The Dominion. THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 1919. THE WORLD'S MENACE

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 150, 20 March 1919, Page 4

The Dominion. THURSDAY, MARCH 20, 1919. THE WORLD'S MENACE

Medical scicncc has done something in tracing to their breeding homes tho plagues and pestilences that have time and again swept over the earth. There are regions where climatic conditions and the low moral and physical condition of the people make plagues, like the bubonic, endemic in those places. Scientists' have specified five such breeding centres in Asia and Africa, and from such centres pestilences stalk forth that slay, endless millions. Disease is no respecter of persons, but in epidemics the communities who defy the laws of sanitation and are in a low physical and moral condition perish like flies. Stern facts like these have been made very intelligible to us in recent times. A malignant disease, involved to some extent in mystery, has been the menace of tho physical health and life of the world. This menace has not yet spent itself, and we are faced with another menace— the menace of Bolshevism—which threatens to turn civilisation into chaos and fling our moral, social, and industrial order into the melt-ing-pot. Mr. Winston Churchill, in his last speech, warns us against this world menace. Another warning note comes from Germany. General Hoffman lately Chief of ■von Hindenburg's Staff", savs this menace will make our victory fruitless, and calls for its extinction by the Potsdam method of "blood and iron." Potsdam methods of "blood and iron," while Mr. Churchill summons us to fight it with the moral forces of "courage, enorgy, discipline, and unity." This Bolshevist menace is a mental and moral disease as influenza is a physical disease, and like physical diseases, it had its breeding-place in conditions suitable to its gro\Vth, that is, among a. people in a low mental and moral condition. A good many people have been living in a fool's paradise of ignorancc with regard to the real mental, moral, religious, and physical condition of the Russian people. Twenty years ago Dr. Dillon, over his pen name of "E. I. Lanin," wrote a profound study of the Russian people, entitled Eiissian Characteristics. He was then Professor in a Russian University, and in close touch with the moral, religious, social, and industrial life of tho people. The book was a mordant attack and terrific indititmcnt of a people sunk in mental and moral- degradation as the result of subjection to an unjust Tsardom and to a corrupt and despotic Church. As serfs up to 18G1 the condition of the people was terrible, and emancipation was accompanied by grinding poverty. Th'is economic and industrial disease of Bolshevism has broken out among a people sunk in ignorancc, poverty, and wretchedness, and it will find its easiest victims outside of Russia among people in thai condition. We do not say that the apostles of Bolshevism, such .as Lenin and Trotsicy, are ignorant men, but their mad gospel of revolution finds ready entrance into the minds of the ignorant, the wretched, the lawless, and the victims of injustice and despair. It fiiids its most numerous victims, as the influenza does, among a people in an abnormal and unhealthy condition.

This social and industrial disease is the menace to-day of the Central Powers of Europe.- Tho tyranny of Tsardom in Russia kept the people in poverty and in ignorance. The tyranny of Kaiserism in Germany since 1870 developed the intelligence of tho people, degraded their moral nature, gave them plenty to eat, and taught them to cringe to authority and to practise blind obedience. Casto was as real in Germany as in India, and even more terrible. Within recent years von ScniEßbuand, in his German!!: the Welding of a World I'ower, wrote:

Nowhere in modern times are the relations between employer and employed so unsatisfactory. Casto spirit is nowhere elso so strong Tho worker is still looked upon as the serf, tho thing of tho man whosp bread ho eats, and the treatment lie receives is, leaving exceptions out of the calculations, on a par with the low estimate in which ho is held. The Kaiser's intimate advisor and friend for many years, tho late Baron Stunner, was a man who embodied to the full this type of German employer. His SW av over his army of 25,000 workmen was not only autocratic, but tyrannical as well, lie was inexorable in the demands ho made on every fibre of his hands. He allowed no strikes. He allowed no newspapers except those approved by him. no dictated to them whom they were to vote for. Ho discharged and blacklisted any man who dared to disobey him. He played high-handed omnipotence in his district, and ho found the Kaiser's enthusiastic endorsement on numerous occasions.

Such was the position of the German workers before the war. The war brought to them endless miseries, accompanied by partial starvation. Defeat finds them in blank despair, and in their madness a number willingly accept the Bolshevist sham gospel, believing that any change would be better than their present condition. In Germany, as in Russia, political freedom finds expression in licensc and lawlessness. _ This menace of Bolshevism, regarding which warning notes are coming from our statesmen, ought to mean to us a call to make our social and industrial conditions such as to be health-proof against this economic disease. _ .Russia, Germany, and Austria, with their tyranny,'injustice, and caste, have been natural breeding homes for such evils, but it should not bo so with our Empire. Poverty and insanitary conditions invite plagues; and bad houses, low wages, _ and uncertain employment make it easy for people in these circumstances to listen to any quack remedy that is preached to them, and Bolshevism, with its highsounding internationalism and its universal brotherhoods, can be so disguised as to seem a real remedy. But a tree is known by its fruits. Bolshevism has made Petrograd a "city of horrors," and in less than a year terrorism and hunger have reduced the population by one million. _ No tyrannical Tsar had such an evil record as this. Russia needs deliverance from Bolshevism, and intervention scons necessary, for the people in their iirnorance cannot help themselves. Meanwhile, within our Empire a thorough'work of reconstruction is the best defence against Bolshevism. Such pregnant words as the following, that fell from the lips of Ma. Lloyd Geouge not so many weeks ago, should not be lisrlitly passed over: "You cannot nlough the waste lands with writing pens. You cannot sweep away slums with paint brushes, and you cannot bind the gaping wounds of a pcopjo with red tape. You cannot maintain an Al Empire with a 03 population. 1 '