"The central committee of Local New York, Socialist Party, greets Comrade L. C. A. K. Martens, recently appointed the representative of the Russian Soviet government in the United States and in his name the victorious Russian proletariat. "We sincerely hope that his work in behalf of the Socialist government of Russia will be crowned with success. We pledge him our aid, and promise that we shall not rest until the government of the United States has ceased to be a party to the economic and political isolation of Russia and the military occupation of territory of the Soviet republic."
In the latter part of March, 1919, Martens shared offices with Santeri Nuorteva, also a great friend of the American Socialists. Nuorteva was
head of the Bolshevist propaganda in this country and from his office mailed the "Weekly Bulletin of the Bureau of Information on Soviet Russia." Nuorteva denied that these large sheets, which are about the same size as the propaganda sheets issued in the first months of the war by the German Information Service, constitute propaganda. Like the German Information Service sheets, each contains from six to ten articles. All paint conditions in Russia under Trotzky and Lenine as steadily improving and show those men and their aids as gentle, kind-hearted individuals whose only sin is the betterment of mankind.
Among labor unions Bolshevism has made great headway. The New Labor Party of Illinois in 1919 not only supported Soviet Russia but favored the Soviet system in our own country. Sensible workingmen in the American Federation of Labor and conservative members of the new Labor Party had good reason for being alarmed and for suspecting that American propagators of Bolshevism received Russian gold from some one, possibly from Martens.