REVELLING IN DIRT

Greymouth Evening Star, 26 June 1922, Page 7

REVELLING IN DIRT

——■— PSYCHOLOGY OF REVOLUTION. AVe have read of the manner in which the Reds of Russia managei to impress something of their own character on beautiful buildings they took and occupied during the course of their subjugation of the couiitiy (says the Johannesburg ‘Sunday Times’). _ . The papers have been, full °i how they would “take over” a catltedral, and in a short while turn it into a pestilential den. It has hardly been possible to believe it. A'larket Building. EordsbTiTg, bears just the same signs of the occupancy of our own Reds. ■ The day after its capture by trie loyal forces it presented in indescribable picture of filth, wreckage, ami confusion. The stairs leading to the Reds’ quarters prepared the visitor for ■what was to come—they were uttered with the dirt of days. Empty bottles, tins which had contained meat, scraps of food, bits of discarded clothing. A pair of old boots lay at the top. Above there were innumerable small rooms or flats. These had been occupied by decent ’ residents until the revolution. They were furnished as such tenemen rooms would be —clean beds, tables, chairs, and chests of drawers. There were probabfo enough beds to have accommodated the whole Red j garrison had they used them. But no ; )in many instances bedsteads were smashed and the men preferred to - drag mattresses or bundles of bed j clothing into corners of rooms, and . there they would apparently live, eat, and sleep* Generally the floor was piled with . the debris of smashed open boxes and chests of drawers —the revolutionaries [ revelled in filth. They ate and threw the scraps on the floor —tins, bottles, and bits, all in a sickening squalor. i The bathrooms were made filthy. As a young country policeman told one person who had occasion to be at the building, “Man, the sanitary arrangements are awful. You' can’t go into i some of the places.” , The rank atmosphere of filth, neg--1 lect, and, in short, revolution, pervaded the whole place. The explanation must be sought deep down in the psychology of revolution. It may be that, seeing that they are against. all established things, revolutionaries “attain a state of mind fin which they deI light in disorder, destruction, squalor and dirt.