Berkman organised meetings in Mooney and Billings' defence all over America, and aroused tremendous agitation in their favour. Had not the entry of America into the war overwhelmed the case, the accused men might have been freed. The anti-war and anti-conscription campaign that the anarchists conducted during the last war was recognised as a serious danger by the American Government. Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman and others were arrested, and condemned to two years' imprisonment, ten thousand dollars fine and deportation at the end of their sentence. In Berkman's case the persecution was particularly savage. The San Francisco authorities indicted him for complicity in the Preparedness Parade bomb · explosion, and demanded his extradition. They had not forgotter. or forgiven his defence of Mooney and Billings. And the New York authorities would have handed him over to San Francisco but for the intervention of the workers. The trade unions sent strong delegations to the Governor of the State of New York to protest against the extradition order. But .his cause was also taken ·up abroad. The revolutionary workers of Petrograd and the Kronstadt sailors organised demonstrations threatening the life of the American Ambassador in ' Russia, Francis. The Federal Government at Washington were frightened at the prospect of reprisals against their ambassador and the California demand for Berkman's extradition failed. Revolutionary international solidarity had saved our comrade's life. Berkman and Emma Goldman arrived in Russia at the end of December I g 19. For two years they worked for the revolution; but the tyrannical nature of the Bolshevik government, and the gradual strangling of the initiative of the workers in their soviets, culminating in the massacre of the Kronstadt sailors in 1921, disillusioned both of them. Alexander Berkman has described*this gradual disappointment in his book "The Bolshevik Myth." They applied for and received passports to Germany as delegates of the Anarchist Congress of 1921-22. The Socialist government of Ebert, however, refused to admit them. But in Sweden, the Socialist government of Branting allowed them to enter, with the stipulation that they stayed no longer than three months. Berkman soon succeeded in entering Germany illegally:,and remained there for a s Bibhoteca Gino Bianco
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