TOPICS OF THE DAY.
BOLSHEVISM AT HOME AND ABROAD.
THE anniversary week of the outbreak of the war finds the Western world, instead of contentedly settling down, repairing the fissures in its edifice, and replenishing its stocks, anxiously reading the latest telegrams and wonder- ing whether once more we shall be plunged into a great war. The signs, when we write on Thursday, are ominous indeed, but though the worst may easily come, we do not despair, as there are indications that if statesmanship is allowed reasonable opportunities the situation may yet be retrieved. But will statesmanship, even if we can confidently count on statesmanship doing itself justice, be allowed full play ? Everything depends upon whether the Russian Bolsheviks want peace or war. In spite of all the clumsiness of the Allies in the past, in spite of their short-sighted failure to restrain Poland, and in spite of the heavy and disastrous ambitions of Poland herself, the world can undoubtedly have peace if the Bolsheviks want it.
If the Bolsheviks decide on war the whole peace settle- ment will probably go by the board. It is necessary to face the facts clearly. Some despairing critics might tell us even now that the settlement of Versailles is dead— that Alsace-Lorraine will no doubt remain in French hands, and that Northern Slesvig will no doubt belong in future to Denmark, but that absolutely nothing else is certain. If the Bolsheviks are really intent upon a great Westward advance, there is, of course, no saying what Germany will do. She is bound to be affected by that advance, and affected radically. So far as we can learn, militarism is very unpopular now in Germany, but circumstances might well bring greater opportunities and more power to the malignant minorities in Germany if the Russian advance were pressed far enough. The Spartacists might want to join hands with the Bolsheviks, and moderate Germans, weary of war and militarism though they are, might turn to the professional soldier for protection from fanaticism. But when once the leadership of the professional soldier had been again accepted, it would be impossible to prophesy what might happen. We must not forget that even the Germans who are by no means militarists loathe the Treaty of Versailles, and will not be averse from considering possible means of entirely destroying it. The Times of Thursday published an extraordinary statement from a correspondent about the conclusion of a secret treaty between the Russian Soviet and Germany a few weeks before the Polish offensive began. The Times does not accept the statement as necessarily true, but it is plainly inclined to think that there is something in it. If there should be any substantial truth in the allegation that Germany and Russia have agre2d jointly to exploit Poland, we should have to admit that we were dealing with people capable of the most disgraceful duplicity. It would mean that the Bolsheviks, when they profess their willingness for peace, are merely telling lies in order to gain time ; and it would mean that the Germans, in spite of their fashionable doctrine about "the Great Slav Danger "—a danger as widely preached now as it was even before the war—are willing to expose themselves to that danger rather than be loyal to the Treaty which they have promised to carry out.
We wish that the Government had applied the simplest of all tests to Russia's good faith by agreeing to a conference without conditions. As it is' an excuse has been given to the Russians to say that the Allies are trying by side winds to introduce conditions which Lenin has already rejected. While the parleys continue, so also do the rout of the Poles and the advance of the Reds. But although the conditions of the conference apparently pressed upon Mr. Lloyd George by the French seem to us unwise, there can still be no doubt, as we have already said, that the Bolsheviks could have peace to-morrow if they wanted it. They know this perfectly well. If they persist in war Lenin and Trotsky will be no more capable than anyone else of controlling events ultimately. It is said that already there is a rift among the Bolshevik leaders. Lenin, it may be, is not disinclined for peace, and in the past he has been able to get his way. But the Russian Revolu- tionary Army is becoming gradually a more closely welded and practised instrument of war. If that army should become fired with the lust of conquest it might turn into another Grand Army, and we should have an exact repeti- tion of what happened after the French Revolution. The unwilling French recruits who ran away at Neerwinden in the early stages of the Revolution became by slow degrees the greatest and most efficient army the world had ever known. The soldier instead of being the servant became the master, and Napoleon was able to destroy his employers—the Directory—and place a relation upon nearly every throne in Europe. Russia has yet to find her Napoleon ; nor is Russia France. The coming Russian adventurer has yet to break with Lenin and Trotsky, and of course might be thwarted early in his career by that fundamental Russian impracticability which might cause a hopeless failure in the supply of his materials of war. We are dealing not with physical probabilities, but rather with the motives which history has taught us might well up at such a time as this.
With such appalling dangers ahead we do not, of course, want to say a word that might seem captious or as deter- ring the Government from calling upon the nation to do its duty if the Bolsheviks lay a terrible duty upon us. The fact that Poland has behaved foolishly does not in the very least degree alter the fact that we must do our best to save Poland from annihilation. It is a puzzle, however, to know what we can do. If the Polish demoralization is as complete as we are led to believe, to send m,unitions would be only to make pres2nts to the Bolsheviks. Again, it would be impos- sible for us to raise a large Army for sarviee in Poland. As it is, the Reds seem to be forcing a Soviet system of government on those parts of Poland which they have already occupied. Such, however, is our belief in the deep-down good sense of British working men that we are convinced that if they recognized that the Bolsheviks meant to impose their odious and cruel tyranny upon as much of the world as they could conquer, the British workers would refuse to allow such a thing so far as it lay in their power to prevent it.
No doubt the British working man flirted with the idea of Bolshevism till he began to suspect what it meant. Since then, thanks to the tactical blunder of Mr. Lansbury, who has said that industrial conscription or slavery, in a great cause may be worth while, and thanks also to the unvarnished accounts of Labour delegates who have visited Russia, the British working man has had his eyes pretty well opened. If he wanted more evidence he certainly had it in the astonishing reply issued by the Third (or Communist) International at Moscow, to a series of questions asked by the Independent Labour Party. The Moscow Bolsheviks tell the British worker that he should prepare "not for an easy Parliamentary victory, but for victory by a heavy Civil War." The reply then draws a nightmare picture of Communism, first establishing itself everywhere in Europe and then joining hands with "the nations of the East to remove the last vestiges of Parlia- mentary government in Great Britain and America. No wonder that even Mr. Ramsay MacDonald is horrified, and expresses his horror in the Socialist organ Forward, though it is only just to say that Mr. Ramsay MacDonald and Mr. and Mrs. Snowden mistrusted Bolshevism from the beginning and saw what it would lead to. As Mr. MacDonald says, what the Russians call Socialism is only, after all, the seizure of power by a few men. It is an old, old story, and an old imposture, but it has perhaps been more bloodily written by the Bolsheviks than ever before. In articles published in the Morning Post the Duke of North- umberland has also done excellent service in describing the operations of Russian Bolshevism here and in Ireland. He writes temperately, and is well equipped with infor- mation. He is specially wise in pointing out that though these influences capture only the minority, it is always a minority with the power to intimidate that makes a revolution. When the majority recognize what the minority are plotting they are half-way towards safety. This tremendous question of revolution, seen in its most obvious form in Russia, but feeling its way already into the heart of our own land, is one about which the British working man may be required finally to make up his raiad within a very few weeks.
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