WAS LENIN A GREAT MAN

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 134, 8 June 1929, Page 17 (Supplement)

WAS LENIN A GREAT MAN

HIS REIGN OF TERRORISM. MY REPLY TO WINSTON CHURCHXjJLj. NOT JUDAS,. NOR LUCIFER, NOR MACHIAVELLI. py THE EARL OF BIRKENHEAD, formerly Secretary for India.) In the course of a brilliant character study of Lenin which; appeared in the "Times," Mr. Winston Ghurehill said "Lenin's mind was a remarkable , instrument. When its light, shone it revealed the whole world, Its history*, its sorrows; its stupidities,-its ■shams/and, above all, its wrongs." - : ~/ \ : Lord Birkenhead repudiates : this view, declaring that Mr. Churchill has.' totally misunderstood Lenjri.. Churchill's Lenin will not d 0;"..... It is absurd to cast him as a modern blend of Iscariot, Lucifer.and Machiavelli." Mr. Winston' Churchill hae already' published enough of the new volume of his book on the war to show,that it fully maintains theinterest of its predecessors. He has the great advantage over most contemporary historians of having himself taken an active part in the most decisive events, political and military, of the last thirty years. The Army and Politics. , I need give but the briefest outline of his career. The son of Lord Randolph Churchill, he became a cavalry subaltern. By the age of 24 he could claim to be the only soldier in history, except Napoleon, who had fought in three continents. He returned to England from South Africa, the hero of a sensational escape from the Boers; and occupied in the eyes of his countrymen a place comparable only with that enjoyed in more recent years by Colonel Lawrence. Entering politics, he, a youth in the middle twenties, at once became an outBtanding figure in the House of Commons, and when he went to America to lecture he was hailed there as "the hero of five wars, the author of six books, afed the. future Prime Minister of Great Britain." Among these books was a biography of his father, which no less distinguished a critic than Lord Rosebery declared to be one of the first half-dozen British biographies. Ever since Mr. Churchill entered Parliament he has been among the most forceful and prominent of its members. He has occupied a greater variety of posts for a greater length of time than any other member of the preeent House of Commons; such responsibilities and opportunities have been accepted by him as were combined before by few Englishmen. . .

After the Armistice. Tliat Mr. Churchill's writings, therefore, dealing as;shy.e! do with the momentous period lie has played a leading role, should be.,of interest would not be etirprking, even.if he were a mediocre wriW-', But he is not. He has a gift altogether .remarkable of surveying a vast subjected reducing it, by brilliant analysis, to a concise and illuminating record. His judgments, moreover, on men and politics are as penetrating as they are profound; he combines the° utmost economy in. words with the maximum of insight. • The four books -tehich he has already published on the Great War will undoubtedly be accepted by future historians as authorities. A fifth volume is on the way. Therein Mr. Churchill purposes to describe the hardly leas interesting events which followed upon the armistice of November, 1918. Certain extract* from this forthcoming volume have been appearing in the "Times." They show Mr. Churchill at his most typical andbest. Hie account of incidents, hie character sketches, hie lucidity and his wisdom have never been shown to greater advantage. Onljr on one point so far have. I found myself m eerious disagreement from him. I believe that he has wholly misjudged the significance of Lenin. i Lenin's Personality. C

No man, I imagine,: not even the most patriotic Russian, hated Lenin more than Mr. Churchill hated him. Certainly no; Russian did more to oppose Lenin and his Bolshevist colleagues than Mr. Churchill. It is aleo true to sa.y that he. understood from the first, better than almost any other public man, the menace which Lenin and his fellows represented for the future of civilisation. Yet in the very intensity of his loathing MrChurchill has come to conceive a certain admiration for the arch murderer ot Moscow. ■ '~: .■ Mr. Churchill's friends may Say that this is a fine gesture of generosity towards a dead enemy; they would not be wholly wrong. His detractors may sneer that Mr. Churchill instinctively magnifies Lenin in order to magnify himself for the part he played against Lenin. I will not say that even urthis there is not a grain of truth. Such emotions are human. . But, whatever the reasons, I believe Mr. Churchill to be mistaken in his estimate of Lenin's personality. He has confused Lenin the man with Lemn the figurehead, Lenin the demagogue with Lenin the thistledown of Fate. Here is what Mr. Churchill says ol '"Lenin was to Karl Marx what Omar was to Mahomet. He translated faith into acte. He devised, the practical methods by which the Marxian theories could be applied in his own time. He invented the Communist plan of campaign. He issued the orders, he prescribed the watchwords, he gave the signal, and he led the attack < "Hie mind was a remarkable instrument. When its light shone it revealed the whole world, its 'history, its sorrows, its stupidities, its ams > a ™' above all, its wrongs. » revealed all facte in iie focus-the moet unwelcome, the most inspiring-with an equal lay. "The intellect wae capacious and. m some phases superb. It was capable of universal comprehension in j>: ae i rarely reached among men. J^?J tion of the elder brother deflected this broad, white light through pram, and the prism was red. But the mind of Lenin was used and driven by a will not less exceptional." , - And he calls Lenin "the Grand Repudiator." For the Russian people, he says, "their worst misfortune . was his birth; thefr next woree—hie dea-tn.

Capacity for Comprehension. This ie : extravagance! It i to credit Lenin with all the bloody ° f the Bolehevists, to to /^J +ni 7 8 6 ight and will-power all the forturtous series of events which placed them m power in Russia and has held them tnere for the paet decade. , Let us examine Lenin througli a pnsm less purpk. knowi to a limited circle of revohi ae the iead 'of m extreme

section of the Russian Social-Demo-cratic organisation. In one respect, and one only, did he exhibit consistency; he eought by every channel of chicanery and intrigue to become the leader of hie party, or, at any rate, of a party. Since to do this it was necessary to split the organisation, Lenin without compunction forced a split and thus became 'head of the small group of Bolshevists.

It then became necessary to overlook the fact that more than threequarters of hie adherents were either police spies or willing to become so. .Lenin wae prepared to overlook this. When the chief Bolshevist in the Duma was unmasked as an agent provocateur, Lenin, alone •of the Russian Socialists, gave 'him a welcome abroad. A complete egotkm, a luet for supremacy over no matter how few toadies, an utter lack of any scruples —these were the; admitted traits of the pre-war Lenin.

He was a fluent oracle of unsound prophecy. As far back as 1908 he anticipated a revolution in England.

. "That Socialism among the working class in England, its growing, that Socialism is once, again becoming a mass movement in that country, that the social revolution in Great Britain is approaching—one should 'be blind not to see," . '••.■'■ This is typical of hie superb capacity iox universal comprehension. i . . Kerensky'a Blunder. The : world first heard, of Lenin in the spring of 1917, when he wae sent by the Germane into Russia in order to confuse the new revolutionary order there. He began at once to address the Petrograd Soviet —in those days an amorphous and, on the whole, fairly patriotic body —urging it to take "all over" into its hands. He met with no success; Kereneky utterly vanquished him in debate. The revolution pursued its hesitating path. Muddle succeeded muddle.

In the summer Lenin called upon his followers to make an armed bid to overthrow the Government. It was an utter failure. The Bols'hevlsts were routed and a fresh wave of patriotism followed. Had Kereneky acted then, had he pos'sessed the moral courage to arres-t Lenin and ehoot him as an armed rebel in time of war, history would never have recorded the name of the "Grand Repudiator." But Kerensky was only a rhetorician. The most eloquent Ruesian of his day, he did not understand how weak are words unaccompanied by action. He blundered in allowing Lenin to live. Soon he blundered woree by provoking a senseless quarrel with the army commanders. Through his mad folly the army collapsed into a marauding mob, and, since even mobs demand leaders, Lenin's moment came. Lenin and his group : alone were shame-lees enough to set themselves iat the head of the mutineers with promises of peace, bread and the land. This was his supreme moment of triumph, and euch was the path by which he attained it.

An Orgy of Murder. From November, 1917, to the very moment of his death, he did not initiate a single measure which turned out as he intended it; not ,one policy but achieved the-opposite "result; and one forecast about the. future of Europe and the certainty of an early world-revolu-tion but proved false. It is idle,to say that he and his colleagues defeated all their enemies, both internal and external. There was never a moment during his whole reign - when he could not easily have been overthrown. The foes of Bolshevism chose rather, to quarrel among themselves, to allow the Bolshevists to oppose them seriatim r each in turn repeated Napoleon's mistakes and learned again the lessons of 1812.

Nor was it due to any internal state-' craft that Lenin's rule lasted so long. The most damnable orgy of murder that ever disgraced mankind terrorised the unhappy Russian people; but it could not feed them. Murder and famine, disease and civil war, the moral degeneration of at least one whole generation of children, the utter breakdown of everything which stands for civilisation and progress—these were what Bolshevism has meant for Russia. , But it is idle to suppose that Lenin, with some Satanic lust, desired these things to befall his country. He did not. In his constructive moments .he —the "Grand Repudiator" —dreamed in his diseased brain of a vague, co-operative commonwealth, with a great deal of electric light, and himself, of course, as perpetual president! He was an optimist as well as an egotist. Even after the. murders had b°gun he. could write that: "The Republic of Soviets of workmen's soldiers', and peasants'- delegates is not only a higher type of democratic institution, but it is also the form capable of ensuring the most painless realisation of •'Socialism."

Juaas, Lucifer ana Machiavelll. He was Indeed an incompetent, and a very tedious and prolix one. If hie intellect were eo "capacious," "superb" and "capable of universal comprehension to a degree rarely reached," it seems a pity that his writings should be as voluminous as, and even more turgid than those of his.master, Karl Marx. The latter could at least, in his lighter moments, write a good descriptive account of a riot; Lenin was incapable of writing clearly about anything. ■ Mr. Churchill's Lenin will not do. To cast him as a modern blend of Judas Iscariot, Lucifer and Machiavelli is all very well as an exercise in the Gibbon style, but I have already suggested to Mr. Churchill that he might with better reason paint a similar picture of Mr. A. J. Cook. Lenin only rose to notice in a distraught, defeated, mob-ridden slaughterhouse. Mr. Cook for a considerable period baited the Government of the world's greatest Empire, victorious, calm and, by comparison with Russia, almost incredibly prosperous and contented. If it were possible to separate men's mental equipment from the uses to -which they subordinate it, one might attempt to weigh Lenin against his latest celebrator. I will only say here that, in every year of his official life, Mr. Churchill has displayed twenty times as much courage, capacity,- intelligence, understanding, and driving force as this pinchbeck Red polichinelle exercised in the whole of his foul career.—("Star" and Anglo-American N.S.—Copyright.)