Francis McCullagh
Published: 2015-06-17
Total Pages: 382
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Excerpt from A Prisoner of the Reds: The Story of a British Officer Captured Siberia I attempt in the following pages to give some account of my experiences among the Bolsheviks from January to April of the year 1920. My story is neither Propaganda for Bolshevism nor Propaganda against it. I simply give all the facts, whether they tell against Communism or in its favour; and, if I indulge in deductions from those facts, my readers are at liberty to draw whatever other deductions they like. The main thing is that all the facts be placed before them; and that I have tried my best to do. The result may possibly be that this book will displease not only the Bolsheviks, but also those equally fanatical anti-Bolsheviks who believe that Lenin and Trotsky lead lives of phenomenal debauchery, that cannibalism is common in Moscow, that all Russian women have been nationalized, that the Red Army is composed of Letts and Chinese who have to be driven into action by means of whips and machine-guns, and that anyone who disputes these facts is a Bolshevik himself. I really hate Bolshevism as much as these people do, but I also hate Propaganda in so far as that word means the selection of all the facts supporting a certain theory, and the deliberate suppression of all the facts which tell against that theory, or vice versa. Even during the Great War Propaganda probably did more harm than good to every nation which made use of it. Laughed at by the soldiers, distrusted by the general public, regarded with unspeakable contempt by independent journalists, it was too often used merely for the purpose of screening Governments which had miscalculated and Generals who had blundered. The only good Propaganda is propaganda of the truth; it is amazing that none of the belligerent Governments ever recognized the tremendous advantages such a form of Propaganda possesses over the other kind. Of that other kind my own experiences as a combatant at the Front during the war showed me the futility and even danger. I will briefly narrate two of these experiences. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.