RED FRENZY.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXII, Issue 2612, 9 August 1928, Page 7

RED FRENZY.

THE TERRIBLE STORY OF RUSSIA. “HATE. HATE ABOVE ALL.” “An almost unbearably painful account” is how the Sydney Morning Herald” describes the story of the Russian Revolution, as revealed by a distinguished Russian soldier in his recently published book. “From Double Eagle to Red Flag.” We give below the Sydney paper’s review.

The Russian Revolution was remote from us in Australia. We read of the atrocities and the wholesale slaughter, and .shuddered. Nevertheless, these things might have happened in another world; they seemed in some ways almost as distant from us as the French Revolution. But we did not realise a tithe of the horrors which were the daily commonplaces of life in stricken Russia. The French Revolution with all its excesses, its “noyades,” its crowded tumbrils, and its never-idlie guillotine was a comparatively bloodless affair beside the red frenzy of the Russian Revolution. Professor Gilbert Murray has described a force which he terms “Satanism.” a sinister, malignant spirit, which, out of sheer devilish perversity would destroy aIU that is good, all that is beautiful, all that men reverence, and all that sweetens existence. Satanism was supreme in Russia during those years of terror.

An almost unbearably painful account of the revolution is given by General P. N. Krassnoff in “From Double Ehgle to Red Flag.” The author, a Don Cossack by birth, had a distinguished record in the army. He served in a Guard Cossoick regiment at Petrograd, and during the war commanded a brigade on the Eastern front. He was an eye-witness of the incidents which he relates, and perhaps numbed by the ghastly experience, writes with a curious detachment. He merely sets down the facts without comment or criticism. It is not surprising to learn from the preface that his book has “provoked indignation in certain quarters.” When men deliberately descend beneath the level of beasts the story of their doings is not likely to present them in a favourable light REVOLUTION INEVITABLE.

General Krassnoff makes it clear that a revolution—although not necessarily one on these lines—was inevitable. The fabric of the empire was rotten. The expression “Tsar of all the Russias” is proverbially associated with the possession of absolute power, yet Nicholas H was a cipher. A wellmeaning but ineffectual man, be was too weak to assert himself. He was surrounded by unscrupulous Ministers, who kept him in ignorance of affairs and pursued their own selfish ends. The aristocracy was pleasure-loving and blind to its responsibilities. Corruption and oppression were rife, Russia was fertile soil for the revolutionary. No revolution ever succeeds without preparation, and the anarchists took long views. They sedulously sowed the seed, training even little children in the practice of cruelty. An instance is given. The nuie-year-old son of one of the leaders was in the habit of cutting kittens to pieces with his penknife and picking out their eyes. His father only laughed at these exhibitions of sadism. “Let him get used to the sight of blood,” he would remark. Thus were recruits to the movement equipped for the work that lay before them.

Shortly after the outbreak of the war the Bolsheviks judged, that the time had come to put into operation the initial part of their scheme, the opening gambit of the revolution, namely, the demoralisation of the army. The programme was thus defined by one of their - spokesmen: “The educated classes are a herd of cowardly sheep, and it' will) suffice to scatter them in the ranks of the army to see it decomposed by them as by a noxious microbe. Make a laughing-stock of the officers in whatever way you choose .... so that the rank of a general shall seem a disgrace and that of a soldier, honour. Play upon the public admiration of the soldier’s merits, and gradually form new soldiers with nothing military about them. .. . Raise criminals to heroes and get the criminal classes to side with you.” And more to the same purpose. The revolution could have been effective with a minimum of violence. The army was war-weary. The aristocrats were few in number, and were unorganised. The peasants were apathetic, and the bourgeoisie were spineless—as was proved by the event when they made no attempt to sell their lives dearly but uallowed themselves to be killed like cattle. There was no necessity for the savage massacres. Russia as a whole would have acquiesced in the new regime. But such a quiet readjustment would not have suited the Bolsheviks’ plan.. Their object was to create an atmosphere in which nothing was sacred and nothing secure. All .institutions must go by the board. Religion, morality, and law' must be ilouted and held up to derision. To achieve this aim they did not shrink from the most revolting actions. It requires a strong stomach to read certain chapters in this book. After victims by the score are murdered by the Chinese executioners, the latter calmly carved up their corpses and the dismembered bodies are fed to the animals in the ozo. by the animals in the Kremlin. A son has his father- — a general—shot after subjecting! hint to fiendish tortures. When the impulse to evil doing becomes jaded, these monsters goad themselves to fresh iniquities with cocaine. But even this stimulus fails j they are sated with sin. One of them complains that he has tried everything, tasted everything, and found everything tedious. He yearns for a new sensation. There is no wi.ckedness he has not practised. Familiarity with vice in its most loathsome forms hats dulled his palate. Even depravity palls. This was the type that brought the “glorious revolution” to pass 1 General Krassnoff’s book should cure any sane person who feels any sympathy for that revolution or for Communistic ideas. “The Christians,’'' runs a Bolshevik manifesto, “preach that their lives must be piloted by three virtues, Faith*. Hope and Charity, Charity taking, the lead. Our system consists in sowing unbelief, de» ( spair, and hate, h? he above ‘all.’ R