The Beauty and the Bolshevist

by Alice Duer Miller

Cord turned sharply to Crystal. “Does what I think make any difference to you?” he asked.

“A lot, dear,” she answered, “but I don’t understand. You never seemed so much opposed to the radical doctrine.”

“No, it’s the radical, not the doctrine, your father objects to,” said Ben.

“Exactly,” answered Mr. Cord. “You’ve put it in a nutshell. Crystal, I’m going to tell you what these radicals really are—they’re failures—everyone of them. Sincere enough—they want the world changed because they haven’t been able to get along in it as it is—they want a new deal because they don’t know how to play their cards; and when they get a new hand, they’ll play it just as badly. It’s not their theories I object to, but them themselves. You think if you married Moreton you’d be going into a great new world of idealism. You wouldn’t. You’d be going into a world of failure—of the pettiest, most futile quarrels in the world. The chief characteristic of the man who fails is that he always believes it’s the other fellow’s fault; and they hate the man who differs with them by one per cent more than they hate the man who differs by one hundred. Has there ever been a revolution where they did not persecute their fellow revolutionists worse than they persecuted the old order, or where the new rule wasn’t more tyrannical than the old?”

“No one would dispute that,” said Ben. “It is the only way to win through to—”

“Ah,” said Cord, “I know what you’re going to say, but I tell you, you win through to liberal practices when, and only when, the conservatives become converted to your ideas, and put them through for you. That’s why I say I have no quarrel with radical doctrines—they are coming, always coming, but”—Cord paused to give his words full weight—“I hate the radical.”

There was a little pause. Crystal, who had sunk into a low chair, raised her eyes to Ben, as if she expected a passionate contradiction from him, but it did not come.

“Yes,” he said, after a moment, “that’s all true, Mr. Cord—with limitations; but, granting it, you’ve put my side, too. What are we to say of the conservative—the man who has no vision of his own—who has to go about stealing his beliefs from the other side? He’s very efficient at putting them into effect—but efficient as a tool, as a servant. Look at the mess he makes of his own game when he tries to act on his own ideas. He crushes democracy with an iron efficiency, and he creates communism. He closes the door to trade-unionism and makes a revolution. That’s efficiency for you. We radicals are not so damned inefficient, while we let the conservatives do our work for us.”

“Well, let it be revolution, then,” said Cord. “I believe you’re right. It’s coming, but do you want to drag a girl like Crystal into it? Think of her! Say you take her, as I suppose a young fellow like you can do. She’d have perhaps ten years of an exciting division of allegiance between your ideas and the way she had been brought up, and the rest of her life (for, believe me, as we get older we all return to our early traditions)—the rest of her life she’d spend regretting the ties and environment of her youth. On the other hand, if she gives you up she will have regrets, too, I know, but they won’t wreck her and embitter her the way the others will.”

Ben’s face darkened. No man not a colossal egotist could hear such a prophesy with indifference. He did not at once answer, and then he turned to Crystal.