We arrived at Newcastle at midnight on the 19th. Steaming up the Tyne at
night is wonderful, all the arc lights throwing into relief great
machinery and construction. The activity and work looked colossal. How
can Russia fight this iron industrialism? As soon as we had glided
alongside the quay, and I had touched English soil once more, I was not
left in doubt one moment as to the truth of Kameneff’s premonitions.
While the coffins were being opened with chisel and hammer at the Custom
House, reporters, who declared they had come from London and had been
waiting two days, clamoured for information. The head official of the
Customs was very abrupt in his manner and subjected all my luggage to a
most ruthless search. I did not declare the identity of my heads, but
from the unpleasant official attitude I guessed that they were already
known. One official began examining a large album of photographs. I
said to him: “That isn’t contraband, they are photographs of my work;
yes, that one is Mr. Churchill, if it interests you, you may look at
it.” He nearly flung it down. “I’ve no scent and no tobacco, one doesn’t
get those things in Russia,” I said. Unfortunately at that minute he
came upon a packet of Soviet cigarettes, my last ration that I had
carefully kept and brought back to England. But he said: “That is not
what we are looking for.” Whatever he was looking for he didn’t find.
He then poked his arm up to the elbow in the straw and shavings that
wrapped up Dzhirjinsky, until satisfied that it was not a Christmas bran
pie. I then got it nailed down again, and accepted the newspaper
reporters’ invitation to drive with them from the quay to the station.
There another man met me armed with a kodak and a flashlight. I
sympathise with professional keenness, but I will not be butchered to
make a Roman holiday. The moment seemed inappropriate. There were
inebriated young fellows shouting, singing, and falling about the
stations to such an extent that the policeman, who had vainly tried to
look the other way, had finally to take notice, but he had to knock one
of them down before he could arrest him. It was a revolting sight to
which one had grown unaccustomed. I was glad to get into my sleeper and
shut out the sight and sound of Newcastle at midnight.
Since then my soul, my life, my time, has been no longer my own. I have
been pursued, besieged, harassed, feasted, attacked, appraised in turn.
I have seen the anti-Bolshevik in all his glory of prejudice, hate and
bitterness.
The Bolshevik is a new phenomenon, but the anti-Bolshevik is merely
history repeating itself. We read of the same condition of mind in
England after the Napoleonic wars; the same fear of French Revolutionary
ideas, and same action and reactions.
Yet, if people would only realise it, Revolutions are not caused by
propaganda, nor by plots. In Russia the Revolution failed every time it
was organised. It was brought about by cause and effect at the very
moment when the present leaders were in exile in the four corners of the
globe.
Alexinsky says in his “Modern Russia”: “Seek for the cause of Revolution
neither in the ardent propaganda of the Revolutionists--nor in the bad
qualities of monarchs and their advisers, but in the deep and silent
operation of certain forces, which lead new social classes upon the
stage of history.” It is futile to waste hate upon these forces, or to
call them Lenin and Trotsky, when really it is the law of evolution and
change that is demonstrating in certain parts of the earth.
_THE END._
THE BOTOLPH PRINTING WORKS,
8, GATE STREET, KINGSWAY, W.C.2.