literature, and recently I have been very much amazed at the same line of argumentation with regard to the attack on religion and Christianity and so-called religious organizations.”
Senator King. “She is the Bolshevik who has been in jail in this country and who will be deported as soon as her sentence is over?”
Mr. Simons. “I do not know as she will be deported.”
Senator King. “I think she will be.”
Mr. Simons. “She ought to be put somewhere where she cannot issue any more of that literature. Lunacharsky and Spitzberg came out with pretty much the same things that she has been saying and printing. This is one of these theses: ‘All that is bad in the world, misery and suffering that we have had, is largely due to the superstition that there is a God.’”
Senator King. “I noticed in yesterday’s paper that in their schools the children are being taught, wherever they have schools at all, positive atheism. Did you verify that?”
Mr. Simons. “Lunacharsky, as the official head of the department of education, Commissar of the People’s Enlightenment, said: ‘We now propose to enlighten our boys and our girls and we are using as a textbook a catechism of atheism which will be used in our public schools.’ Yet he had the audacity to say: ‘We are going to give all churches the same chance.’ And a priest replied to him, saying: ‘Then you ought not to put your catechism of atheism into the schools.’”18
Referring further to the meeting at the Y. M. C. A., Mr. Simons said a little later in his testimony:
“Lunacharsky and Spitzberg said in that meeting, and they sent it out in their proclamations: ‘The greatest enemy to our proletarian cause is religion. The so-called church is simply a