Page:Albert Rhys Williams - Through the Russian Revolution (1921).djvu/337

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RETROSPECT
279

which they can struggle. If they fail they will fail with clean shields and clean hearts, having striven for an ideal which will live beyond them. Even if they fail, they will none the less have written a page more daring than any other I can remember in the story of the human race. . . . When in after years men read that page they will judge your country and my country by the help or hindrance they gave to the writing of it."

This appeal was in vain.

As the monarchists of Europe combined to crush the idea loosed on the world by the French Revolution, so the capitalists of Europe and America combined to crush the idea loosed on the world by the Russian Revolution. To these famished, frozen, typhus-stricken Russians sailed no ships of good will laden with books, tools, teachers and engineers but grim ships of war and transports laden with troops and officers, guns and poison-gas. Landings were made at strategic points on the coast of Russia. Monarchists, landlords and Black Hundreds flocked to these rallying centers. New White armies were conscripted, drilled and equipped with hundreds of millions of dollars of supplies. The Interventionists started their drive on Moscow, seeking to plunge the sword into the heart of the Revolution.

Out of the East rolled the hordes of Kolchak following the trail of the Czechs across Siberia. Out of the West struck the armies of Finland, the Letts and Lithuanians. Down from the forests and snow-