“Don’t let that nasty scene deceive you,” he said shortly, “it doesn’t mean that Socialism is dead in London. It means that it is more intelligent. They’ve left off shouting in public and begun to work under cover. This thing to-night proves it.”
The following, from the pen of Vassili Verestchagin, the eminent Russian painter, whose realistic representations of battle scenes have created a great sensation wherever exhibited, and who is also a writer of great ability, will show how the situation in Europe as regards Socialism, Anarchy and Nihilism appears to one close and intelligent observer:
“There is no gainsaying the fact that all the other questions of our time are paling before the question of Socialism that advances on us, threateningly, like a tremendous thunder-cloud.
“The masses that have been for centuries leading a life of expectancy, while hanging on the very borders of starvation, are willing to wait no more. Their former hopes in the future are discarded; their appetites are whetted, and they are clamoring for arrears, which means now the division of all the riches, and so as to make the division more lasting, they are claiming that talents and capacities should be leveled down to one standard, all workers of progress and comfort alike drawing the same pay. They are striving to reconstruct society on new foundations, and, in case of opposition to their aims, they threaten to apply the torch to all the monuments pertaining to an order that, according to them, has already outlived its usefulness; they threaten to blow up the public buildings, the churches, the art galleries, libraries and museums—a downright religion of despair!...
“My friend the late General Skobeleff once asked me, ‘How do you understand the movement of the Socialists and the Anarchists?’ He owned to it that he himself did not understand at all what they aimed at. ‘What do they want? What are they striving to attain?’
“‘First of all,’ I answered, ‘those people object to wars between nations; again, their appreciation of art is very limited, the art of painting not excluded. Thus, if they ever come into power, you, with your strategic combinations, and I, with my pictures, will both be shelved immediately. Do you understand this?’
“‘Yes, I understand this,’ rejoined Skobeleff, ‘and from this on I am determined to fight them.’
“There is no mistaking the fact that, as I have said before, society is seriously threatened at the hands of a large mass of people counting hundreds of millions. Those are the people who, for generations, during entire centuries, have been on the brink of starvation, poorly clad, living in filthy and unhealthy quarters; paupers, and such people as have scarcely any property, or no property at all. Well, who is it that is to blame for their poverty—are they not themselves to be blamed for it?
“No, it would be unjust to lay all the blame at their door; it is more likely that society at large is more to blame for their condition than they are themselves.
“Is there any way out of the situation?