PASSING OF KROPOTKIN

NZ Truth, Issue 818, 16 July 1921, Page 4

PASSING OF KROPOTKIN

Prince and Proletarian —Dreamer and Doer

GRAND OLD MAN OF RUSSIAN DEMOCRACY GLIMPSES THE DAWN. '

A Seeker of " The Land of Nowhere."

Prince and -workman, dreamer Knd doer, writer and lighter of wrongs, nationalist and internationalist-4the great Kropotkin "passed" som c months ago.. The first rriessage concerning his death was subsequently "contradicted, and again, after a lapse of a few days, confirmed- Friends of the noble' old Russian revolutionary have, hoped against hope that the later message also would be contradicted, but so far that hope v has been . m vain, and now there is little doubt as to its. truth. . After the crowded life, and with a knowledge. , the deep knowledge, born of eventful experience, this really true idealist and seeker after the naked truth, has reached the grim, silent majority without having realised m daylight a fraction of the many dreams that filled arid broadened and burdened his midnight soul. He realised, however, 'the brevity and consolation of simple ways and work, and the beauties -of love and social service. He discovered many other things besides these. He found'. that ideals are still ideals ;,tnat his beloved proletarians can err -as blindly, and cruelly at times as the despot; that the mysteries of the human mind and heart are unfathomable and, as obstacles to complete fraternal activity m any Utopia, City of the Sun, or New Atlantis, ■ ■' WELL - NIGH UNSURMOUNTABLE." He saw that the mini and heart dan never be successfully socialised, as these marvellously inscrutable : possessions of man are individualistic, jselfish, deep as infinity and wide as the universe. Man may look at man, but it is only one mask surveying another. The very stars present less mystery . than does man to himself and others Hence to know oneself is the greatest of human achievements, b'iit to know the other fellow, is not .within the powers of all conquering men. The conqueror of the- earth may master the sun, but h,e will never conquer mankind. . Kropotkin arrived at the ultimate opinion slowly, painfully and surely, that the placid fraternal land of Nowhere shall ever remain for the earthbound, mysterious and elusive, yet delightfully apparent at times to the poet and dreamer: ■' Oland^ of Nowhere beckoning From the portals of the sun, I have sought you m the morning •: And ere^my work was done;. I have seen your peaceful vineyards, And heard , sweet voices there — , But you m the evening, 0 golden land— Nowhere. He ; saw many historic changes ana revolutions, and death and the gaoler stalked him for half a century. The greatest revolution Russia experienced or the world probably has seen-— . the sudden dethronement of a mighty Tsar and Tsaric appurtenances, and the giant, spontaneous uprising of hosts of untutored people, found him an exile. He had foreseen and longed for the revolution, but when it did come, the blinding reality of it palled him, and he felt disturbed for the loosened children of his untameable race. With the long trains of absent ones — the torch-bearers iff progress and rational protest— he returned to the land of his fathers. The old tyranny .was utterly vanished, and A STRANGE DAWNING HAD ' ARRIVED — not the dawning of his dreams, but a blood-red dawn, with hammers and battleaxes silhouetted on the walls of \ the cities. Seer though, he was and child of many beautiful 'illusions, he recognised the sen^e of it all m a world seething with* violence and lust. The foreign hosts of Mammon menaced his Russia on every side, and the armed despotism of the Tsars had made way i for the armed defence and dictatorship of the proletariat. The Russians were still spldiers — all soldiers m the gateway of the dawn ! Kropotkin-rubbed his eyes and wondered, but the Teasbns for it all, impressed but did not convince him. What could the poor fellows do? Give up the victory for the sake iof a dream, and be eaten and made dung of by the mad savages of Mammon thundering along the border? Yes, what could the poor fellows do, and what could \Kropotkin do ? He didn't like it at all, but he set to and helped, and warned others not to make the mistakes of Russia. But work, however, willingly he could and others with him, he found that the dictatorship of the proletariat was not social democracy or pacific communism, or communistic anarchy, and that pacific social conditions ;' . COULD NEVER SUDDENLY^ ARISE on the glowing embers of dismantled empires and oligarchic republics. He realised that, the dawn of all wouldnever unfold itself until the collective social intellect, adhesive m cnarity and disrobed of selfishness and suspicion, had mastered the crude; but powerful mentality ot Mammon's lords and dupes. The magic keys were knowledge and love. Thus by a widely different route Krbpotkin arrived at something closely akin to Tolstoys i gospel. , . . Oh what a long, long road to tne portals of the sun. But the sun was really there, and surely some one woula. reach the gates. So Kropotkin, Prince, and Workman, if not Prince of Workmen .worked on and helped, and suffered And still dreaming the old dreams, and many new ones, he passed oat. quietly into the lovely Land of Nowhere: Perhaps somewhere m nightless 1 space The majesty of mind that save Such hope to man, and splendor to <the race Hath found a coronation. V.