One of the Common Sense issues mentioned a full-page newspaper article written by Winston Churchill called "Zionism versus Bolshevism: A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People." The article had originally appeared in the Illustrated Sunday Herald on February 8, 1920. Churchill had maintained that the world's Jews were being torn between an allegiance to Communism on the one hand and Zionism on the other. Churchill hoped the Jews would adopt Zionism as an alternative to what he called "diabolical" and "sinister" Bolshevism. In his well-written article, contemporary with the early years of the Russian Revolution, Churchill described Communism as a "sinister confederacy" of "International Jews" who "have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of this enormous empire."¹

The article shocked me enough that I had to check its authenticity. It turned out to be genuine. In fact, I found some Jewish references to it bewailing the fact that Churchill's article gave fodder to the anti-Semites of the world. The following is an excerpt from his amazing article.

In violent opposition to all this sphere of Jewish effort rise the schemes of the International Jews. The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where the Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most, if not all, of them have forsaken the faith of their forefathers and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing…and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.

There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews...²

As an important historical figure as Churchill was, he was still only one voice. I rationalized that he could be wrong about the nature of the Russian Revolution. One of the Common Sense articles I read referred to a series of explosive documents (complete with file numbers) from the National Archives of the United States. I wrote to my local Congressman, F. Edward Hebert, and asked if his office could obtain copies of the files for me. A couple of weeks later, on returning home from school, I found waiting for me a large manila envelope from the Congressman.