Page:George Lansbury - What I saw in Russia.pdf/136

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WHAT I SAW IN RUSSIA

and blood, they were informed that if any shooting was to be done it would be against the officers. Anarchial as this doctrine sounds in the ears of those in authority, ultimately it is the one and only law of life which will save mankind.

It is authority, man made, man supported, or rather accepted and tolerated, which holds the world in chains. There will be no more wars, no more bloody revolutions, once the workers in all countries absolutely refuse under any conditions to kill one another. I am certain that, apart from all other economic questions, apart from all questions of terrorism or anything else, the one and only thing which has rallied the Churchills, Clemenceaus and other supporters of capitalism against Soviet Russia, is this fact, that once the workers of the world can be made to understand that, by complete unity of action, and refusal to obey the order to shoot, they can emancipate themselves, the whole business of capitalist society is at an end and the social revolution will be an accomplished fact.

That day is not yet. In Russia, as everywhere else, it was and is an active virile self-confident minority which for the past two and a half years has carried on the revolution. All the time, they have been beset by hosts of internal and external foes. Lenin and his friends were no sooner settled in power than