work than workers. This picture changes, however, at the moment the
destruction is fulfilled and the necessity arises for putting things into
order somehow. In spite of the great pretensions, and of all the absurd
complications of the Soviet administrative methods, there are not enough
positions now in Russia to supply with offices all the amateurs of power
palpable and clear to the most primitive mind; — now the offer exceeds the
demand: for not everybody succeeds in finding a place in the Cheka, in
the “political bureau” and in such like omnipotent administrative institu-
tions. Unemployment among the former rulers, which had affected numbers
of people in the higher as well as in the lower strata of the communistic
party in Russia, is the true reason for that ever growing disorganisation
which bears the name of struggle of centre against opposition: there
isn’t enough for every one.
And what a miraculous change would take place should the bloody
Bolshevic flag be hoisted, say, above the palace of the Chinese Emperors in the
inner city of Pekin! What an enormous field, what scope for activity would
reveal itself! It is the scope the Bolshevics never cease to crave for. To
possess themselves of this, is a question of life and death for them. What
is there to be accomplished in such a state of affairs by persuasion,
exhortation and treaties? The generation that has seen with its own eyes
during those October days the destruction of a Great Empire under the
onslaught of a lewd mob, would have to die even to the last man, before
the idea would dawn on the Moscow rulers that the world was not made for
them. And how many generations would need to pass away ere this idea
would become a restraining force!
While rooting below ground, the Bolshevies are also prepared at any
moment to fall upon their neighbours in open war, in the hope of setting
the whole world on fire: that is why they dig at the roots of our civili-
sation, — at a propitious moment they will exert all their strength in
attempting to overthrow it. Of course, one cannot tell when and in what
direction the Bolshevies will make an onslaught, whether it will be directed
to the East, the West or the South-West, — they do not know it themselves;
but the bloody storm, which practically raised them from the bottom to the
crest of the wave, never ceases to fascinate their imagination. And there
is no good in trying to soothe ones apprehension by saying the Bolshevics
are to prudent or too cowardly for it. They are even more lascivious than
cowardly, and as to their prudence, it vanishes whenever there is a chance
for madness: a reckless gamble is the very essence of Bolshevism. That
the force of the Bolshevics is not great, that their very chance of success
is problematic, that is true; but in this fact is little comfort: the great
danger lies already in the attempt. For who can tell what dangers
threaten the world still unsettled after the great shock. should peace at
~~
72x
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