The trouble can only be averted in two ways. One is the systematic inculcation of sound doctrines of economic truth into the minds of the working people of this country. The second, and the more important, is the rooting out of the social evils which furnish the revolutionary with striking and indisputable object-lessons of the failure of the capitalistic system as an agent of human happiness. Without the latter the former effort will be futile. Arguments in favour of the existing order will be refuted by glaring and painful facts. Meanwhile, let the champions of that order take note of the efforts put forth by the Socialists to advertise their eagerness to redress the wrongs of the ex-service men and to soften the asperities of discipline for the soldier. The Socialist leaders have shrewdly taken note of the causes that produced the overthrow of their Italian brethren, and they mean to take such steps as will ensure that if Fascism comes in Britain it will be an ally, and not a foe.
London, April 16th, 1923.
XXVI SHOULD WE MAKE PEACE WITH RUSSIA?
I am frankly delighted that negotiations between Lord Curzon and the Soviet government seem to indicate a genuine desire on the part of both parties to establish a more satisfactory understanding between this country and Russia. The Bolshevist episode, like all revolutionary terrors, has been at times a shrieking nightmare which has made the world shudder. It did render one supreme service to civilisation—it terrified democracy back into sanity just at the time when the nervous excitability that followed the war was bordering on mental instability. In our attitude towards the Soviet government we must, however, constantly bear in mind one consideration. What matters to us is not so much the Russian government as the people of Russia, and for the moment the Bolshevist administration represents the only medium for dealing with that mighty nation. As long as it remains the only constituted authority in Russia, every act of hostility against it injures Russia. As we discovered in 1919, you cannot wage war against the government for the time being of a country without devastating the land and alienating its people. You cannot refuse to trade with it now without depriving its people of commodities—and especially of equipments—essential to their well-being. It is the people, therefore, who would suffer, and it is the people who would ultimately resent that suffering. Governments come and go, but the nation goes on for ever.
The Russian people deserve—especially at the hands of all the Allied nations—every sympathetic consideration we can extend to them. Not only because they have to endure the sway of a tyrannical oligarchy imposing its will by ruthless violence, but even more for the reasons that led to the establishment of that tyranny. If the fruit is bitter we must bear in mind how the tree came to be planted in the soil. It may sound like quoting ancient history to revert to the events of eight or nine years ago, but no one can understand Russia, or do justice to its unhappy people, without recalling the incidents that led to the great catastrophe.
Those who denounce any dealings with the existing order seem to have persuaded themselves that pre-revolutionary Russia was governed by a gentle and beneficent despotism which conferred the blessings of a tolerant and kindly fatherland upon a well-ruled household. In no particular is this a true picture of the ancien régime. The fortress of Peter and Paul was not erected, nor its dungeons dug, by the Bolshevists. Siberia was not set up as a penal settlement for political offenders for the first time—if at all—by the Bolshevists. In 1906 alone 45,000 political offenders were deported to endure the severities of Siberia. Persecution of suspected religious leaders was not started by the Soviets. To them does not belong the discredit of initiating the methods of Pogromism. Under the "paternal" reign of the Tsars dissent from the Orthodox faith was proscribed and persecuted, and the Jews were hunted like vermin.
Let us not forget also that beyond all these circumstances the revolution was rendered inevitable by the ineptitude and corruption of the old system, and especially by the terrible suffering and humiliation which that state of things inflicted on Russia in the Great War.