RUSSIA: Very Easily Led

In Moscow the Soviet Government opened last week the first little Red schoolhouse for children of U. S. and British engineers and workmen now helping Russia with her Five-Year Plan. Fond parents faced painful alternatives. The school, as Soviet officials frankly admitted, will try to turn every pupil into a little Bolshevik. But the Government offered free tuition & textbooks, reduced streetcar fares and for each hungry pupil a heaping hot lunch at 15¢—such a lunch as would otherwise cost in Moscow at least $1.

Parents of 52 children sent them to the little Red school on opening day. Aged from six to 14, the children trooped merrily in, found that the Government had prepared attractive textbooks, strikingly illustrated, modeled on the famed Soviet children’s Primer which has recently been a best seller among U. S. adults.*

Puzzling their little White brains over problems of arithmetic, the children were assisted by Arithmetic Teacher Lovett Whiteman, a Chicago Negro. Thus imperceptibly they began to learn a fundamental Communist lesson: Reds call no race “inferior,” call the black and the yellow man “comrade.”

Principal and Mistress of the little Red school are Comrade Mike Gruzenberg and his wife Comrade Fanny. Famed under his alias “Borodin,” Comrade Gruzenberg is considered throughout Russia the ablest Red instigator of foreign revolutions. In the East his silver tongue and Moscow’s gold coin made possible the revolutionary conquest of all China by Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek, now President. Today the Chinese Government, which broke with Russia to establish friendly relations with other Great Powers (TIME, April 25, 1927), is again angling for Moscow’s aid.

As Principal and Mistress, Comrades Mike & Fanny will teach U. S. tots that the U. S. and other “imperialist” powers are plotting and preparing war on Russia. Challenged recently by a visiting U. S. pastor who called Heaven to witness that the U. S. is profoundly peaceful, Borodin replied: “The people of America are very easily led. They had no notion of going into the World War, but imperceptibly their leaders carried them on until one morning they woke up at war.”

*Hougfiton Mifflin ($1.75). Excerpt: “America . . . A Mad Country … In a country boasting millions of machines, storerooms are bursting with goods; corn is burned in place of coal; milk is poured into the river. . . . What does this mean? Have people lost their senses, or what is the matter? . . . Why is this done? Who profits by it?

“It is profitable to the Foxes and the Boxes. Mr. Fox burns a few trainloads of grain in order to raise the price of corn. Mr. Box gives orders to spill tens of thousands of bottles of milk into the river in order that milk may not be sold too cheaply. . . .

“Among us the mechanical helpers belong, not to Mr. Fox and to Mr. Box, but to the workers. And this at once changes the whole situation. Workers do not wish to break up automobiles; they do not wish to pour milk into the river. . . .

“We have a plan. . . .

“In America they work without a plan.”