The World Significance of the Russian Revolution/Section 17
XVII. Our "Policy."
The complete failure of the Allied politicians even to grasp the meaning of the International-Communistic-Futurist-Sadistic movement, vaguely called Bolshevism, has resulted in a complete absence of policy in dealing with the situation. By attempting to fight against a movement they failed either to understand or guess the nature of, they directly fostered the very conditions upon which it thrived.
Two conditions are necessary in fighting any movement. It is first of all essential to know exactly what is being fought, and secondly, a perfectly definite and positive principle must be opposed to it. This positive principle has never been used to oppose it, see § VII. p. 15–17. No mere "anti" movement has ever triumphed. The struggle in Russia has been a three-cornered one. The initial phase saw the overthrow of the forces of national solidarity by the combined forces of Social-Revolutionary-bourgeois-commercialism (the middle) and the revolutionary-international-communistic-Jewish (the extreme) group.
Power quickly passed from the middle to the extreme. The middle, the Kerensky party, was the party of compromise, indecision, vacillation, greedy opportunism, inept utopianism and hopeless incompetence. The middle was aided by the extreme in the initial stage for the latter's own purpose, and cast aside as soon as it had served its purpose. In the same way the extreme was also aided by Germany, who hoped thereby to score against the Allies.
From the time of the overthrow of the middle by the Bolsheviks, the armed struggle has been between these two, that is to say, between the first revolution and the second revolution. Now at last the middle, the party of invertebrate incompatibles, has finally been submerged, in spite of the vacillating and bewildered assistance that the middle has received from England and the Allies.
From the very first we characteristically backed the "wrong horse," and the sooner we recognise that fact the better. Had we backed Korniloff in April, 1917, against the forces of anarchy and disruption, even if that assistance had been purely "moral" assistance, it might already have been too late; on the other hand, it might have turned the scales and preserved Russia for herself and also for us, her Allies. Instead we chose to throw the weight of our support, moral, financial, and eventually in armed forces, on the side of the feeblest traitor who ever ruined his country. And why should this revolutionary solicitor of the German firm of "Kunst and Alberst" (whose members were interned as German Agents by the Russian Government at the beginning of the war), why should this incompetent intriguer have received our support? Was it only because he lent his hand to the overthrow of monarchy—monarchy, which Englishmen appear to regard as a crime in any country except their own? And yet it is only a monarchy restored, purified, and constitutionally established, which can restore to Russia her national life and soul, and which alone can protect her, and indirectly us too, from the exploitation, both of International anarchists, and revengeful Germany.
The time is now past when Russia can be assisted by armed forces from outside in regaining control of her own national life. The regeneration must come from inside. It will be well for us if it does not come in the person of another Napoleon burning with a bitter sense of wrong against the Allies who deserted Russia in the hour of her downfall. What do the Russian people, caught in the meshes of an alien and international conspiracy, think now of those "fine" words of the Allied spokesman in the beginning of 1918: "The whole heart of our people is with the people of Russia in the attempt to free themselves and to become the master of their own life." And again, when at the Peace Conference, the same spokesman, speaking of his own people, said: "They came as crusaders, not merely to win a war, but to win a cause; … and I, like them, must be a crusader for these things, whatever it costs, and whatever it may be necessary to do, in honour, to accomplish the object for which they fought."—(President Wilson at Paris, Jan. 25th, 1919.) If he has won a cause, it is Lenin's cause, whose contempt and derision he has earned in winning it!
Now the time has come when Russia, left to her own resources, must regenerate herself from within, if she would free herself from the crazy paranoiacs and parasites who are sucking her life's blood. We can only try to understand her troubles and help her, where we can, in regaining her national life. Though we have helped her little enough, she may yet have helped us, by teaching us to look to our own health, and to take early precautions against the disease through which she is passing. Thus we may learn to distinguish between the empty catch-words and decoy-cries and the motives and ills that cause them to become the powerful agents of destruction. There is no smoke without fire. Let us pay heed to the cries, not to the crazy remedies wrung from distracted brains.
The pages of history are blackened with the records of the misery and suffering men have created for themselves, of countless human holocausts as horrible and senseless as those of Dahomey, whose tortured victims have been destroyed—self-immolated, for the most part—on the altars raised to vain words and meaningless symbols. And still their crazy priests and fanatical votaries, mad with frenzy and drunk with blood, shriek for ever more victims, never content until the whole world is infected with their madness and rocks helpless in an orgy of self-destruction.