MY DEAR CHARLES,--The Third International is not a Rugby football match.
It is a corporation of thrusters whose prospectus announces that it will
very shortly have your blood, having first acquired exclusive rights in
your money. Have you two acres and a cow? Have you seven pounds three
and threepence in the Post-Office Savings Bank? Have you any blood? Very
well, then; THIS CONCERNS YOU.
There was a meeting of shareholders in Moscow as recently as July last.
The Chairman said: "Gentlemen--I beg your pardon, Comrades,--I am happy
to be able to report promising developments. Our main enterprise in
Russia, for technical reasons with which I will not now trouble you, is
not for the moment profit-producing; but we have been able to promote
some successful ventures abroad. In all parts of the civilised
world--and Ireland--we may anticipate a distribution of assets in the
near future." And among those assets to be parcelled out are, I may say,
your acres, your cow, your savings and yourself.
There followed a meeting of the Executive Committee (I wish they would
avoid that tactless word "executive," don't you?). Simple and brisk
instructions were drafted for foreign agents, bidding them get on with
it and not spare themselves, or in any case not spare anyone else. These
were inscribed on linen, which was folded over, with the writing inside,
and neatly hemmed. Shortly afterwards a number of earnest young men
wearing tall collars and an air of exaggerated innocence sought to cross
various frontiers and were surprised and offended when rough and rude
officials stole their collars and set about taking them to pieces.
I hate to speak slightingly of anyone, but these world-revolutionaries
have no business to be so young. According to my view a professor of
anarchy and assassination ought to be a man of middle-age with stiff
stubble on his chin. He has no business to be a pale and perspiring
youth, tending to long back hair and apt to be startled by the slightest
sound when he is alone. And what a lot of them write poetry, and such
poetry too! That is the manner of the man who is going to seize your
house and usurp your cow, while you will be lucky if you are allowed a
place on a perch in your own fowl-house.
We had an opportunity of seeing them in procession when a consignment of
these world-revolutionaries drove off in state from Berne about the time
of the Armistice. I told you, last week, that we had a Legation of them,
very kindly lent by the Moscow management, and I also told you that our
Italian juggler had let us into the secret of their midnight lucubrations,
of which we had duly informed the officials interested in such matters.
We had front places when the motor lorry called for them and the
military escort arrived to assist all the passengers to take, and keep,
their seats. Into the lorry were packed the Minister Plenipotentiary and
Envoy Extraordinary, the Chargé d'Affaires, the First Secretary, the
Second Secretary, the Third Secretary, the Legal and Spiritual Advisers
and the Lady Typist. Their features were not easy to distinguish; when
the Bolshevists assume dominion over us they will not nationalize our
soap. One or two fell out, but were carefully replaced by willing hands
and bayonets; and so home.
Now that is a sight you don't often see: a Diplomatique Corps being
returned to store in a motor lorry. The disappointing thing about them
was that, for all their fiery propaganda and for all their drastic
resolutions, never a one of them produced so much as a squib-cracker.
The only people to derive any excitement from the affair were the small
children, who took it for a circus.
The best they could do for us was a general strike. What all this had to
do with trades or unions nobody seemed to know, least of all the
workers. But there was an attractive sound about the then novel phrase,
"Direct Action," and it gave a sense of useful business to that
otherwise over-portly word, "Proletariat." And the local politicians,
promised good jobs in LENIN'S millennium, made great use of the phrase,
"Dictatorship of the Proletariat." Thus many an honest workman joined in
under the belief that it meant an extra hour's holiday on Saturdays, an
extra hour in bed on Mondays and an extra bob or two of wages.
While it lasts, even a bloodless revolution can be very tiresome; almost
as disquieting as a general election. Everybody who isn't revoluting is
mobilised to keep the revolution from being molested. There are no
trams, because the drivers are demonstrating; no shops, because the
shopmen are mobilised; no anything, because everyone is out watching the
fun. So you go into the square to watch also. You see little groups of
revolutionaries looking sullen and laboriously class-hating. You see a
lot of soldiers looking very ordinary but trying not to. The riff-raff
scowl at the soldiers, who are ordered out to shoot at them. The
soldiers scowl at the riff-raff at whom they are ordered not to shoot.
And, for some reason which the experts have not yet fathomed, it always
pours with rain.
When we had succeeded in persuading the soldier who was posted to guard
our hotel that we were not the proletariat and might safely be let pass,
we found a gathering of inside-knowledge people discussing the
situation. The Government ought to have known all about it long
before--how the Bolshevists were stirring up trouble. "They did," said
we; "we told them." There was a silence at this, but a smile on the face
of the audience which we at first mistook for incredulity. We referred
darkly to our private information, derived, as I told you in my last,
from the Italian juggler. "Did he do juggling tricks with _your_
ink-pots too?" asked the French element. "How much money did _you_ give
him?" asked all the other elements. "And I suppose he also told you,"
said the Italian officer, "that he had no confidence in his own people
and that the British alone enjoyed his respect?"
At this moment the Americans came in and asked us to quit arguing and
attend while they told us how they had unearthed the great plot.... When
together we reckoned up the Italian juggler's net takings we realised
that it is an ill revolution which brings no one any good.
Yours ever,
HENRY.
(_To be continued._)
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