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 music was heard, and the gay company fell to waltzing away the hours. Meanwhile, from below on the road level, there streamed out of the darkness on either side of the building and up the half-lit steps, their fetters ringing in harmony with the music, the enslaved and toiling masses coming in response to command to build the monument for their masters. It is impossible to describe the exquisite beauty of the slow movement of those dark figures aslant the broad flight of steps; individual expressions were of course indistinguishable, and yet the movement and attitude of the groups conveyed pathos and patient endurance as well as any individual speech or gesture in the ordinary theatre. Some groups carried hammer and anvil, and others staggered under enormous blocks of stone. Love for the ballet has perhaps made the Russians understand the art of moving groups of actors in unison. As I watched these processions climbing the steps in apparently careless and spontaneous fashion, and yet producing so graceful a result, I remembered the mad leap of the archers down the stage in _Prince Igor_, which is also apparently careless and spontaneous and full of wild and irregular beauty, yet never varies a hair-breadth from one performance to the next.

For a time the workers toiled in the shadow in their earthly world, and dancing continued in the lighted


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 paradise of the rulers above, until presently, in sign that the monument was complete, a large yellow disc was hoisted amid acclamation above the highest platform between the columns. But at the same moment a banner was uplifted amongst the people, and a small figure was seen gesticulating. Angry fists were shaken and the banner and speaker disappeared, only to reappear almost immediately in another part of the dense crowd. Again hostility, until finally among the French workers away up on the right, the first Communist manifesto found favour. Rallying around their banner the _communards_ ran shouting down the steps, gathering supporters as they came. Above, all is confusion, kings and queens scuttling in unroyal fashion with flying velvet robes to safe citadels right and left, while the army prepares to defend the main citadel of capitalism with its golden disc of power. The _communards_ scale the steps to the fortress which they finally capture, haul down the disc and set their banner in its place. The merry music of the _Carmagnole_ is heard, and the victors are seen expressing their delight by dancing first on one foot and then on the other, like marionettes. Below, the masses dance with them in a frenzy of joy. But a pompous procession of Prussian legions is seen approaching, and, amid shrieks and wails of despair, the people are driven

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 back, and their leaders set in a row and shot. Thereafter came one of the most moving scenes in the drama. Several dark-clad women appeared carrying a black pall supported on sticks, which they set in front of the bodies of the leaders so that it stood out, an irregular pointed black shape against the white columns behind. But for this melancholy monument the stage was now empty. Thick clouds of black smoke arose from braziers on either side and obscured the steps and the platform. Through the smoke came the distant sound of Chopin's _Marche Funèbre_, and as the air became clearer white figures could be dimly seen moving around the black pall in a solemn dance of mourning. Behind them the columns shone ghostly and unreal against the glimmering mauve rays of an uncertain and watery dawn.

The second part of the pageant opened in July 1914. Once again the rulers were feasting and the workers at toil, but the scene was enlivened by the presence of the leaders of the Second International, a group of decrepit professorial old men, who waddled in in solemn procession carrying tomes full of international learning. They sat in a row between the rulers and the people, deep in study, spectacles on nose. The call to war was the signal for a dramatic appeal from the workers to these leaders, who refused to accept the Red Flag, but weakly received patriotic


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 flags from their respective governments. Jaurès, elevated to be the symbol of protest, towered above the people, crying in a loud voice, but fell back immediately as the assassin's shot rang out. Then the people divided into their national groups and the war began. It was at this point that "God Save the King" was played as the English soldiers marched out, in a comic manner which made one think of it as "_Gawd_ save the King." Other national anthems were burlesqued in a similar fashion, but none quite so successfully. A ridiculous effigy of the Tsar with a knout in his hand now occupied the symbolic position and dominated the scene. The incidents of the war which affected Russia were then played. Spectacular cavalry charges on the road, marching soldiers, batteries of artillery, a pathetic procession of cripples and nurses, and other scenes too numerous to describe, made up that part of the pageant devoted to the war.

Then came the Russian Revolution in all its stages. Cars dashed by full of armed men, red flags appeared everywhere, the people stormed the citadel and hauled down the effigy of the Tsar. The Kerensky Government assumed control and drove them forth to war again, but soon they returned to the charge, destroyed the Provisional Government, and hoisted all the emblems of the Russian Soviet


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 Republic. The Entente leaders, however, were seen preparing their troops for battle, and the pageant went on to show the formation of the Red Army under its emblem the Red Star. White figures with golden trumpets appeared foretelling victory for the proletariat. The last scene, the World Commune, is described in the words of the abstract, taken from a Russian newspaper, as follows:-- Cannon shots announce the breaking of the blockade against Soviet Russia, and the victory of the World Proletariat. The Red Army returns from the front, and passes in triumphant review before the leaders of the Revolution. At their feet lie the crowns of kings and the gold of the bankers. Ships draped with flags are seen carrying workers from the west. The workers of the whole world, with the emblems of labour, gather for the celebration of the World Commune. In the heavens luminous inscriptions in different languages appear, greeting the Congress: "Long live the Third International! Workers of the world, unite! Triumph to the sounds of the hymn of the World Commune, the 'International'." Even so glowing an account, however, hardly does it justice. It had the pomp and majesty of the Day of Judgment itself. Rockets climbed the skies and peppered them with a thousand stars, fireworks blazed on all sides, garlanded and beflagged ships moved up and down the river, chariots bearing the emblems of prosperity, grapes and corn, travelled slowly along the road. The Eastern peoples came


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 carrying gifts and emblems. The actors, massed upon the steps, waved triumphant hands, trumpets sounded, and the song of the International from ten thousand throats rose like a mighty wave engulfing the whole.

Though the end of this drama may have erred on the side of the grandiose, this may perhaps be forgiven the organizers in view of the occasion for which they prepared it. Nothing, however, could detract from the beauty and dramatic power of the opening and of many of the scenes. Moreover, the effects obtained by movement in the mass were almost intoxicating. The first entrance of the masses gave a sense of dumb and patient force that was moving in the extreme, and the frenzied delight of the dancing crowd at the victory of the French _communards_ stirred one to ecstasy. The pageant lasted for five hours or more, and was as exhausting emotionally as the Passion Play is said to be. I had the vision of a great period of Communist art, more especially of such open-air spectacles, which should have the grandeur and scope and eternal meaning of the plays of ancient Greece, the mediæval mysteries, or the Shakespearean theatre. In building, writing, acting, even in painting, work would be done, as it once was, by groups, not by one hand or mind, and evolution would proceed slowly until once again the individual emerged from the mass.


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In considering Education under the Bolshevik régime, the same two factors which I have already dealt with in discussing art, namely industrial development and the communist doctrine, must be taken into account. Industrial development is in reality one of the tenets of Communism, but as it is one which in Russia is likely to endanger the doctrine as a whole I have thought it better to consider it as a separate item.

As in the matter of art, so in education, those who have given unqualified praise seem to have taken the short and superficial view. It is hardly necessary to launch into descriptions of the crèches, country homes or palaces for children, where Montessori methods prevail, where the pupils cultivate their little gardens, model in plasticine, draw and sing and act, and dance their Eurythmic dances barefoot on floors once sacred to the tread of the nobility. I saw a reception and distributing house in Petrograd with which no fault could be found from the point of view of scientific organization. The children were bright-eyed and merry, and the rooms airy and clean. I saw, too, a performance by school children in Moscow which included some quite wonderful Eurythmic dancing, in particular an interpretation of Grieg's _Tanz in der Halle des Bergkönigs_ by the Dalcroze method, but with a colour and warmth


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 which were Russian, and in odd contrast to the mathematical precision associated with most Dalcroze performances.

But in spite of the obvious merit of such institutions as exist, misgivings would arise. To begin with, it must be remembered that it is necessary first to admit that children should be delivered up almost entirely to the State. Nominally, the mother still comes to see her child in these schools, but in actual fact, the drafting of children to the country must intervene, and the whole temper of the authorities seemed to be directed towards breaking the link between mother and child. To some this will seem an advantage, and it is a point which admits of lengthy discussion, but as it belongs rather to the question of women and the family under Communism, I can do no more than mention it here.

Then, again, it must be remembered that the tactics of the Bolsheviks towards such schools as existed under the old régime in provincial towns and villages, have not been the same as their tactics towards the theatres. The greater number of these schools are closed, in part, it would seem, from lack of personnel, and in part from fear of counter-revolutionary propaganda. The result is that, though those schools which they have created are good and organized on modern lines, on the whole there would


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 seem to be less diffusion of child education than before. In this, as in most other departments, the Bolsheviks show themselves loath to attempt anything which cannot be done on a large scale and impregnated with Communist doctrine. It goes without saying that Communist doctrine is taught in schools, as Christianity has been taught hitherto, moreover the Communist teachers show bitter hostility to other teachers who do not accept the doctrine. At the children's entertainment alluded to above, the dances and poems performed had nearly all some close relation to Communism, and a teacher addressed the children for something like an hour and a half on the duties of Communists and the errors of Anarchism.

This teaching of Communism, however necessary it may appear for the building of the Communist state of the future, does seem to me to be an evil in that it is done emotionally and fanatically, with an appeal to hate and militant ardour rather than to constructive reason. It binds the free intellect and destroys initiative. An industrial state needs not only obedient and patient workers and artists, it needs also men and women with initiative in scientific research. It is idle to provide channels for scientific research later if it is to be choked at the source. That source is an enquiring and free intellect unhampered


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 by iron dogma. Beneficial to artistic and emotional development therefore, the teaching of Communism as a faith may well be most pernicious to the scientific and intellectual side of education, and will lead direct to the pragmatist view of knowledge and scientific research which the Church and the capitalist already find it so convenient to adopt.

But to come to the chief and most practical question, the relation of education to industry. Sooner or later education in Russia must become subordinate to the needs of industrial development. That the Bolsheviks already realize this is proved by the articles of Lunacharsky which recently appeared in _Le Phare_ (Geneva). It was the spectre of industry that haunted me throughout the consideration of education as in the consideration of art, and what I have said above of its dangers to the latter seems to me also to apply here. Montessori schools belong, in my view, to that stage in industrial development when education is directed as much towards leisure occupations as towards preparation for professional life. Possibly the fine flower of useless scientific enquiry belongs to this stage also. Nobody in Russia is likely to have much leisure for a good many years to come, if the Bolshevik programme of industrial development is efficiently carried out. And there seemed to me to be something pathetic and


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 almost cruel in this varied and agreeable education of the child, when one reflected on the long hours of grinding toil to which he was soon to be subject in workshop or factory. For I repeat that I do not believe industrial work in the early days of industry can be made tolerable to the worker. Once again I experienced the dread of seeing the ideals of the Russian revolutionaries go down before the logic of necessity. They are beginning to pride themselves on being hard, practical men, and it seems quite reasonable to fear that they should come to regard this full and humane development of the child as a mere luxury and ultimately neglect it. Worse still, the few of these schools which already exist may perhaps become exclusive to the Communists and their children, or that company of Samurai which is to leaven and govern the mass of the people. If so, they will soon come to resemble our public schools, in that they will prepare, in an artificial play atmosphere, men who will pass straight to the position of leaders, while the portion of the proletariat who serve under them will be reading and writing, just so much technical training as is necessary, and Communist doctrine.

This is a nightmare hypothesis, but the difficulties of the practical problem seem to warrant its entertainment. The number of people in Russia who can


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 even read and write is extremely small, the need to get them employed industrially as rapidly as possible is very great, hence the system of education which develops out of this situation cannot be very ambitious or enlightened. Further it will have to continue over a sufficiently long period of time to allow of the risk of its becoming stable and traditional. In adult education already the pupil comes for a short period, learns Communism, reading and writing--there is hardly time to give him much more--and returns to leaven the army or his native village. In achieving this the Bolsheviks are already doing a very important and valuable work, but they cannot hope for a long while to become the model of public instruction which they have hitherto been represented to be. And the conditions of their becoming so ultimately are adherence to their ideals through a very long period of stress, and a lessening of fanaticism in their Communist teaching, conditions which, unhappily, seem to be mutually incompatible.

The whole of the argument set out in this chapter may be summed up in the statement of one fact which the mere idealist is prone to overlook, namely that Russia is a country at a stage in economic development not much more advanced than America in the pioneer days. The old civilization was aristocratic and exotic; it could not survive in the modern


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 world. It is true that it produced great men, but its foundations were rotten. The new civilization may, for the moment, be less productive of individual works of genius, but it has a new solidity and gives promise of a new unity. It may be that I have taken too hopeful a view and that the future evolution of Russia will have as little connection with the life and tradition of its present population as modern America with the life of the Red Indian tribes. The fact that there exists in Russia a population at a far higher stage of culture, which will be industrially educated, not exterminated, militates against this hypothesis, but the need for education may make progress slower than it was in the United States.

One would not have looked for the millennium of Communism, nor even for valuable art and educational experiment in the America of early railroading and farming days. Nor must one look for such things from Russia yet. It may be that during the next hundred years there, economic evolution will obscure Communist ideals, until finally, in a country that has reached the stage of present-day America, the battle will be fought out again to a victorious and stable issue. Unless, indeed, the Marxian scripture prove to be not infallible, and faith and heroic devotion show themselves capable of triumphing over economic necessity.


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 Before I went to Russia I imagined that I was going to see an interesting experiment in a new form of representative government. I did see an interesting experiment, but not in representative government. Every one who is interested in Bolshevism knows the series of elections, from the village meeting to the All-Russian Soviet, by which the people's commissaries are supposed to derive their power. We were told that, by the recall, the occupational constituencies, and so on, a new and far more perfect machinery had been devised for ascertaining and registering the popular will. One of the things we hoped to study was the question whether the Soviet system is really superior to Parliamentarism in this respect.

We were not able to make any such study, because the Soviet system is moribund. In _Theses_ (p. 6 of French edition) it is said: "The ancient classic subdivision of the Labour movement into


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 three forms (parties, trade unions, and co-operatives) has served its time. The proletarian revolution has raised up in Russia the essential form of proletarian dictatorship, the _soviets_. But the work in the Soviets, as in the industrial trade unions which have become revolutionary, must be invariably and systematically directed by the party of the proletariat, i.e. the Communist Party. As the organized advanced guard of the working class, the Communist Party answers equally to the economic, political and spiritual needs of the entire working class. It must be the soul of the trade unions, the soviets, and all other proletarian organizations.

"The appearance of the Soviets, the principal historical form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, in no way diminishes the directing rôle of the party in the proletarian revolution. When the German Communists of the 'Left' ... declare that 'the party itself must also adapt itself more and more to the Soviet idea and proletarianize itself,' we see there only an insinuating expression of the idea that the Communist Party must dissolve itself into the Soviets, so that the Soviets can replace it.

"This idea is profoundly erroneous and reactionary.

"The history of the Russian Revolution shows us, at a certain moment, the Soviets going against the proletarian party and helping the agents of the bourgeoisie....

"In order that the Soviets may fulfil their historic mission, the existence of a Communist Party, strong enough not to 'adapt' itself to the Soviets but to exercise on them a decisive influence, to force them _not to adapt themselves_ to the bourgeoisie and official social democracy, ... is on the contrary necessary." No conceivable system of free election would give majorities to the Communists, either in town or country. Various methods are therefore adopted for giving the victory


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 to Government candidates. In the first place, the voting is by show of hands, so that all who vote against the Government are marked men. In the second place, no candidate who is not a Communist can have any printing done, the printing works being all in the hands of the State. In the third place, he cannot address any meetings, because the halls all belong to the State. The whole of the press is, of course, official; no independent daily is permitted. In spite of all these obstacles, the Mensheviks have succeeded in winning about 40 seats out of 1,500 on the Moscow Soviet, by being known in certain large factories where the electoral campaign could be conducted by word of mouth. They won, in fact, every seat that they contested.

But although the Moscow Soviet is nominally sovereign in Moscow, it is really only a body of electors who choose the executive committee of forty, out of which, in turn, is chosen the Presidium, consisting of nine men who have all the power. The Moscow Soviet, as a whole, meets rarely; the Executive Committee is supposed to meet once a week, but did not meet while we were in Moscow. The Presidium, on the contrary, meets daily. Of course, it is easy for the Government to exercise pressure over the election of the executive committee, and again over the election of the Presidium. It must


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 be remembered that effective protest is impossible, owing to the absolutely complete suppression of free speech and free Press. The result is that the Presidium of the Moscow Soviet consists only of orthodox Communists.

Kamenev, the President of the Moscow Soviet, informed us that the recall is very frequently employed; he said that in Moscow there are, on an average, thirty recalls a month. I asked him what were the principal reasons for the recall, and he mentioned four: drinking, going to the front (and being, therefore, incapable of performing the duties), change of politics on the part of the electors, and failure to make a report to the electors once a fortnight, which all members of the Soviet are expected to do. It is evident that the recall affords opportunities for governmental pressure, but I had no chance of finding out whether it is used for this purpose.

In country districts the method employed is somewhat different. It is impossible to secure that the village Soviet shall consist of Communists, because, as a rule, at any rate in the villages I saw, there are no Communists. But when I asked in the villages how they were represented on the Volost (the next larger area) or the Gubernia, I was met always with the reply that they were not represented at all. I


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 could not verify this, and it is probably an overstatement, but all concurred in the assertion that if they elected a non-Communist representative he could not obtain a pass on the railway and, therefore, could not attend the Volost or Gubernia Soviet. I saw a meeting of the Gubernia Soviet of Saratov. The representation is so arranged that the town workers have an enormous preponderance over the surrounding peasants; but even allowing for this, the proportion of peasants seemed astonishingly small for the centre of a very important agricultural area.

The All-Russian Soviet, which is constitutionally the supreme body, to which the People's Commissaries are responsible, meets seldom, and has become increasingly formal. Its sole function at present, so far as I could discover, is to ratify, without discussion, previous decisions of the Communist Party on matters (especially concerning foreign policy) upon which the constitution requires its decision.

All real power is in the hands of the Communist Party, who number about 600,000 in a population of about 120 millions. I never came across a Communist by chance: the people whom I met in the streets or in the villages, when I could get into conversation with them, almost invariably said they were of no party. The only other answer I ever


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 had was from some of the peasants, who openly stated that they were Tsarists. It must be said that the peasants' reasons for disliking the Bolsheviks are very inadequate. It is said--and all I saw confirmed the assertion--that the peasants are better off than they ever were before. I saw no one--man, woman, or child--who looked underfed in the villages. The big landowners are dispossessed, and the peasants have profited. But the towns and the army still need nourishing, and the Government has nothing to give the peasants in return for food except paper, which the peasants resent having to take. It is a singular fact that Tsarist roubles are worth ten times as much as Soviet roubles, and are much commoner in the country. Although they are illegal, pocket-books full of them are openly displayed in the market places. I do not think it should be inferred that the peasants expect a Tsarist restoration: they are merely actuated by custom and dislike of novelty. They have never heard of the blockade; consequently they cannot understand why the Government is unable to give them the clothes and agricultural implements that they need. Having got their land, and being ignorant of affairs outside their own neighbourhood, they wish their own village to be independent, and would resent the demands of any Government whatever.


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Within the Communist Party there are, of course, as always in a bureaucracy, different factions, though hitherto the external pressure has prevented disunion. It seemed to me that the personnel of the bureaucracy could be divided into three classes. There are first the old revolutionists, tested by years of persecution. These men have most of the highest posts. Prison and exile have made them tough and fanatical and rather out of touch with their own country. They are honest men, with a profound belief that Communism will regenerate the world. They think themselves utterly free from sentiment, but, in fact, they are sentimental about Communism and about the régime that they are creating; they cannot face the fact that what they are creating is not complete Communism, and that Communism is anathema to the peasant, who wants his own land and nothing else. They are pitiless in punishing corruption or drunkenness when they find either among officials; but they have built up a system in which the temptations to petty corruption are tremendous, and their own materialistic theory should persuade them that under such a system corruption must be rampant.

The second class in the bureaucracy, among whom are to be found most of the men occupying political posts just below the top, consists of _arrivistes_, who


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 are enthusiastic Bolsheviks because of the material success of Bolshevism. With them must be reckoned the army of policemen, spies, and secret agents, largely inherited from the Tsarist times, who make their profit out of the fact that no one can live except by breaking the law. This aspect of Bolshevism is exemplified by the Extraordinary Commission, a body practically independent of the Government, possessing its own regiments, who are better fed than the Red Army. This body has the power of imprisoning any man or woman without trial on such charges as speculation or counter-revolutionary activity. It has shot thousands without proper trial, and though now it has nominally lost the power of inflicting the death penalty, it is by no means certain that it has altogether lost it in fact. It has spies everywhere, and ordinary mortals live in terror of it.

The third class in the bureaucracy consists of men who are not ardent Communists, who have rallied to the Government since it has proved itself stable, and who work for it either out of patriotism or because they enjoy the opportunity of developing their ideas freely without the obstacle of traditional institutions. Among this class are to be found men of the type of the successful business man, men with the same sort of ability as is found in the American


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 self-made Trust magnate, but working for success and power, not for money. There is no doubt that the Bolsheviks are successfully solving the problem of enlisting this kind of ability in the public service, without permitting it to amass wealth as it does in capitalist communities. This is perhaps their greatest success so far, outside the domain of war. It makes it possible to suppose that, if Russia is allowed to have peace, an amazing industrial development may take place, making Russia a rival of the United States. The Bolsheviks are industrialists in all their aims; they love everything in modern industry except the excessive rewards of the capitalists. And the harsh discipline to which they are subjecting the workers is calculated, if anything can, to give them the habits of industry and honesty which have hitherto been lacking, and the lack of which alone prevents Russia from being one of the foremost industrial countries.


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40 heading of good manners. You must avoid in society all disagreeable actions, such as, spitting, yawning, and making audible guttural and nasal sounds. Therefore avoid them; if you cannot do so altogether, suppress such sounds as much as possible. Cleanliness in body, in apparel and in surroundings also comes under good manners.

There is a very good moral saying, viz., "money, learning and noble birth bring pride to a man of bad behaviour, and the same three bring politeness and gentleness to a man of good behaviour." Then how can a man acquire good behaviour? He must be trained and taught well when he is young, and he must be careful, watchful and thoughtful in his actions in his after life.

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42 settled. Even if he is not sufficiently careful in the matter, the visiting Zamindar should take no notice of it, considering that it is the silly fault of his host.

There are many more things to be said on this subject. On the whole Europeans, especially the inhabitants of Great Britain, know more of what belong to good manners than Hindus. Yet there are some points required by Hindu good manners to be observed which Europeans overlook when they meet Native gentlemen. Yet, if they find a native fail, they will at once remark that he is a rude or a dirty fellow. However, we must be very careful in our behaviour when we meet them. On the whole, whether you come in contact with Europeans or Hindus, your manners must be good in word, in act, and in gesture.

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43 give some very good principles suited for one's behaviour and conduct. I hope you, my dear friends, will read them carefully in your mother tongue and also note in what connection they were given by those two learned and wise gentlemen.


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 At first sight it is surprising that Russian industry should have collapsed as badly as it has done, and still more surprising that the efforts of the Communists have not been more successful in reviving it. As I believe that the continued efficiency of industry is the main condition for success in the transition to a Communist State, I shall endeavour to analyse the causes of the collapse, with a view to the discovery of ways by which it can be avoided elsewhere.

Of the fact of the collapse there can be no doubt. The Ninth Congress of the Communist Party (March-April, 1920) speaks of "the incredible catastrophes of public economy," and in connection with transport, which is one of the vital elements of the problem, it acknowledges "the terrible collapse of the transport and the railway system," and urges the introduction of "measures which cannot be delayed and which are to obviate the complete paralysis of


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 the railway system and, together with this, the ruin of the Soviet Republic." Almost all those who have visited Russia would confirm this view of the gravity of the situation. In the factories, in great works like those of Putilov and Sornovo, very little except war work is being done; machinery stands idle and plant is becoming unusable. One sees hardly any new manufactured articles in Russia, beyond a certain very inadequate quantity of clothes and boots--always excepting what is needed for the army. And the difficulty of obtaining food is conclusive evidence of the absence of goods such as are needed by the peasants.

How has this state of affairs arisen? And why does it continue?

A great deal of disorganization occurred before the first revolution and under Kerensky. Russian industry was partly dependent on Poland; the war was conducted by methods of reckless extravagance, especially as regards rolling-stock; under Kerensky there was a tendency to universal holiday, under the impression that freedom had removed the necessity for work. But when all this is admitted to the full, it remains true that the state of industry under the Bolsheviks is much worse than even under Kerensky.

The first and most obvious reason for this is that Russia was quite unusually dependent upon foreign


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 assistance. Not only did the machinery in the factories and the locomotives on the railways come from abroad, but the organizing and technical brains in industry were mainly foreign. When the Entente became hostile to Russia, the foreigners in Russian industry either left the country or assisted counter-revolution. Even those who were in fact loyal naturally became suspect, and could not well be employed in responsible posts, any more than Germans could in England during the war. The native Russians who had technical or business skill were little better; they almost all practised sabotage in the first period of the Bolshevik régime. One hears amusing stories of common sailors frantically struggling with complicated accounts, because no competent accountant would work for the Bolsheviks.

But those days passed. When the Government was seen to be stable, a great many of those who had formerly sabotaged it became willing to accept posts under it, and are now in fact so employed, often at quite exceptional salaries. Their importance is thoroughly realized. One resolution at the above-mentioned Congress says (I quote verbally the unedited document which was given to us in Moscow): Being of opinion that without a scientific organization of industry, even the widest application of compulsory labour service, as the great labour heroism of the working


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 class, will not only fail to secure the establishment of a powerful socialist production, but will also fail to assist the country to free itself from the clutches of poverty--the Congress considers it imperative to register all able specialists of the various departments of public economy and widely to utilize them for the purpose of industrial organization.

The Congress considers the elucidation for the wide masses of the workers of the tremendous character of the economic problems of the country to be one of the chief problems of industrial and general political agitation and propaganda; and of equal importance to this, technical education, and administrative and scientific technical experience. The Congress makes it obligatory on all the members of the party mercilessly to fight that particular obnoxious form, the ignorant conceit which deems the working class capable of solving all problems without the assistance _in the most responsible cases_ of specialists of the bourgeois school, the management. Demagogic elements who speculate on this kind of prejudice in the more backward section of our working classes, can have no place in the ranks of the party of Scientific Socialism. But Russia alone is unable to supply the amount of skill required, and is very deficient in technical instructors, as well as in skilled workmen. One was told, over and over again, that the first step in improvement would be the obtaining of spare parts for locomotives. It seems strange that these could not be manufactured in Russia. To some extent they can be, and we were shown locomotives which had been repaired on Communist Saturdays. But in the main the machinery for making spare parts


text: Advice to the Indian Aristocracy/Chapter 4


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 is lacking and the skill required for its manufacture does not exist. Thus dependence on the outside world persists, and the blockade continues to do its deadly work of spreading hunger, demoralization and despair.

The food question is intimately bound up with the question of industry. There is a vicious circle, for not only does the absence of manufactured goods cause a food shortage in the towns, but the food shortage, in turn, diminishes the strength of the workers and makes them less able to produce goods. I cannot but think that there has been some mismanagement as regards the food question. For example, in Petrograd many workers have allotments and often work in them for eight hours after an eight hours' day in their regular employment. But the food produced in the allotments is taken for general consumption, not left to each individual producer. This is in accordance with Communist theory, but of course greatly diminishes the incentive to work, and increases the red tape and administrative machinery.

Lack of fuel has been another very grave source of trouble. Before the war coal came mostly from Poland and the Donetz Basin. Poland is lost to Russia, and the Donetz Basin was in the hands of Denikin, who so destroyed the mines before retreating


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 that they are still not in working order. The result is a practically complete absence of coal. Oil, which is equally important in Russia, was also lacking until the recent recovery of Baku. All that I saw on the Volga made me believe that real efficiency has been shown in reorganizing the transport of oil, and doubtless this will do something to revive industry. But the oil used to be worked very largely by Englishmen, and English machinery is much needed for refining it. In the meantime, Russia has had to depend upon wood, which involves immense labour. Most of the houses are not warmed in winter, so that people live in a temperature below freezing-point. Another consequence of lack of fuel was the bursting of water-pipes, so that people in Petrograd, for the most part, have to go down to the Neva to fetch their water--a considerable addition to the labour of an already overworked day.

I find it difficult to believe that, if greater efficiency had existed in the Government, the food and fuel difficulties could not have been considerably alleviated. In spite of the needs of the army, there are still many horses in Russia; I saw troops of thousands of horses on the Volga, which apparently belonged to Kalmuk tribes. By the help of carts and sledges, it ought to be possible, without more labour than is warranted by the importance of the problem, to


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 bring food and timber into Moscow and Petrograd. It must be remembered that both cities are surrounded by forests, and Moscow at least is surrounded by good agricultural land. The Government has devoted all its best energies hitherto to the two tasks of war and propaganda, while industry and the food problem have been left to a lesser degree of energy and intelligence. It is no doubt probable that, if peace is secured, the economic problems will receive more attention than hitherto. But the Russian character seems less adapted to steady work of an unexciting nature than to heroic efforts on great occasions; it has immense passive endurance, but not much active tenacity. Whether, with the menace of foreign invasion removed, enough day-by-day detailed energy would exist for the reorganization of industry, is a doubtful question, as to which only time can decide.

This leads to the conclusion--which I think is adopted by most of the leading men in Russia--that it will be very difficult indeed to save the revolution without outside economic assistance. Outside assistance from capitalist countries is dangerous to the principles of Communism, as well as precarious from the likelihood of fresh causes of quarrel. But the need of help is urgent, and if the policy of promoting revolution elsewhere were to succeed, it would probably render the nations concerned temporarily


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 incapable of supplying Russian needs. It is, therefore, necessary for Russia to accept the risks and uncertainties involved in attempting to make peace with the Entente and to trade with America. By continuing war, Russia can do infinite damage to us, especially in Asia, but cannot hope, for many years, to achieve any degree of internal prosperity. The situation, therefore, is one in which, even from the narrowest point of view, peace is to the interest of both parties.

It is difficult for an outsider with only superficial knowledge to judge of the efforts which have been made to reorganize industry without outside help. These efforts have chiefly taken the form of industrial conscription. Workers in towns seek to escape to the country, in order to have enough to eat; but this is illegal and severely punished. The same Communist Report from which I have already quoted speaks on this subject as follows: _Labour Desertion._--Owing to the fact that a considerable part of the workers either in search of better food conditions or often for the purposes of speculation, voluntarily leave their places of employment or change from place to place, which inevitably harms production and deteriorates the general position of the working class, the Congress considers one of the most urgent problems of Soviet Government and of the Trade Union organization to be established as the firm, systematic and insistent struggle with labour desertion, The way to fight this is to publish a list of desertion


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 fines, the creation of a labour Detachment of Deserters under fine, and, finally, internment in concentration camps. It is hoped to extend the system to the peasantry: The defeat of the White Armies and the problems of peaceful construction in connection with the incredible catastrophes of public economy demand an extraordinary effort of all the powers of the proletariat and the drafting into the process of public labour of the wide masses of the peasantry. On the vital subject of transport, in a passage of which I have already quoted a fragment, the Communist Party declares: For the most immediate future transport remains the centre of the attention and the efforts of the Soviet Government. The improvement of transport is the indispensable basis upon which even the most moderate success in all other spheres of production and first of all in the provision question can be gained.

The chief difficulty with regard to the improvement of transport is the weakness of the Transport Trade Union, which is due in the first case to the heterogeneity of the personnel of the railways, amongst whom there are still a number of those who belong to the period of disorganization, and, secondly, to the fact that the most class-conscious and best elements of the railway proletariat were at the various fronts of the civil war.

Considering wide Trade Union assistance to the railway workers to be one of the principal tasks of the Party, and as the only condition under which transport can be raised to its height, the Congress at the same time recognizes the inflexible necessity of employing exclusive and extraordinary


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 measures (martial law, and so forth). Such necessity is the result of the terrible collapse of the transport and the railroad system and is to introduce measures which cannot be delayed and which are to obviate the complete paralysis of the railway system and, together with this, the ruin of the Soviet Republic. The general attitude to the militarization of labour is stated in the Resolution with which this section of the Proceedings begins: The ninth Congress approves of the decision of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party on the mobilization of the industrial proletariat, compulsory labour service, militarization of production and the application of military detachments to economic needs.

In connection with the above, the Congress decrees that the Party organization should in every way assist the Trade Unions and the Labour Sections in registering all skilled workers with a view of employing them in the various branches of production with the same consistency and strictness as was done, and is being carried out at the present time, in relation to the commanding staff for army needs.

Every skilled worker is to return to his particular trade Exceptions, i.e. the retention of the skilled worker in any other branch of Soviet service, is allowed only with the sanction of the corresponding central and local authorities. It is, of course, evident that in these measures the Bolsheviks have been compelled to travel a long way from the ideals which originally inspired the revolution. But the situation is so desperate that they could not be blamed if their measures


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 were successful. In a shipwreck all hands must turn to, and it would be ridiculous to prate of individual liberty. The most distressing feature of the situation is that these stern laws seem to have produced so little effect. Perhaps in the course of years Russia might become self-supporting without help from the outside world, but the suffering meantime would be terrible. The early hopes of the revolution would fade more and more. Every failure of industry, every tyrannous regulation brought about by the desperate situation, is used by the Entente as a justification of its policy. If a man is deprived of food and drink, he will grow weak, lose his reason, and finally die. This is not usually considered a good reason for inflicting death by starvation. But where nations are concerned, the weakness and struggles are regarded as morally culpable, and are held to justify further punishment. So at least it has been in the case of Russia. Nothing produced a doubt in our governing minds as to the rightness of our policy except the strength of the Red Army and the fear of revolution in Asia. Is it surprising that professions of humanitarian feeling on the part of English people are somewhat coldly received in Soviet Russia?


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 Daily life in Moscow, so far as I could discover, has neither the horrors depicted by the Northcliffe Press nor the delights imagined by the more ardent of our younger Socialists.

On the one hand, there is no disorder, very little crime, not much insecurity for those who keep clear of politics. Everybody works hard; the educated people have, by this time, mostly found their way into Government offices or teaching or some other administrative profession in which their education is useful. The theatres, the opera and the ballet continue as before, and are quite admirable; some of the seats are paid for, others are given free to members of trade unions. There is, of course, no drunkenness, or at any rate so little that none of us ever saw a sign of it. There is very little prostitution, infinitely less than in any other capital. Women are safer from molestation than anywhere else in the world. The whole impression is one of virtuous, well-ordered activity.


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On the other hand, life is very hard for all except men in good posts. It is hard, first of all, owing to the food shortage. This is familiar to all who have interested themselves in Russia, and it is unnecessary to dwell upon it. What is less realized is that most people work much longer hours than in this country. The eight-hour day was introduced with a flourish of trumpets; then, owing to the pressure of the war, it was extended to ten hours in certain trades. But no provision exists against extra work at other jobs, and very many people do extra work, because the official rates do not afford a living wage. This is not the fault of the Government, at any rate as regards the major part; it is due chiefly to war and blockade. When the day's work is over, a great deal of time has to be spent in fetching food and water and other necessaries of life. The sight of the workers going to and fro, shabbily clad, with the inevitable bundle in one hand and tin can in the other, through streets almost entirely empty of traffic, produces the effect of life in some vast village, rather than in an important capital city.

Holidays, such as are common throughout all but the very poorest class in this country, are very difficult in Russia. A train journey requires a permit, which is only granted on good reasons being shown; with the present shortage of transport, this regulation


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 is quite unavoidable. Railway queues are a common feature in Moscow; it often takes several days to get a permit. Then, when it has been obtained, it may take several more days to get a seat in a train. The ordinary trains are inconceivably crowded, far more so, though that seems impossible, than London trains at the busiest hour. On the shorter journeys, passengers are even known to ride on the roof and buffers, or cling like flies to the sides of the waggons. People in Moscow travel to the country whenever they can afford the time and get a permit, because in the country there is enough to eat. They go to stay with relations--most people in Moscow, in all classes, but especially among manual workers, have relations in the country. One cannot, of course, go to an hotel as one would in other countries. Hotels have been taken over by the State, and the rooms in them (when they are still used) are allocated by the police to people whose business is recognized as important by the authorities. Casual travel is therefore impossible even on a holiday.

Journeys have vexations in addition to the slowness and overcrowding of the trains. Police search the travellers for evidences of "speculation," especially for food. The police play, altogether, a much greater part in daily life than they do in other countries--much greater than they did, for example,


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 in Prussia twenty-five years ago, when there was a vigorous campaign against Socialism. Everybody breaks the law almost daily, and no one knows which among his acquaintances is a spy of the Extraordinary Commission. Even in the prisons, among prisoners, there are spies, who are allowed certain privileges but not their liberty.

Newspapers are not taken in, except by very few people, but they are stuck up in public places, where passers-by occasionally glance at them. There is very little to read; owing to paper shortage, books are rare, and money to buy them is still rarer. One does not see people reading, as one does here in the Underground for example. There is practically


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 no social life, partly because of the food shortage, partly because, when anybody is arrested, the police are apt to arrest everybody whom they find in his company, or who comes to visit him. And once arrested, a man or woman, however innocent, may remain for months in prison without trial. While we were in Moscow, forty social revolutionaries and Anarchists were hunger-striking to enforce their demand to be tried and to be allowed visits. I was told that on the eighth day of the strike the Government consented to try them, and that few could be proved guilty of any crime; but I had no means of verifying this.

Industrial conscription is, of course, rigidly enforced. Every man and woman has to work, and slacking is severely punished, by prison or a penal settlement. Strikes are illegal, though they sometimes occur. By proclaiming itself the friend of the proletarian, the Government has been enabled to establish an iron discipline, beyond the wildest dreams of the most autocratic American magnate. And by the same professions the Government has led Socialists from other countries to abstain from reporting unpleasant features in what they have seen.

The Tolstoyans, of whom I saw the leaders, are obliged by their creed to resist every form of conscription, though some have found ways of


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 compromising. The law concerning conscientious objectors to military service is practically the same as ours, and its working depends upon the temper of the tribunal before which a man comes. Some conscientious objectors have been shot; on the other hand, some have obtained absolute exemption.

Life in Moscow, as compared to life in London, is drab, monotonous, and depressed. I am not, of course, comparing life there with that of the rich here, but with that of the average working-class family. When it is realized that the highest wages are about fifteen shillings a month, this is not surprising. I do not think that life could, under any system, be very cheerful in a country so exhausted by war as Russia, so I am not saying this as a criticism of the Bolsheviks. But I do think there might be less police interference, less vexatious regulation, and more freedom for spontaneous impulses towards harmless enjoyments.

Religion is still very strong. I went into many churches, where I saw obviously famished priests in gorgeous vestments, and a congregation enormously devout. Generally more than half the congregation were men, and among the men many were soldiers. This applies to the towns as well as to the country. In Moscow I constantly saw people in the streets crossing themselves.


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There is a theory that the Moscow working man feels himself free from capitalist domination, and therefore bears hardships gladly. This is no doubt true of the minority who are active Communists, but I do not think it has any truth for the others. The average working man, to judge by a rather hasty impression, feels himself the slave of the Government, and has no sense whatever of having been liberated from a tyranny.

I recognize to the full the reasons for the bad state of affairs, in the past history of Russia and the recent policy of the Entente. But I have thought it better to record impressions frankly, trusting the readers to remember that the Bolsheviks have only a very limited share of responsibility for the evils from which Russia is suffering.


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 The problem of inducing the peasants to feed the towns is one which Russia shares with Central Europe, and from what one hears Russia has been less unsuccessful than some other countries in dealing with this problem. For the Soviet Government, the problem is mainly concentrated in Moscow and Petrograd; the other towns are not very large, and are mostly in the centre of rich agricultural districts. It is true that in the North even the rural population normally depends upon food from more southerly districts; but the northern population is small. It is commonly said that the problem of feeding Moscow and Petrograd is a transport problem, but I think this is only partially true. There is, of course, a grave deficiency of rolling-stock, especially of locomotives in good repair. But Moscow is surrounded by very good land. In the course of a day's motoring in the neighbourhood, I saw enough cows to supply milk


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 to the whole child population of Moscow, although what I had come to see was children's sanatoria, not farms. All kinds of food can be bought in the market at high prices. I travelled over a considerable extent of Russian railways, and saw a fair number of goods trains. For all these reasons, I feel convinced that the share of the transport problem in the food difficulties has been exaggerated. Of course transport plays a larger part in the shortage in Petrograd than in Moscow, because food comes mainly from south of Moscow. In Petrograd, most of the people one sees in the streets show obvious signs of under-feeding. In Moscow, the visible signs are much less frequent, but there is no doubt that under-feeding, though not actual starvation, is nearly universal.

The Government supplies rations to every one who works in the towns at a very low fixed price. The official theory is that the Government has a monopoly of the food and that the rations are sufficient to sustain life. The fact is that the rations are not sufficient, and that they are only a portion of the food supply of Moscow. Moreover, people complain, I do not know how truly, that the rations are delivered irregularly; some say, about every other day. Under these circumstances, almost everybody, rich or poor, buys food in the market, where it costs about


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 fifty times the fixed Government price. A pound of butter costs about a month's wages. In order to be able to afford extra food, people adopt various expedients. Some do additional work, at extra rates, after their official day's work is over. For, though there is supposed to be by law an eight-hours day, extended to ten in certain vital industries, the wage paid for it is not a living wage, and there is nothing to prevent a man from undertaking other work in his spare time. But the usual resource is what is called "speculation," i.e., buying and selling. Some person formerly rich sells clothes or furniture or jewellery in return for food; the buyer sells again at an enhanced price, and so on through perhaps twenty hands, until a final purchaser is found in some well-to-do peasant or _nouveau riche_ speculator. Again, most people have relations in the country, whom they visit from time to time, bringing back with them great bags of flour. It is illegal for private persons to bring food into Moscow, and the trains are searched; but, by corruption or cunning, experienced people can elude the search. The food market is illegal, and is raided occasionally; but as a rule it is winked at. Thus the attempt to suppress private commerce has resulted in an amount of unprofessional buying and selling which far exceeds what happens in capitalist countries. It takes up


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 a great deal of time that might be more profitably employed; and, being illegal, it places practically the whole population of Moscow at the mercy of the police. Moreover, it depends largely upon the stores of goods belonging to those who were formerly rich, and when these are expended the whole system must collapse, unless industry has meanwhile been re-established on a sound basis.

It is clear that the state of affairs is unsatisfactory, but, from the Government's point of view, it is not easy to see what ought to be done. The urban and industrial population is mainly concerned in carrying on the work of government and supplying munitions to the army. These are very necessary tasks, the cost of which ought to be defrayed out of taxation. A moderate tax in kind on the peasants would easily feed Moscow and Petrograd. But the peasants take no interest in war or government. Russia is so vast that invasion of one part does not touch another part; and the peasants are too ignorant to have any national consciousness, such as one takes for granted in England or France or Germany. The peasants will not willingly part with a portion of their produce merely for purposes of national defence, but only for the goods they need--clothes, agricultural implements, &c.--which the Government, owing to the war and the blockade, is not in a position to supply.


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When the food shortage was at its worst, the Government antagonized the peasants by forced requisitions, carried out with great harshness by the Red Army. This method has been modified, but the peasants still part unwillingly with their food, as is natural in view of the uselessness of paper and the enormously higher prices offered by private buyers.

The food problem is the main cause of popular opposition to the Bolsheviks, yet I cannot see how any popular policy could have been adopted. The Bolsheviks are disliked by the peasants because they take so much food; they are disliked in the towns because they take so little. What the peasants want is what is called free trade, i.e., de-control of agricultural produce. If this policy were adopted, the towns would be faced by utter starvation, not merely by hunger and hardship. It is an entire misconception to suppose that the peasants cherish any hostility to the Entente. The _Daily News_ of July 13th, in an otherwise excellent leading article, speaks of "the growing hatred of the Russian peasant, who is neither a Communist nor a Bolshevik, for the Allies generally and this country in particular." The typical Russian peasant has never heard of the Allies or of this country; he does not know that there is a blockade; all he knows is that he used to have six cows but


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Noyon stands about a mile from the river, in a little plain surrounded by wooded hills, and entirely covers an eminence with its tile roofs, surmounted by a long, straight-backed cathedral with two stiff towers. As we got into the town, the tile roofs seemed to tumble uphill one upon another, in the oddest disorder; but for all their scrambling, they did not attain above the knees of the cathedral, which stood, upright and solemn, over all. As the streets drew near to this presiding genius, through the market place under the Hôtel de Ville, they grew emptier and more composed. Blank walls and shuttered windows were turned to the great edifice, and grass grew on the white causeway. "Put off


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 the Government reduced him to one for the sake of poorer peasants, and that it takes his corn (except what is needed for his own family) at a very low price. The reasons for these actions do not interest him, since his horizon is bounded by his own village. To a remarkable extent, each village is an independent unit. So long as the Government obtains the food and soldiers that it requires, it does not interfere, and leaves untouched the old village communism, which is extraordinarily unlike Bolshevism and entirely dependent upon a very primitive stage of culture.

The Government represents the interests of the urban and industrial population, and is, as it were, encamped amid a peasant nation, with whom its relations are rather diplomatic and military than governmental in the ordinary sense. The economic situation, as in Central Europe, is favourable to the country and unfavourable to the towns. If Russia were governed democratically, according to the will of the majority, the inhabitants of Moscow and Petrograd would die of starvation. As it is, Moscow and Petrograd just manage to live, by having the whole civil and military power of the State devoted to their needs. Russia affords the curious spectacle of a vast and powerful Empire, prosperous at the periphery, but faced with dire want at the centre. Those


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 who have least prosperity have most power; and it is only through their excess of power that they are enabled to live at all. The situation is due at bottom to two facts: that almost the whole industrial energies of the population have had to be devoted to war, and that the peasants do not appreciate the importance of the war or the fact of the blockade.

It is futile to blame the Bolsheviks for an unpleasant and difficult situation which it has been impossible for them to avoid. Their problem is only soluble in one of two ways: by the cessation of the war and the blockade, which would enable them to supply the peasants with the goods they need in exchange for food; or by the gradual development of an independent Russian industry. This latter method would be slow, and would involve terrible hardships, but some of the ablest men in the Government believe it to be possible if peace cannot be achieved. If we force this method upon Russia by the refusal of peace and trade, we shall forfeit the only inducement we can hold out for friendly relations; we shall render the Soviet State unassailable and completely free to pursue the policy of promoting revolution everywhere. But the industrial problem is a large subject, which

no match
has been already discussed in Chapter VI.


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 changeableness and unlimitedness of God, the latter is contrary to the limitedness of man. On the basis of the principles of the revealed, or Christian, theology, reason must tell us that only in the unblended and untransferred union of the two essences in Jesus Christ, and only with their perfect integrity, could have taken place the great work of our redemption, for the Saviour could have suffered on the cross only with his humanity, and only his divinity could give an infinite value to his sufferings. Consequently, to acknowledge in Christ the blending or transmutation of the two essences into one, means to overthrow the mystery of our redemption.” (pp. 89 and 90.)

139. The consequences of the hypostatic union of the two essences in Jesus Christ, (a) in relation to himself. “The consequences of the first kind are: I. The communion in Jesus Christ of the two attributes of his essences. It consists in this, that in the person of Jesus Christ each of his essences transfers its attributes to the other, namely, what is proper to him according to his humanity is appropriated to him as to God, and what is proper to him according to his divinity is appropriated to him as to man. II. The deification of the human essence in Jesus Christ. The deification is not in the sense that the human in Christ is changed into divinity, has lost its limitedness, and has received, in the place of the human attributes, other attributes of God; but that, having been received by the Son of God into a union with his hypostasis, it has been communicated to his divinity, has become one with God the Word, and through incorporation with the divinity has been heightened in its perfections to the highest degree to which humanity can rise, at the same time not ceasing to be humanity.” (p. 95.)

“III. To Jesus Christ, as to the one person, to the God-man, it behoves us to give one, undivided divine


text: An Inland Voyage/Chapter 16

title: An Inland Voyage/Chapter 16


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 thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." The Hôtel du Nord, nevertheless, lights its secular tapers within a stone cast of the church; and we had the superb east-end before our eyes all morning from the window of our bedroom. I have seldom looked on the east-end of a church with more complete sympathy. As it flanges out in three wide terraces, and settles down broadly on the earth, it looks like the poop of some great old battle ship. Hollow-backed buttresses carry vases, which figure for the stern lanterns. There is a roll in the ground, and the towers just appear above the pitch of the roof, as though the good ship were bowing lazily over an Atlantic swell. At any moment it might be a hundred feet away from you, climbing the next billow. At any moment a window might open, and some old admiral thrust forth a cocked hat, and proceed to take an observation. The old


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 admirals sail the sea no longer; the old ships of battle are all broken up, and live only in pictures; but this, that was a church before ever they were thought upon, is still a church, and makes as brave an appearance by the Oise. The cathedral and the river are probably the two oldest things for miles around; and certainly they have both a grand old age.

The Sacristan took us to the top of one of the towers, and showed us the five bells hanging in their loft. From above, the town was a tesselated pavement of roofs and gardens; the old line of rampart was plainly traceable; and the Sacristan pointed out to us, far across the plain, in a bit of gleaming sky between two clouds, the towers of Château Coucy.

I find I never weary of great churches. It is my favourite kind of mountain scenery. Mankind was never so happily inspired as when


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 it made a cathedral: a thing as single and specious as a statue to the first glance, and yet, on examination, as lively and interesting as a forest in detail. The height of spires cannot be taken by trigonometry; they measure absurdly short, but how tall they are to the admiring eye! And where we have so many elegant proportions, growing one out of the other, and all together into one, it seems as if proportion transcended itself and became something different and more imposing. I could never fathom how a man dares to lift up his voice to preach in a cathedral. What is he to say that will not be an anti-climax? For though I have heard a considerable variety of sermons, I never yet heard one that was so expressive as a cathedral. 'Tis the best preacher itself, and preaches day and night; not only telling you of man's art and aspirations in the past, but convicting your own soul of ardent


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 sympathies; or rather, like all good preachers, it sets you preaching to yourself;—and every man is his own doctor of divinity in the last ressort.

As I sat outside of the hotel in the course of the afternoon, the sweet groaning thunder of the organ floated out of the church like a summons. I was not averse, liking the theatre so well, to sit out an act or two of the play, but I could never rightly make out the nature of the service I beheld. Four or five priests and as many choristers were singing Miserere before the high altar when I went in. There was no congregation but a few old women on chairs and old men kneeling on the pavement. After a while a long train of young girls, walking two and two, each with a lighted taper in her hand, and all dressed in black with a white veil, came from behind the altar and began to descend the nave; the four first carrying a


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 Virgin and child upon a table. The priests and choristers arose from their knees and followed after, singing "Ave Mary" as they went. In this order, they made the circuit of the cathedral, passing twice before me where I leaned against a pillar. The priest who seemed of most consequence was a strange, down-looking old man. He kept mumbling prayers with his lips; but as he looked upon me darkling, it did not seem as if prayer were uppermost in his heart. Two others, who bore the burthen of the chaunt, were stout, brutal, military-looking men of forty, with bold, over-fed eyes; they sang with some lustiness, and trolled forth "Ave Mary" like a garrison catch. The little girls were timid and grave. As they footed slowly up the aisle, each one took a moment's glance at the Englishman; and the big nun who played marshal fairly stared him out of countenance. As for the choristers, from


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 first to last they misbehaved as only boys can misbehave; and cruelly marred the performance with their antics.

I understood a great deal of the spirit of what went on. Indeed it would be difficult not to understand the Miserere, which I take to be the composition of an atheist. If it ever be a good thing to take such despondency to heart, the Miserere is the right music and a cathedral a fit scene. So far I am at one with the Catholics:—an odd name for them, after all? But why, in God's name, these holiday choristers? why these priests who steal wandering looks about the congregation while they feign to be at prayer? why this fat nun, who rudely arranges her procession and shakes delinquent virgins by the elbow? why this spitting, and snuffing, and forgetting of keys, and the thousand and one little misadventures that disturb a frame of mind, laboriously edified with chaunts and


text:
Portal:Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.

Published

 * A Gentleman from France (1924) by Clarence Hawkes

title: Portal:Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.


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 organings? In any play-house reverend fathers may see what can be done with a little art, and how, to move high sentiments, it is necessary to drill the supernumeraries and have every stool in its proper place.

One other circumstance distressed me. I could bear a Miserere myself, having had a good deal of open air exercise of late; but I wished the old people somewhere else. It was neither the right sort of music nor the right sort of divinity, for men and women who have come through most accidents by this time, and probably have an opinion of their own upon the tragic element in life. A person up in years can generally do his own Miserere for himself; although I notice that such an one often prefers Jubilate Deo for his ordinary singing. On the whole, the most religious exercise for the aged is probably to recall their own experience; so many friends dead, so many hopes disappointed,


text:
Author:Lewis Jesse Bridgman

As illustrator

 * A Gentleman From France (1924) by Clarence Hawkes
 * Jungle Joe (1926) by Clarence Hawkes

title: Author:Lewis Jesse Bridgman


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 so many slips and stumbles, and withal so many bright days and smiling providences; there is surely the matter of a very eloquent sermon in all this.

On the whole, I was greatly solemnised. In the little pictorial map of our whole Inland Voyage, which my fancy still preserves, and sometimes unrolls for the amusement of odd moments, Noyon cathedral figures on a most preposterous scale, and must be nearly as large as a department. I can still see the faces of the priests as if they were at my elbow, and hear Ave Maria, ora pro nobis sounding through the church. All Noyon is blotted out for me by these superior memories; and I do not care to say more about the place. It was but a stack of brown roofs at the best, where I believe people live very reputably in a quiet way; but the shadow of the church falls upon it when the sun is low, and the five bells are


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 heard in all quarters, telling that the organ has begun. If ever I join the church of Rome, I shall stipulate to be Bishop of Noyon on the Oise.


text: An Inland Voyage/Chapter 17

title: An Inland Voyage/Chapter 17


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 worship, both according to his Godhead and according to his humanity.”

“IV. In Jesus Christ there are two wills and two actions.” There follow long controversies about the two wills and the two actions. Refutals and proofs from Scripture and from common sense. The mental morbidity has so increased in this chapter that it is painful to read it, if you read with the desire to understand what the author is talking about. Then, in accordance with the subdivision made in the beginning of the chapter, where it said that the consequences of the hypostatic union of Jesus Christ are of two kinds, in relation: (a) to himself, (b) to the Virgin Mary, and (c) to the Most Holy Trinity.

140. (b) In relation to the Most Holy Virgin, the Mother of our Lord Jesus. The consequences of the hypostatic union in relation to the Virgin Mary are analyzed. Contents: a polemic with the Macedonians and the Nestorians. The subdivision about the consequences in relation to Christ and to the Virgin Mary is made only in order to dispute against Nestorius, who called the Virgin Mary the Mother of Christ.

141. (c) In relation to the Most Holy Trinity. It is proved that, in spite of the incarnation, the Trinity remained a Trinity. This is the way it is to be understood:

“The words of St. John Damascene: ‘I do not introduce a fourth person into the Trinity, which it shall not be; but I profess the one person of God the Word and of his flesh. The Trinity remained the Trinity even after the incarnation of the Word. The flesh of God the Word did not receive an independent hypostasis, and did not become a hypostasis different from the hypostasis of God the Word; but in it, having received the hypostasis, it became rather received into the hypostasis of God the Word than an independent hypostasis. For this reason it


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 is free. We do not obey, or we resent the law, and suffering from its rigid restrictions, are enslaved by it. This is the motive of a great number of passages in Arnold's poems. In this view of nature, he has slipped out of his view of her as seen by science. Science could not talk of the joy or freedom of nature. And indeed, he was not faithful to the scientific view of her. His conception of her wavered with his mood. He sometimes, in a sort of reversion to Wordsworth, speaks of her as powerful to help him, as having, like a mother, the heart to help him. He appeals to her to fill him with the healing qualities he vainly imputes to her. He is happily inconsequent in his conceptions of her.

For example, there is a half-outlined conception of nature, quite different from the rest, which obscurely appears in a poem entitled Morality. He seems to imagine that behind nature there is a self-harmonious, self-conscious Life, as it were a Demiourgos, who, putting the thoughts of the Eternal Intelligence into form, has made the Universe and the intelligent beings who inhabit it, and therefore, being in nature and in man as thought, can bring them into communion and cause nature to work and feel with man; and the lines which close A Summer Night, seem to be filled with that idea—


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This thought which I suggest he conceived, is in these lines obscure and wandering. It takes a clearer, indeed another, consistency in Morality. Nature there, in her freedom and joy, looks on our agony, and, while we think she censures or despises our strife, does really nothing of the kind, but, on the contrary, is emotionalised by it, set into self-wonder and questioningby it. Did I ever feel, she asks, the eagerness to perfection, to realisation of thought in form, which gives to men that earnest air?


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 When the Czecho-Slovaks and South Slavs lent active support to the Habsburgs against radical Vienna and Pest, Marx and Engels, who earlier had applauded the “democratic” Prague uprising, turned their full anger against the “Slavonian dilettanti,” whose “anti-historical movement intended nothing less than to subjugate the civilized West under the barbarian East, the town under the country, trade, manufactures, intelligence under the primitive agriculture of Slavonian serfs.” Their “chief champion,  Professor Palacký, [was] himself nothing but a learned German run mad, who even now [could not] speak the Tschechian language correctly and without foreign accent.” Engels accused the Czech and Croatian “Pan-Slavists [of] betraying the revolutionary cause for the shadow of nationality,” which played directly into Russian hands. The Slav Congress, he concluded, “would have proved a decided failure even without the interference of the Austrian military.”

To the end of his life, František Palacký remained convinced that the Slavs’ enemies had provoked the June uprising to disrupt the Slav Congress and compromise the newly formed Bohemian provincial government. In his Political Testament (Politisches Vermächtniss), he wrote: “I know of no event of our times which has had more fateful and damaging consequences for the nation than this Whitsuntide uprising.”

To be sure, the Slav Congress was only a brief episode in Palacký’s long and varied political career. Its importance, nonetheless, was manifold: it was the first test of his political leadership of the Czechs and Austro-Slavs, and it served as a seedbed for the development of his views on the federal restructuring of the Danubian monarchy that he later presented at Kroměřiž. Even after the late 1860’s, when he came to doubt the chances for meaningful national reform in a German-dominated Austria, Palacký continued to prize the Slav Congress as a milestone on the road of the Slavs political maturation.

On the Slav Congress, see esp. the collection of documents edited by the Czech historian Václav Žáček, Slovanský sjezd v Praze roku 1848: Sbírka dokumentů (Prague, 1958). Among older studies reflecting the national points of view of the major participating Slav nations toward the congress, see: (in Czech) Zdeněk V. Tobolka Slovanský sjezd v Praze roku 1848 (Prague, 1901); (in Serbo-Croatian) Milan Prelog, Slavenska renesansa 1780–1848 (Zagreb, 1924); (in Polish) Władysław T. Wisłocki, Kongres Stowiański w r. 1848 i sprawa polska (Lvov, 1927); (in Ukrainian) Ivan Bryk, “Slavians ’kyiSlavians’kyi [sic] zizd u Prazi 1848 r. i ukrains ’kaukrains’ka [sic] sprava,” Zapysky Naukovoho Tovarystva imeny Shevchenka, CXXIX (1920), pp. 141–217.

Jan Petr Jordan, Aktenmässiger Bericht über die Verhandlungen des ersten Slavenkongresses in Prag (Prague, 1848), pp. 10–11. The origins and preparations


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 This self-conscious communion of nature with her own heart, this questioning of her own being in contrast with man's being, this dim remembrance of herself elsewhere, hold in them a philosophic idea of nature we do not find elsewhere in the poets, and the philosophic imagination is charmed to play with it. It seems as if Arnold thought of the creative Logos, by whose being outward nature is and continues, as able to pass back momentarily from his existence in the natural world, which is subject to the conceptions of time and space, to a remembrance of the eternity when there was neither time nor space to him, when there was no material universe into which he had shaped the thoughts of God, when he was himself the Logos in God as yet unexpressed in form, but desiring eagerly towards form. This is Arnold playing with the obscure conceptions of Neoplatonism.

Again, he puts into two poems, the Youth of Nature and the Youth of Man, his contrast of the everlasting life of Nature with the decay and fleeting of our life. The beauty, charm, romance we feel in nature, are they, he asks, in nature or in the poet? In nature, he answers, and far more than in the poet; the singer is less than his theme. They were in the poet when he was conscious of the immeasurable glory of Nature's life. And what they were in him no pencil could ever paint, no verse could ever fully tell. The depth, the force, the joy, sadness, and longing of them which in youth he felt were nature's depth, force, joy, sadness,


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 does not remain anhypostatic and introduce another hypostasis into the Trinity.’” (p. 114.)

142. Moral application of the dogma about the mystery of the incarnation. All these dogmas give us the following lessons: (1) all these blasphemous controversies, in the opinion of the author, “confirm the faith in us;” (2) faith reminds us of hope; (3) kindles in us the love for God; (4) teaches us to glorify not only God, but also “to glorify with all the strength of our being the Most Holy, Most Blessed, Glorious Lady, our Mother of God and Ever Virgin Mary;” (5) “to respect in ourselves the dignity of man,” because Christ was God and man; (6) “finally, presents to us in the incarnated Son of God a most perfect example for emulation, in accordance with his own words: ‘For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you’ (John xiii. 15).” (p. 115.)


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 words of Christ, the kingdom of heaven is now received; it does not exactly reject, but merely ascribes less importance to those reflections about the purposes and means of God, about which I can know nothing, and which I understand less the more I am told about them. Is it not better for me to believe only that God has certainly done the best for me, and that I, too, must do the best I can? If I am going to do so, without discussing what the redemption consisted in and what it was, whatever it may have been, it will not get away from me. And how about it, if I put my reliance in the redemption of Christ and neglect that which I ought to do for my redemption?


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 and longing; and only a shred of them could he ever put into all his verse. Yes, cries Nature, when all the poets who, because they were part of me, thought that my life was theirs, are dead dust, I remain as living, as young as ever. This is the law. Nature, rich and full in us when we are young, we think to have no life but that which we give her. But as years pass by, our energy fails, and, like fools, we think our decay is a decay in nature. But she watches us, silent and contemptuous. Her living beauty never sees our corruption. Therefore, cries Arnold, while we are able, get into vital union with the calm, and obedience and life of nature, order the soul into the spirit of her life—

That is his conclusion. It would not be mine from the premises, and it belongs to that part of Arnold's thinking which he derived from stoicism. It were better to rise out of one's soul into love of the soul of the world, to lose oneself in its beauty and joy and peace by self-forgetfulness, to see the perfect good outside of one's self, and spring off one's own shadow into union with the infinite light. No man can change his yearning to the greatness of nature into possession of that greatness who is sunk in his personal soul. But outside of that prison, ravished by the love of the perfect—he retains in decay, in old age, in death, not


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 the misery Arnold paints in the poem, but delight and life, even rapture.

I say no more of his poetry of nature. I pass to his poetry of man, and here I must risk repetition, and take up, in this new connection, poems on which I have already written. He cared for the beauty of the natural world, but he cared far more for the landscape of the soul of man. It was at first the landscape of his own life-its rivers, its buried life,

the voices which called it in the night, of which he first wrote with his serious stoic passion. But the time came when the landscape of the soul of the world, of humanity at large, engaged him far more than that of the little world within him. He sang of man's history in the past, but chiefly of his own age and country, and of the battle for life and God in which he moved; yet, even now, he still remained more of an interested spectator than of a fighter. It was only when he gave up verse that he became a warrior hotly engaged in the fray. But whether spectator or not, it is when he is writing not about himself but about the soul of man travailing through its foes to the City of God that he is at his best as a poet. The larger subject makes the lovelier verse, when one is a poet at all. Even in the earliest poems, as in Resignation and in the passion of Philomela, he began, as also in some


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 of the sonnets of that time, to look out beyond himself over the world of man. The close of Dover Beach marks how despairing and pitiful was sometimes that outlook. The world, he says,

Then, in another mood, hope for the world emerges at the close of that noble and frowning poem, A Summer Night. And then, changing again, he can stand apart, and give advice to the confused and toiling world. The New Age bids men keep reverence for the past, and Progress bids them keep religion. Guard the fire within, lest the heart of humanity perish of cold. The Future, a poem as full of imagination as of thought, paints first all that man has lost of the insight, the freshness, the calm, the vigour of life which filled the past; and then, the hoarse roar of the present, the huge cities, the black confusion of trade, the peacelessness. What was before man neglects, of what shall succeed he has no knowledge. But haply, the river of Time, as it grows, may gain, not the earlier calm, but a solemn quiet of its own; and as it draws to the Ocean, may, at last, allure peace to the soul of man out of the infinite sea into which it flows.

This is a higher, a more hopeful strain; and it is continued and strengthened in the Elegiac Poems. I


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 and holy, and not even anything rational and good. The attempts of these theologians, especially of our Khomyakóv, to overthrow the foundation of the church, the infallibility of the hierarchy, and to put in its place the mystical conception of all the believers who are united in love, is the last convulsion of this church teaching, a support which brings the whole structure to its fall. Indeed, a remarkable quid pro quo takes place here. To conceal its crude assertion that the church is the infallible hierarchy, the Theology cloaks itself with false definitions of the church in the sense of an assemblage of all the believers. The new theologians grasp this external and false definition and, imagining that they are basing their church upon it, destroy the one essential support of the church, the infallibility of the hierarchy. Indeed, for any one who does not even wish to trouble himself to investigate the arguments of the church about the infallibility of the hierarchy, it is sufficient to read all that which the Protestant literature has worked out in this respect. The foundation of the infallibility of the hierarchy is destroyed in the name of the foundation of the church as an assemblage of believers united in love. However, an assemblage of believers united in love can, obviously, not define any dogma, or a Nicene symbol, as Khomyakóv and other theologians believe.

An assemblage of believers united in love is such a general conception that upon it no common creed, or dogma, common to all the Christians, can be based, so that the work of the new theologians, if they are at all consistent, reduces itself to this, that the only foundation of the church, the infallibility of the church, is destroyed, but the new one is left what it was, a mystical conception from which can follow no creed, much less a confession of faith. The only foundation is the infallibility of the hierarchy,—for those who believe in it.


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Rh


text: The Works of Abraham Cowley/Volume 1/The Chronicle