Russia as Seen by a Trained Investigator

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 11, 25 March 1925, Page 15

Russia as Seen by a Trained Investigator

THE FAMOUS PRESS CORRESPONDENT AND AUTHOR. t [Captain McCullagh. is expected to arrive in New Zealand during the year on a lecture tour.]

Captain Francis McCullagh, famous war correspondent, for many years with . the New York Herald and lately with the London Times and Daily Mail, speaking recently at a dinner given in New .York by Henry W. Marsh to a few of his associates in the American Defence Society laid special stress on the menace of the Soviet philosophy to the religious and spiritual life throughout the world. In part he said: "I have come to speak to you to-night of Russia, a great country which resembles the United States in many of its physical features. Like America, it is of vast extent, impregnable, self-sustaining, capable of supporting a population many times greater than its present illation. . In the matter of physical characteristics there are many points of resemblance between the two countries but, in the matter of religious belief and of historical and social development, there are, on the other hand, few points of resemblance and many points of contrast. "It is a curious fact, that the principle of the Super-State, which we find in Muscovite history as early as the time of- Ivan the Terrible, still remains under the Bolsheviks. The theory of the Super-State was

Lenin's guiding principle. Instead ©f decentralisation, the grant of every kind of freedom (including, of course, religious freedom) and the encouragement of individual initiative, the Bolsheviks have more centralisation than the Tzars had, much less freedom, and no permission at all for individual initiative. Thus, Lenin's cure for Russia was merely an intensification of the evils which had, up to that time, prevented Russia from making much progress. J . "Despite the general impression to the contrary, Lenin made no original discoveries in the science of government, and his Red bureaucracy rules Russia as arbitrarily as the Tzarist bureaucracy did, the only difference being that one is violently anti-Chris-tian and the other is not. I do not mean, of course, that the Tzars were saints, but most of the Tzars believed in the Russian form of Christianity and did their best to make it prevail in their . dominions, while the Bolsheviks, on the other hand, have deliberately set themselves to extirpate Christianity. "I would ask yon to bear in mind what I have, just said about the Super-State of. Lenin being in many respects, similar to the Super-State of the Tzaronly worse.

Just a* the Tzars felt that they should not allow the Uniat Church to exist, so the Bolsheviks are absolutely convinced that they should not allow any kind of church to : exist. The Communist dictatorship of Moscow thinks that it has the right to interfere even in matters of conscience. It has shown in 1 a hundred different ways that such is its conviction. To mention a few of those ways, it has put up alongside the holiest shrine in Moscow a marble slab bearing the words of Karl Marx; ‘ Religion is Opium for the People,” and its whole system of legislation and education are directed to the destruction of Christianity.

“Some of you may feel inclined to ask me if this is not a mere passing phase, a mere incident in a revolutionary outbreak. In ray opinion it is not a passing phase. It is, on the contrary, a permanent feature of the whole Bolshevist theory of the SuperState, and that theory is absolutely subversive of everything in the shape of liberty of conscience or of worship. The laws of a state formed on the Bolshevist model come inevitably into conflict with the Christian law, and the present war against religion in Russia is a development which might have been foreseen from the moment the Bolsheviks seized the reins of power. It is a development which you in this country can only regard with abhorrence as a gospel of tyranny, and which is regarded as such by the majorithy of Christians in Europe, whether those Christians are English Protestants or German Lutherans or Swiss Calvinists or French Catholics.

"In bolshevism there is a good deal of compromise, but it is not the kind of compromise to which we are accustomed in this country. It is a compromise which seeks to lull suspicion with the object of getting home a deadly blow later on. A sort of compromise has been arrived at with capitalism, but this compromise, into which bolshevism has been forced by the necessity of preserving its own existence, means no change of original attitude, for the ultimate' purpose of bolshevism is the utter destruction of capitalism. A similar compromise has been made with a section of the Orthodox L Church, and in this case, also, the ultimate purpose of bolshevism is the destruction of the Orthodox Church. After an orgy of rapine and murder at the expense of that Church, the Soviet Government consents to tolerate such members of it as allow themselves to be absorbed into the nefarious Bolshevist system. Or, to put it differently, the Bolshevist method is to engraft Communism* upon firmly established institutions in the hope eventually of stifling the parent plant. This has been done in the case of the Church, and in the case of the family. ».•-'■ "The Bolsheviks maintain themselves in power by sowing mistrust among their enemies and merciless repression; in other words the Red Terror. "I do not believe that during the last thousand years any European Government. has made such a really serious effort as the Bolsheviks are making to destroy, every form ■ of Christianity,, and every development that we owe to Christianity, and, . indeed, every religion. The anti-religious' excesses com-

mittcd during.the early years. of the first French Republic were directed rather against the dominant religion, and no attempt was made to destroy the Christian basis whereon society was "built. In Russia, on ontrary, the very foundation on which are being torn up from beneath our feet, and there is no knowing what is below. The Bolsheviks, in their histories, \ speak with contempt of the French Revolution as merely a rebellion of the bourgeoisie l against the aristocracy : and their kind, and they speak with much greater contempt /of. the Cromwellian and W{illiamite revolutions as conflicts between the nobility and the .country gentry on the one "side and the | sovereign on the other. They insist that ; their revolution is quite different, and they are right. It is quite different, for in no previous revolution was there such wholesale nationalisation and such an attack on the principle, of private property and of the family. Who can foretell the result of this systematic attempt to destroy the religion which created our modern civilisation? "Since the cutting of the Suez Canal gave the world an idea of the marvels which modern engineering can accomplish, all the ' rulers of the Nile .Valley have exhibited a certain amount of nervousness with regard to the Sudan ; and, I daresay, a great power in possession of the Sudan could, by diverting the course of the Nile, convert Egypt into a desert. In the same way the present very risky experiment which the Reds are carrying out on the Russian branch of the great river of religious truth which flows to us out of the past, may convert all Russia into a spiritual Sahara. And the disaster will not be spiritual only; it will affect every aspect of life in Russia. It will convert the vast empire of Muscovy not only into a desert but also into a plague-spot menacing all Europe and Asia. "I lived in Russia six years, and I know that religion is a factor of enormous political imp or there. You may be a Mohommedan, you may be a Hebrew, you may be an agnostic, but if,' in considering the Russian question, you leave out of account the religion professed by about 80 or 90 million of the people, you are not a statesman. "For the first time in European history I we have the spectacle of a great nation being rapidly de-Christianised, being taught to repudiate the very essentials of Christianity. Some of the results are already visible, but though the horrors apparent in Bolshevism > are very great, they are nothing to the horrors latent in it, or being only slowly reI vealed. We .are, as it were, standing in front of a diabolical apparition whose face, ' the most dreadful part of it, is being slowly j unveiled. "Trotzky describes the Russian Govern- | ment's plans for the break-up of the family : as cold-bloodedly as if he were a keeper in | the zoo talking about the mating' of monkeys. i'jjln their plans for the abolition of |.jjjjhe family, the Bolsheviks have not gone so yfer as has been reported; they have not established free love but the tendency of their, i, recent legislation on marriage and education is all in the direction of that most atrocious doctrine of radical communism, the- doctrine that children belong , absolutely / to . the i; State . and . must c be handed r . over to the State. You will find a project of law on marriage and education in the organ of

the Commissariat of Justice. The Weekly of Soviet Justice it is called, dated September 13, 1923; and in the official Izvestia of May 26, last year, you will find, an article by Kalinin, the President of the Union of Soviet Republics, dealing with 'the question of how to destroy the Christianity of the peasants, as if it were a question of extirpating locusts. However, the abolition of the family is : still > a - thing of the future. Let us come to a-horror that has actually arrived. We st)met'ii|ies c forget that, till comparatively recent times, slavery was the normal condition of most men aiid women, not slavery in the metaphorical sense in which alone it is now used, but slavery/ ; in the literal sense of that dreadful word x \ : sh£-- sense it had in preChristian times.'- '' ••'•'•'..• "It took Christianity a thousand years to abolish slavery, which it did at last, not indeed by direct : decrees but rather by the creation of an atmosphere wherein slavery withered and finally died. Bolshevism has brought it. back, and in some respects the slaves of the Soviet are worse off than the slaves of the ancient Romans, for the Roman slaves belonged mostly to individuals, whereas the Russian slaves belong to the State. Now, an individual has a heart, but a State has none, and this State which the Reds are building up is not only heartless, it has a poison-bag where the heart ought to be. "Russian workmen cannot change their occupation. They cannot go on strike. They cannot form themselves into associations, except Communist associations. They are herded together like, beasts. They are disgracefully underpaid. They cannot write to the newspapers, unless to praise the Government, because all the newspapers are Government property. If they agitate against the Government—which, by a cruel irony, calls itself ' the Government of the Poor and the Oppressed 'they are denounced as enemies of the revolution, hirelings of the capitalists, and, in extreme cases, are imprisoned or shot' without mercy. Only a month or so ago there was a great strike of transport workers in Petrograd, . but the meetings of the strikers were broken up. by the troops and all the leaders arrested. In March, 1919, the workers at Astrakhan went on strike owing to insufferable economic conditions and non-payment of wages; hundreds of these were shot down or drowned in the Volga. - I could give you scores of instances like this. The Soviet Government always takes the same position. It says: .'• We are the Workers' Republic. We are the Revolution personified. How dare you oppose the immutable decision of the workers? How dare 3 t ou/ raise your hand against the Revolution V "The workers might have something to say to this, but they are not allowed to say it or to print it. And, mark you, the majority, of the workmen are now anti-Bolshe-vist, 'but as' they are unarmed, while the Bolshevist workmen are Well armed and drilled and are supported, moreover, by an army which is quite loyal to; - the Soviet which feeds it well, there is no chance of the nonBolshevist workmen overthrowing the Government. />/'Gentlemen, i this whole •= Russian business 'is/an awful instance of the tyranny of words. This junta of desperate men who have, most of \ them, i nothing in common with; "the Rus-

sian workmen} has only to call itself 1 the Workers’ Republic ’ and a large number of well-intentioned enthusiasts throughout -the world throw up their hats and cheer.”