The aim of each of these Asiatic conquerors was to control the vast area of the world from the Pacific Ocean to Central Europe. They planned the overthrow, by force and violence, if need be, of all other governments and peoples in their path. Czarist Russia, in 1905, achieved the geographical empires of Genghis Khan, actually peopled by descendants of the same racial elements. Had they not been defeated subsequently by the Japanese, the Czars and their successors probably would have controlled all of China. In this new grouping of mankind, however, it was the half-Tartar Russians and not the Mongols, who were the dominant military factor. Today, the ruling power comes from Moscow, and not from the Mongolian East, except for the infusion of Chinese blood that has resulted from seven hundred years of constant conflict with the Celestial Empire.
With the discovery of America and her tremendous natural resources, the lust for world dominion has increased. Today, Stalin has ambitions for global mastery. His first tools of conquest are the Communists in every country. In February, 1947, as the Communist Convention in London, delegates from thirty-two countries met to reaffirm their pledges to support the Communist Party. These Communists are not members of a political party in the American sense; they are sinister and potentially powerful weapons of the Soviet Government.
Everywhere today, the “New Democracy,” or early Communism, has followed the pattern of the rise of each Asiatic despot. It repeated itself in Moscow in the early Twenties at the death of Lenin, when Stalin and Trotsky struggled for power. China, today, is passing from the first stage, the period of self-denial, of sharing the wealth, of submitting to rigid discipline and purification for “The Cause”—the Sackcloth and Ashes stage. The Chinese Communists are beginning to experience the progressive steps of disillusionment, apprehension and abject terror, as was the lot of millions of Russian peasants during the infamous Thirties.
The great and overpowering tragedy of Communism is that at no stage or time has it ever been the shining Utopia that hypnotizes the credulous common man and woman and some of the dreamers in high places in our own government. It would appear that neither Marx nor Engels understood human psychology or analyzed intelligently the lessons of history, for Socialism, in suppressing individual initiative, inevitably leads to I-Don’t-Care-ism. An economy based on share-and-share-alike, without regard to individual effort, failed in Russia because it put a premium on mediocrity and deprived man of the fruits of his own labor. It had to be replaced with “Stakhanovitism,” or piece work, which the American labor unions have fought constantly in their march toward Socialism. The Russians found that the only way to make men exert themselves without the incentive of reward was through fear of punishment. Thus Socialism has to be enforced by police methods to be at all effective. What is this but dictatorship? Socialism, Communism, Stateism—these can no more be separated from each other than can the component parts of homogenized milk.
Communist leaders, motivated by the promise of power, insist that world revolution is inevitable. The Chinese Communists, for many years, repeated an ancient legend. They said: “The Mongols still are waiting in their felt tents, for the issue to be decided. They are gathering around their yurt fires and chanting together: ‘When that which is harder than rock and stronger than the storm winds shall fail, the Empires of the North Court and the Empires of the South Court shall cease to be; when the White Tsar is no more, and the Son of Heaven has vanished, then the campfires of Genghis Khan will be seen again, and his empire shall stretch over all the earth’.” That prophesy is being fulfilled.
Chapter V
Communist Propaganda
Propaganda, thanks to a better understanding of mass psychology, has become in the past few years almost an exact science as well as an art In the hands of the Communists it is a powerful weapon, so subtle that, as in shadow boxing, one cannot judge the exact position of the enemy. With wily cleverness, it has perverted the meanings of cherished words, so that great national masses of people are no longer aware of their rightful connotations.
We, in the United States, for instance, think of Democracy as the dictionary defines it: “Government in which the supreme power is retained by the people.” The Communists have distorted this by adopting the term “New Democracy,” to represent a Communist controlled state, that is, a dictatorship.
Freedom, a beautiful word, has also been distorted. In a Western democracy, it means “liberation from slavery,” that is, the opportunity to work, live and play where, when and how one chooses, in open competition. In a Communist State, none of these things is possible. There can be no freedom where full regimentation is required. The Soviet’s claim of freeing the peasants from onerous landlords and the workers from grasping capitalists is only a blind. Any poor Chinese on the street soon sadly learns that these are being replaced by more oppressive masters, the Soviet Commissars.