The book now before us came through the mails, bearing no indication as to the sender; and examination of the contents quickly reveals the reason. Those who print and circulate the volume know that in so doing they render themselves liable to the lethal gas chamber. Nevertheless, they are impelled by fanaticism to incur the risk, so here is the result on our desk. Technically, we believe the editor incurs penalties by keeping the volume, instead of turning it over to the police authorities. But it seems to us a matter of importance that the public should know what sort of material is now being circulated among the populace, and for that reason we give an account of the contents of the “Communist Almanac for 1944.”
It is perhaps a natural tendency of the human mind, an inevitable process of history, that holders of proscribed opinions should see themselves as martyrs, and endeavor to capitalize their sufferings for political advantage. So, ever since the extermination of the Soviet government by the armed forces of the civilized world, the surviving Communists, hiding in forests and holes in the ground, have been seeing themselves as founders of a new religion. In this document which they now put before us, we find the creed and ritual of this monstrous perversion of the so-called proletarian mind, together with the biographies of its founder and the acts of its leading martyrs.
The founder is Nikolai Lenin, and, incredible as it may seem, this person has been selected for sanctification! A couple of years before his death, an almost successful attempt was made to assassinate him, and the bullets then shot into his body are said to have been the final cause of his death. That is sufficient to constitute martyrdom in the Soviet formula, and to entitle Vladimir Ulianov to become a legend. For a year after his death the Soviet government attempted to preserve his body in mummy form; but this kind of immortality being unattainable, the body was buried, and soon afterwards rumors began to spring up all over Russia to the effect that Lenin had come back to life, and was reappearing to his followers, giving them advice about the management of his Bolshevik dictatorship. That was a miracle; so now Lenin is a divine personage, and those who died in the faith of the “proletarian” revolution are martyrs and saints. At least, that is the thesis of the “Communist Almanac for 1944.”
The volume opens with no less than four biographies of the founder, alleged to have been composed by different followers who knew him intimately, Mattiu Shipinsky, Marco Sugarmann, Luka Herzkovitz, and Ivan Petchnikoff. The last, it appears, is a kind of philosopher, and provides for the Bolshevik cult the mantle of a mystical and metaphysical system. It is amusing to note that the four biographies go into minute detail—and differ as to many of these details! They purport to quote their founder verbatim—and his words on the same occasions are seldom the same words! Most absurd yet, they cannot even agree about his ancestry! In fact, they cannot agree about anything, except that he was the most remarkable person who has ever lived on earth, the bearer of a new revelation to mankind.
Following the biographies, the “Almanac” proceeds to a long recital of the doings of various propagandists of the cult, their travels over the world in the interest of the “class struggle,” and the persecutions to which they were subjected in various countries. It is a melancholy duty to record that among these emissaries of disaster were several of American birth and ancestry. One of the easy ways of achieving sanctification under the Bolshevik system is to be bitten by a body-louse, and to die of typhus. So among the Soviet apostles we find the figure of John Reed, graduate of Harvard University, and traitor to his country and his race.
Next we have various communications from these agents of social chaos, addressed to their deluded followers. This part of the volume is almost comical, in the solemnity with which these precious words are recorded and preserved for the benefit of posterity. Needless to say, the communications contain exhortations to the party members to remain steadfast in the faith, and to carry the message to their fellow “wage-slaves.” This portion of the volume is known as the “Epistles”—the word “epistle” being Russian for letter.
Finally, there is a collection of miscellaneous prophesyings, attributed to a former commissar under the Russian Bolshevik government. All we can say concerning this part of the volume is that we have been unable to find out what it means, and it seems destined to serve as an inspiration to all the lunatics and would-be prophets of the next two thousand years. It is called “Revelations,” and closes the amazing volume.
We think the time has come when public sentiment should make plain that the present laxity of the Department of Justice toward Communist agitators, and the whole tribe of “parlor Bolsheviks” and “pinks,” will no longer be tolerated. We should be sorry to see this country return to the old days of the Democratic and Republican parties, and the oil scandals of the Harding-Coolidge era. But when we read a collection of perversities such as this “Communist Almanac,” we cannot but sigh for the return of Palmer and Daugherty, when red-blooded hundred per cent Americans set to work with vigor to preserve their country from the fanatical propagandists of class greed.
CHAPTER XIV
GOD’S PROPAGANDA
We have before us another literary criticism, clipped from the “Roman Times Weekly Review of Books” during the year 300, under the Emperor Diocletian. It is word for word the same as that from the “American Times” of 1944—the only difference being that one deals with an outlaw party known as Bolsheviks, while the other deals with an outlaw sect known as Christians. The Founder of this latter sect is described by the “Roman Times” as a proletarian criminal, who was crucified for disturbing the public peace under the Emperor Augustus Cæsar. His followers have been hiding in catacombs and tombs, carrying on incessant propaganda in defiance of the Roman law. In place of John Reed, the “Roman Times” refers to a certain Paul, a renegade Roman gentleman and former official of the empire. The good old days to which the “Roman Times” looks back with longing, are the days of Nero, when these incendiary fanatics were boiled in oil or fed to the lions. Under the prodding of this most respectable “Times,” the Emperor Diocletian undertook a new and ferocious persecution of the sect; but twenty-four years afterwards the successor of Diocletian became converted to Christianity, and adopted it as the official religion of the state, entitled to persecute other religions.