Suffer Little Children

The “Children’s Magazine” of May, 1920, affords some interesting reading. “It has shut her out from real knowledge of the world. . . . It has shackled her afresh with a system of government based upon spying, on force, and on secret punishments as bad as in the worst days of the Tsar.” A wealth of accompanying pictures reveal to the young mind such horrors as “Aristocratic women cleaning the streets,” “ Peasant shot at sight for stealing bread.”

Of course, the blessings of Deans and Archbishops has wiped all memories of these things out. What truth was there in the allegations. If true, by what miracle has the Soviet regime transformed itself just at the time when a super gangster crowd is threatening the existence of a smugly reformed Old Times and its Artful Dodger young “Ally”?