II.
My dear Charles,—The Third International is not a Rugby football match. It is a corporation of thrusters whose prospectus announces that it will very shortly have your blood, having first acquired exclusive rights in your money. Have you two acres and a cow? Have you seven pounds three and threepence in the Post-Office Savings Bank? Have you any blood? Very well, then; this concerns you.
There was a meeting of shareholders in Moscow as recently as July last. The Chairman said: "Gentlemen—I beg your pardon, Comrades,—I am happy to be able to report promising developments. Our main enterprise in Russia, for technical reasons with which I will not now trouble you, is not for the moment profit-producing; but we have been able to promote some successful ventures abroad. In all parts of the civilised world—and Ireland—we may anticipate a distribution of assets in the near future." And among those assets to be parcelled out are, I may say, your acres, your cow, your savings and yourself.
There followed a meeting of the Executive Committee (I wish they would avoid that tactless word "executive," don't you?). Simple and brisk instructions were drafted for foreign agents, bidding them get on with it and not spare themselves, or in any case not spare anyone else. These were inscribed on linen, which was folded over, with the writing inside, and neatly hemmed. Shortly afterwards a number of earnest young men wearing tall collars and an air of exaggerated innocence sought to cross various frontiers and were surprised and offended when rough and rude officials stole their collars and set about taking them to pieces.
I hate to speak slightingly of anyone, but these world-revolutionaries have no business to be so young. According to my view a professor of anarchy and assassination ought to be a man of middle-age with stiff stubble on his chin. He has no business to be a pale and perspiring youth, tending to long back hair and apt to be startled by the slightest sound when he is alone. And what a lot of them write poetry, and such poetry too! That is the manner of the man who is going to seize your house and usurp your cow, while you will be lucky if you are allowed a place on a perch in your own fowl-house.
We had an opportunity of seeing them in procession when a consignment of these world-revolutionaries drove off in state from Berne about the time of the Armistice. I told you, last week, that we had a Legation of them, very kindly lent by the Moscow management, and I also told you that our Italian juggler had let us into the secret of their midnight lucubrations, of which we had duly informed the officials interested in such matters. We had front places when the motor lorry called for them and the military escort arrived to assist all the passengers to take, and keep, their seats. Into the lorry were packed the Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary, the Chargé d'Affaires, the First Secretary, the Second Secretary, the Third Secretary, the Legal and Spiritual Advisers and the Lady Typist. Their features were not easy to distinguish; when the Bolshevists assume dominion over us they will not nationalize our soap. One or two fell out, but were carefully replaced by willing hands and bayonets; and so home.
Now that is a sight you don't often see: a Diplomatique Corps being returned to store in a motor lorry. The disappointing thing about them was that, for all their fiery propaganda and for all their drastic resolutions, never a one of them produced so much as a squib-cracker. The only people to derive any excitement from the affair were the small children, who took it for a circus.
The best they could do for us was a general strike. What all this had to do with trades or unions nobody seemed to know, least of all the workers. But there was an attractive sound about the then novel phrase, "Direct Action," and it gave a sense of useful business to that otherwise over-portly word, "Proletariat." And the local politicians, promised good jobs in Lenin's millennium, made great use of the phrase, "Dictatorship of the Proletariat." Thus many an honest workman joined in under the belief that it meant an extra hour's holiday on Saturdays, an extra hour in bed on Mondays and an extra bob or two of wages.
While it lasts, even a bloodless revolution can be very tiresome; almost as disquieting as a general election. Everybody who isn't revoluting is mobilised to keep the revolution from being molested. There are no trams, because the drivers are demonstrating; no shops, because the shopmen are mobilised; no anything, because everyone is out watching the fun. So you go into the square to watch also. You see little groups of revolutionaries looking sullen and laboriously class-hating. You see a lot of soldiers looking very ordinary but trying not to. The riff-raff scowl at the soldiers, who are ordered out to shoot at them. The soldiers scowl at the riff-raff at whom they are ordered not to shoot. And, for some reason which the experts have not yet fathomed, it always pours with rain.
When we had succeeded in persuading the soldier who was posted to guard our hotel that we were not the proletariat and might safely be let pass, we found a gathering of inside-knowledge people discussing the situation. The Government ought to have known all about it long before—how the Bolshevists were stirring up trouble. "They did," said we; "we told them." There was a silence at this, but a smile on the face of the audience which we at first mistook for incredulity. We referred darkly to our private information, derived, as I told you in my last, from the Italian juggler. "Did he do juggling tricks with your ink-pots too?" asked the French element. "How much money did you give him?" asked all the other elements. "And I suppose he also told you," said the Italian officer, "that he had no confidence in his own people and that the British alone enjoyed his respect?"
At this moment the Americans came in and asked us to quit arguing and attend while they told us how they had unearthed the great plot.... When together we reckoned up the Italian juggler's net takings we realised that it is an ill revolution which brings no one any good.
Yours ever, Henry.