people wealthy, enlightened and in a position to command, are sighing for
the promised land of Bolshevism. In our time there are people paid by the
government of some country or another — professors, scientists, tutors of
the young — who, when the condition of a people’s life under Bolshevic
rule is pointed out to them, reply: Wait, there will be a new life there
in 300 years. What daring imagination 300 years ago could have fancied
the present-day Europe! And, behold! — all these riches already acquired
and growing with every hour, riches in every sense of the word, — the
culture that created it all and still continues to create it, — all this, such
people are ready to betray and to sell without wavering or hesitation for the
mere shadow of an unknown welfare which is to arise in times unknown;
they are ready to do so although on the road they propose to travel, they
see only an abomination of desolation; they see in the great destruction
the pledge of a greater creation. There is enough in this to cause everyone
who prizes our culture, and in whom the sense of responsibility for the
values entrusted to us by our fathers has not died, to think seriously about
the matter.
So is the existence of a power in the hands of the very worst in itself
a constant source of pernicious poison, corrupting morally and physically.
The Bolshevics, however, do all men can possibly do in order to spread it
wider and make it penetrate deeper, and — as already mentioned — have
no alternative but to do so. Only he who does not know the Bolshevics
and their circumstances can give credence to the thought that by an explicit
and rigid treaty they can be made to abandon their impudent and lewd
propaganda. It is not only their absolute dishonesty which they have raised
to a principle that is of importance, but also their woeful impotence in
anything except verbal debauch. Perched on the cinders of the house burnt
by their own hands, these helpless beggars, ignorant and unskilled, branded
with the mark of Cain, rotting alive, — what do they signify, what can
they signify in this great mighty and growing world! What do they
signify in spite of their mastery over an enormous country with its many
millions of population?! Only after they had covered Europe and all the
globe with a net-work of communistic “cells”, did the Bolshevics become
an omni-present force, in a position to undermine and to root about
everywhere.
Will any benefit arise out of it for them? Do they not precipitate their
own end? How could they think of it, or even give a thought to it —
they have no time to consider! They protect themselves as well as they can,
and by whatever means they know. The bull fights with his horns, a well-
known little animal with its evil-smelling jet, and the Bolshevic with his
evil-smelling propaganda. To renounce the latter, even for a short time,
would mean destroying the whole complicated system of secret bonds which
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