This interesting cutting from the Haining archive tells some
of the story of the short-lived Liberty League. Less than three years after the
Russian Revolution had erupted, leading figures in public life, alarmed by the
progress of its ideas in the West, got together to initiate a counter campaign
that would challenge Bolshevism in the UK and throughout the empire. The new
force for good was ‘The Liberty League’ and on 3rd March 1920 an
open letter declaring its objectives and signed by H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard
Kipling, Lord Sydenham, H. Bax-Ironside, John Hanbury Williams, Algernon
Maudslay and Lt –Col G Maitland-
Edwards, was published in the Times. The
signatories began by defining Bolshevism and its aims.
Bolshevism is the
reverse of what mankind has built up of good by nearly two thousand years of
effort. It is the Sermon of the Mount writ backward. It has led to bloodshed
and torture, rapine and destruction. It repudiated God and would build its own
throne upon the basest passions of mankind.
There are some misguided people of
righteous instincts in this country who believe in Bolshevism; there are others
who have been influenced by secret funds;there are many who hope to fish in its bloodstained waters…If it is allowed to conquer it will mean in the end the destruction of individual rights, the family, the nation, and the whole British Commonwealth, together wit the handing over of all we hold sacred into the power of those who stand behind and perhaps have fashioned this monstrous organization…
If this evil is to be beaten, the signatories argued, it
would require 'counter organisation' and funding:
The first we hope to
be able to supply; the second we ask you to help us obtain. We desire in a
clean and open fashion to fight what we believe to be a great and terrible
evil,
