A British Nurse in Bolshevik Russia. By Margaret IL Barber.
(A. C. Fifield. Is. 6d. net.)—This little narrative does credit to the author's philanthropy. She worked from 1916 to 1919 as a Red Cross nurse in Russia, chiefly in the Friends' Hospital at Samara and in an Armenian hospital at Astrale,n. It is good to know of the work of such devoted women. Never- theless, in so far as the pamphlet is intended to exculpate the Bolsheviks, it is irrelevant. That Miss Barber saw no atrocities is certainly not evidence, either for or against the Bolsheviks. One might live in England without seeing a motor-omnibus, but. one could not deduce from that fact the non-existence of such a vehicle. Miss Barber makes a useful point when she says that the British aeroplanes from the Caspian which dropped bombs on the Bolsheviks at Astrakan had the effect of increaaing the popularity of the "Reds." "An educated member of our unit, hitherto not much of a Communist, exclaimed : 'The Bolsheviks are atleast our own people. We must support them at all costs against the foreign capitalist.' " Thus the Bolsheviks, with all their professions of internationalism, profited by the Russian national sentiment.
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