A. Simons testified before the Overman Committee, in answer to a question of Senator King, as follows:
Senator King. “Did you find, then, that atheism permeates the ranks of the Bolsheviki?”
Mr. Simons. “Yes, sir. And the anti-Christ spirit as well.”
The testimony of Mr. Simons on this subject was as follows:
Senator King. “What I am trying to get at is, for my information, why Bolshevism is bitterly opposed to all sorts of religion or sacraments of the church—Christianity; because I suppose that they recognize that Christianity is the basis of law and order and of orderly government. I was wondering if you had discovered why they were so bitter against Christianity, and if you found that all the Bolsheviks were atheistic or rationalistic or anti-Christian?”
Mr. Simons. “My experience over there under the Bolsheviki régime has led me to come to the conclusion that the Bolsheviki religion is not only absolutely anti-religious, atheistic, but has it in mind to make all real religious work impossible as soon as they can achieve that end which they are pressing. There was a meeting—I cannot give you the date offhand; it must have been in August, 1918—held in a large hall that had once been used by the Young Men’s Christian Association in Petrograd for their work among the Russian soldiers. The Bolsheviki confiscated it; put out the Y. M. C. A. In that large hall there was a meeting held which was to be a sort of religious dispute. Lunacharsky, the Commissar of the People’s Enlightenment, as he was called, and Mr. Spitzberg, who was the Commissar of Propaganda for Bolshevism, were the two main speakers. Both of those men spoke in very much the same way as Emma Goldman has been speaking. I have been getting some of her