BY THE WAY

Evening Star, Issue 17032, 1 May 1919, Page 2

BY THE WAY

[By Ca&Zu Cboss.] In these parts nobody is supposed to know anything about ftalahevism but the men who would like to see it at work in the lands under the Southern Cross. It may. not be amiss, howavw, if one humbly ventures to repeat a ssntenee or two from • The Programme of the Bolshevik Com"isists,* written bv a leading Bolshevik, and published in Moscow last year. Says Bccharin: "The war has created an unprecedented split in the ranks of the Social Democratic parties, and here we now find three distinct tendencies —an Extreme Right, a Centre, and an Extreme Left. The" Right Social Democrats are real traitors to the working classes. . . . The second tendency is the Centre. This group agitates against its governments but is incapable of carrying on a revolutionary straggle. It cannot make up its mind to call the workmen into tht streets. It fears like fire the armed struggle which alone can decide the question. Finally there is the third tendency—that of the Extreme Left. In Germany this group is represented by Liebknecht and his friends. These are the foreign Bolsheviks. Their tactics, their views, are our tactics and our views. . . . To communism. through the dictatorship of the proletariat —that is our party cry. Dictatorship means an iron power, a power which will not spare its enemies. The dictatorship of the working classes is a State power of the working classes which will strangle the'bourgeoisie and the landowners . . . we stand for the employment of revolutionary force." Thus does Bolshevism declare for violence immediate and ruthless, for the attainment of its ends, and for the suppression of everything that stands in its way. As a writer in the 'Round Table' says: "To the Bolshevik as to the Mohammedan, the world is divided into the faithful and the_ infidel, and by the Bolsheviks, Reactionaries, Liberals, Democrats.Social Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, and even extreme Socialists of a different character are classified under the one heading of ' counter-revolutionary ' . . . Bolshevism is a tyranny—a revolutionary tyranny if you will—which is the complete abnegation of democracy and of all freedom of thought and action. Based on force and terroristic violence, it is simply following the same philosophy which was preached bv Nietzsche and Haeckel. . . . Bv submitting one class domination for another it has merely reversed the former tyranny of the Romanoffs into a tyranny still more terrible and still more cruel in its one-sidedness." *******

My eye has just accidentally lighted ! apon another reference to communism, j which occurs in a note on the tri-eentenary ■ of the sailing of the Pilgrim Fathers in I the Mayflower in 1620. Since in this ! ;vorld even the most spiritual movements 1 rind it impossible to quite ignore such a ! natter as finance, it appears that the ; vtr.ture was financed by a sort of company J or .syndicate in London known as the Mer- ' chant Adventurers, and the necessity of j repaying the money advanced by means of ; shins, timber, and such other trade and ; products as they found possible kept the i little colony on the bleak shores of Cape ■ Cod Bay living on the communistic system, j It was a good chance for thpt particular j system. " for it was tried in a community I of sober, industrious, and godly men." j But after nearly three years it broke dewn, | "for it led to confusion and discontent, j discouraged production, and bestowed a j premium upon indifference." The strong and able grew tired of working for the ! wives and children of other men : grave j and aged men resented .the indignity of ; continuing on the same level as "raw j youths: husbands rebelled at the idea of! their wives having to do menial work for other men. As their elected Governor. William Bradford, explained in his quaint way: 4i ihat all should be on an equality, to have alike and do alike, and should think themselves one as good as another, I did much to diminish and take of? that i mutual respect which it is good to preserve ! in a community. - It would have been j worse,with wors^ 1 men, and it is to no ! purpose that the failure lay not with the ! system, bnt with the corruption of human nature; for, seeing that all men have this corruption in them, God in His wisdom has seen another course fitter for them."

That important- person known as the future historian -will infallibly quote this | present time as marking a complete rever- ! sal of the main political ideals that have ' hitherto dominated the world. From time immemorial the supreme factor in the world's political life has been the aspiration of some dominant nation to universal empire. The passion for unity has been the dream of conquerors and statesmen, as it has been the dream of religion and philosophy. The ne plus ultra of political glory has ever been conceived as the emergence on the throne of world-wide sovereignty of some mighty Power that- had previously _subdned all rivals, and quelled all opposition. The absorption of smaller and weaker nationalities by some expanding empire under a single rule was. as far as it went, an increased guarantee of peace, and a step in the direction of the larger harmonies of life. Local habits and aspirations might suffer violence : but time would "heal all that. The last instance of this mad ambition to rule the earth—thatassociated with the military dynasty of the Hohenzollerns—was one of the most formidable, if not the most formidable, at- \ tempts ever made; but it has served only to reveal that the great under-currents of ; human life are set in the opposite direction. The great war. with all its colossal forces and its unparalleled sacrifices, has indeed made havoc of thrones and dynasties : but so far has it been from destroying separate nationalities N and fostering some swelling despotism that it- has actually created, or is in the way of creating, some half a score, more or less, of new nationalities. And the greatest international council that ever met- is so permeated with the jspirit of freedom that, if it could avoid it, it would not leave a subject- race or nationality on the face of the earth. All this, is of quite sensational interest as being an absolute reversal of political ideals as old as humanity. Empire, in the old sense of the term, is an offence, a supreme heresy against the modern spirit- that has found such expression at the-Peace Conference. Our own Empire will be tolerated only on the clearest evidence of its necessity, and of the advantage and beneficence of its sway over subject- peoples in educating and otherwise preparing them for self-government.

******* Undoubtedly a strong disintegratingjorce is at work. It is the nature of Depociacy to disintegrate, for Democracy >mphasises the individual, enfranchises his *iil, liberates his tongue, ai:d makes him impatient of all restraints and compulsions. And that indicates the tremendous peed for the moral and intellectual education 01 Democracy, since a world of human i>eings is inconceivable -without restraints jnd compulsions of some kind (I do not forget that Democracy is frequently associated, if not identified, -with class movements and solid aggregations of men; but in the "nature of things such class movements can be only a temporary phase, the organisations that represent them including all types and qualities of men -whose only bond of union is their common interest in securing a certain advantage). Our present danger is that Democracy, not content with discrediting and demolishing arbitrary and unjust conditions, shall proceed to stow indifference an 3 even .hostility to those deeper, human loyalties that hold society together, and that would 3e all the iriore essential in a thoroughly lemocratised society. Such a danger is far from being- imaginary. The gretter . the advance of the democratic spirit, the heavier the responsibility resting upon the individual to play tb» Jiaxi, to take an enlightened view of lift and its duties as a whole, and to give free placf to the noblest jJements of his nature