Chapter V: Communist Sunday Schools

THE Socialist bodies are as yet in a minority in this country, but they are organized, and they are determined to do all they can to convert their minority into a majority in the near future. One of the means which they are using are Sunday schools. Two kinds of Socialist Sunday schools, the Socialist and the Proletarian, are mentioned. The first kind professes neutrality towards religion; the second is anti-religious, or at least anti-christian. A pamphlet was recently published on Socialist and Other Sunday Schools. Besides these two kinds of schools, the writer says that a third kind has found its way into England within the last three years, the Communist Sunday school. The Young Communist for December, 1921, proclaimed the birth of the new school movement and indicated its object in the following terms:

“We, the Young Communist League of Great Britain, are now a part of the Young Communist International, and, as such, with the Red working youth and Revolutionary children’s groups of almost every country in the world, are embarking on an intensive campaign to teach the Communist ideology to, and inspire the Communist rebel spirit in, the young people of our class. We require everyone to help. See to it that you do your share, and help to realize our slogan—‘ All power to the workers.’ ”

One of the saddest features of the Bolshevist revolution in Russia was the deliberate and systematic corruption of children which it introduced into the public schools of the country. A blatant materialism was substituted for the spiritualism which hitherto had been the foundation of Russian elementary education. According to Lenin, religion is the opium of the people, it tends to make them contented, and he wanted them to be discontented in order to make them the instruments of revolution. Christianity taught them to love all men as brothers; Lenin wanted them to love only those of their class as comrades and to hate others as capitalists. Christianity proclaims peace to men of good will; Lenin proclaimed the class war. The ideology of Lenin is the ideology of the Communist International of Moscow, and the Communist Sunday schools have been established in England and on the Continent in order to spread Russian Communism throughout the world.

In an interview given to the Moscow Atheist in 1923, Mr. A. MacManus, President of the Communist Party of Great Britain, is reported to have said:

“The growth of Socialist Sunday schools in England is of tremendous importance in the development of anti-religious propaganda among the British masses. ... Thus we are undermining one of the bulwarks of English capitalism, its religious organizations, which is beginning to shake. We must keep on shaking it as energetically as we can, and driving blows at it, so that soon there should remain nothing but bitter memories of the Church in England.”

The Communist Sunday schools encourage the children brought under their influence to write letters to their own paper and say frankly what they think. No better indication of the effect of the teaching which the children receive in the Communist Sunday schools could be desired. I will transcribe two of these children’s letters printed in the pamphlet mentioned above.

Last January, little R. Tait, aged seven, wrote as follows: “Comrades, what are we taught at the Council schools? We are taught about King Alfred who burnt the cakes, and Queen Elizabeth with her love for dresses, whereas at the Communist Children’s Section we are taught workers’ history. In Council schools we are also taught ‘ Rule, Britannia,’ and ‘Ye Mariners of England,’ and other such rot. We sing the ‘ Red Flag,’ ‘Red Army March,’ and the ‘ International,’ songs with real meaning in them, at the Communist Section. If we believe what they tell us in day schools about Russia, we would think that the Russians were very wicked, but we comrades know that Russia is now the finest country in the world, having overthrown the capitalist system, and put in its place a Workers’ Soviet Republic.’ Evidently a rising Pitt.

In December last Miss Rena Stebbins, aged ten, wrote what she thought of the Communist Section. She said: “I think the Communist Section is very good, especially for children, as when they grow up they will know about Communism. I also think it is very good to learn and to understand the Communist meaning, for it shows us how hard it is for the working class to live, how hard our parents have to fight to make ends meet, and for what use? Only to make the bosses richer with our parents’ labour. So we must be given to understand how to learn to fight against the bosses, and to make this world just as nice for us as it is for the rich. We have the same feeling as them, and we work for, and the bosses don’t, so let us learn how to end it all, and to learn to fight together to get our aim.”

Poor little Rena! The eloquence of Cicero could not make the matter plainer.

As she grows older Rena will realize that it is not wise to jump from the frying-pan into the fire.