism, and whatever tendency there may be
to approve will disa