“COMRADE!”

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 6, 2 January 1913, Page 8

“COMRADE!”

(Maxim Gorki, in tho ‘Nation.’)

lu the town everything was strange and incomprehensible. Many churches lifted up their tali spires in brilliant array, but) the walls and the chimneys of the factories towered still higher, and the cathedrals were lost amidst the magnificence of the merchant houses, lost in tho silent labyrinth of the stone walls, like adventurous dowers in tho lust and decay of old ruins. And when the church bells rang out for prayer their metallic voices reverberated across the iron roofs, and lost themselves mutely in the silent nooks and crannies of the houses below.

The houses were gigantic, and sometimes beautiful. The people were ug.y, and always looked poverty-stricken. From morning until evening, like grey mice, they hurried to and fro along tut narrow, crooked streets of the town, looking with hungry, eager eyes foi bread and for pleasure, while others again, with hostile, suspicious looks, saw to it that the weak subjected themselves to the strong without protest. • For to them the strong meant the rich. And all believed that monev done gave men power and freedom All struggled for power and might, foi all were slaves. The luxury of tin rich inflamed the envy and hatred ol the poor. No one knew a finer music than tho sound of clinking gold Everyone was the enemy of his neighbour —and the ruler of all was Cruelty. Sometimes the sun shone over the town, but the light in the streets waalways grey, and the people them selves resembled shadows. The odom of rich and savoury foods filled the air, While out of the client darkness oi the night, mad eyes of the starving glittered eagerly, and above the noteof the town could bo heard the low, suppressed moaning of the unfortun ate who had not the strength to cry aloud. All tho people lived unhappily and restlessly, all were at enmity with one another, and all had guilty consciences. There were a few who believed that they were righteous, but these were cruel as wild beasts, and were the most malicious of all. All wanted to live, but none knew, none could understand, how to follow the straight path of their wishes and desires. Every step into tho future forced them involuntarily to turn back to the present, while the present held the people with the relentless grip of an insatiate monster, whose embrace is death. Doubtful and intimidated Man stood before this distorted picture of life, which seemed to look into his lioai t with a thousand helpless and mournfu eyes, as though pleading for something, and all the fair dreams of the future died within his soul. And the groans of his own helplessness were Tost in the discordant cries of suffering and complaints from those who had been crushed by life.

Always sad and restless, sometimes even terrible, like a prison shutting out tho rays of the sun, stood tin dark, melancholy town, in the midst of whose repulsively regular masses ot stone the church spires were lost. And the music of life was the suppressed shrieks of pain and fury, the low whispers of concealed hatred, the threatening cries of cruelty, and the wiling of the oppressed In the midst of this -ombre restless ness of misfortune and pain, the ter rible struggle between need and avar ice, and the depths of miserable egot ism, there walked unnoticed through underground passages in which poverty /dwelt—that poverty u "ich the riches of the town had erected—a few lonely dreamers who believed in mankind, dreamers whose attitude was strange and distant to all, preachers of revolt, rebellious sparks from the distant fire of truth. Secretly they carried into these underground passages fruit-hearing little seeds of a simple and great teaching. And sometimes rudely, with flashing eyes sometimes with love, they sowed ur. noticed the seeds of the clear burning truth into the dark hearts of these human slaves, who, through the power of the avaricious and the will oi the oppressors, had become blind and dumb instruments of greed and g..m And these unenlightened, worn-out slaves listened doubtfully to the music of these new words, a music wihich their sick hearts had unconsciously long hoped for. Slowly they lifted up their heads, and tore asunder the net of falsehoods with which they had been ensnared by their all-powerful and m satiable masters. _ , Into their lives, which were full ol dull and suppressed hatred; into then hearts, which were poisoned by manj bitter insults; into their consciences, which had been deadened by the many lies of their oppressors; and into their whole sad and dark existences, saturated with the bitterness of humiliations, one simple word shone clearly,:

Comrade! The word was not new to them; they had heard it and had used it themselves. Until then it had sounded as empty and meaningless as many other well-known useless words w hich one can forget without losing anything. Now it had quite a different sound; it rang out clear and strong, it was hard and brilliant, and finely polished like a diamond. They clung to it and made use of it cautiously and with care, nursing the sound in their souls tenderly as a mother nurses hei new-born babe. 1 And tho deeper tho word entered into their souls, tho more full of fight and meaning did it seem to them.

“Comrade!” they said. And they felt that this word had como to unite mankind and to rar e it to the heights r.f freedom, making the whole world kin by new bonds, the strong bonds of reciprocated respect, the respect for the freedom of man. for the sake of freedom.

When the true meaning of this word entered into the souls of the slaves and the oppressed they ceased

to be slaves and oppressed, and one day they announced to all the town, and to all the men in power, the great human cry: “I will not!” Then life stood still, for they themselves were the moving power of life, and no one else. Water ceased to flow; the light was extinguished; the town was hidden in darkness; and i tho strong became weak as children. | Terror possessed the souls of the op- j pressors; they hid their anger against | the revolters out of fear of their . strength. The phantom of hunger stood before them, and their children cried sadly in the darkness. The houses and churches, shrouded in blackness, resembled a chaotic mass of stone and iron. A threatening silence settled dowm on the streets. All life died out, because the creative strength of the men-slaves had been awakened to consciousness, because it had found the unconquerable magic word of its will; had thrown off the yoke, aid realised with open eyes its strength—the strength of the Creator. These days were days of fear for die strong—those who had till now considered themselves the .masters ox fife—and each night was like a thousand nights, so dense and impenetrable was the darkness, so poor and so dimly did the lights of the dead town shine. And this monster, sprung up in the course of centuries, and nourished by the blood of the people, now seemed to them in all its repulsive, ugly worthlessness, a miserable heap of stone, wood, and iron. The closed windows of the houses looked coldly and gloomily into the streets. And there the real masters of life walked joyously. True, they were hungry—hungrier than the others —but hunger was not strange to them. Physical suffering was not so painful to them as the present suffering of the former masters of life. And it did not extinguish the fire in their souls. The consciousness of strength burned within them, and the presentiment of victory shone in their eyes.

They went through the streets of the town, their dark and narrow prison where they had been treated with contempt, and where their souls had been bruised with bitter insults, and they saw the great significance of their work. And this realisation led them to the consciousness of their sacred right—the right to he the masters, the law-givers, and the creators of life. Again the uniting word came to them with new power, with greater brilliancy, that life-giving word: Comrade! .

In the midst of tho false and misleading words of the present it seemed like a happy message for the future, like the tale of a now life, which is for all alike, both far and near. They felt that it was within the power of their will to get nearer to' freedom, and that that approach co fil'd only be hindered through their own fault. The happy feeling of, kinship of the disinherited, and that they were a part of the large family of workers of the earth, shone in all the streets of the town. And the closed windows of the houses stared colder and more threateningly. ~ ( The beggar to whom a penny was thrown yesterday in order to get rid of him—a penny, that tribute of sympathy from the satisfied—he, too. heard the word,' and it fvas the first alms which awoke a feeling of gratitude in his poverty-stricken heart. A cabdriver, a good-natured fellow, who had often received blows and struck the hungry, tired horses in re-turn-—this man, become dull and stupid from the rattling of the wheels on tho pavements, looked at a passer-by and asked, with a broad grin: “Will you have a ride Comrade ?”

He said it, and then seemed frightened. He quickly gathered up tho reins to drive away, and looked at the other, unable to conceal the smile which lighted up his broad red face. Tho passer-by returned his friendly look, and answered, nodding to him: “Thank you, comrade; I haven’t far to go.” “Oh, Mother, dear!” the cabdriver sang out, happily jumped on his box, and in the twinkling of an eye drove away, merrily cracking his whip. The people gathered in close groups in the streets, and like sparks from a fire, the word flew from one to the other, the word which was destined to united the whole world: Comrade!

A very important and serious-look-ing policeman came up to one df the crowds which had assembled at a street corner around an old man who was speaking. He listened, and said, considerately: “You are not allowed to assemble in the street; please disperse, gentlemen ” He was silent for a moment, lowered his eyes to the ground, and added softly: “ Comrades. . . ■” The faces of those who carried the word in their hearts, who were ready to sacrifice themselves, and to whom the word meant unity, boro the proud consciousness of the strength of youthful creators, and it was clear that the power which they had put into this living word was irresistible, irrevocable, and imperishable. But already a grey, blind mass of armed people were gathering to form silently into rank and file. These were the preparations of the oppressors to resist the mighty wave of justice which threatened to roll over them. But in the small, narrow streets of the gigantic town, in the midst of the silent, gloomy walls which had been erected by unknown hands, there grew and ripened the belief of man in the brotherhood of all. Comrade 1 Sometimes here, sometimes there, a spark shot up, destined to grow to a great fire, which will spread all eve; the earth, a consciousness of the brotherhood of men. The whole earth will reach out for this fire, and in its flame all wickedness and hatred and ail the

cruelty which disfigures cur life will burn to ashes. Our hearts will bo touched by this lire, and will melt together into a huge heart ol the world . one heart. The hearts of all the sincere and noble-minded will be bound together by truly indissoluble bonds of friendship to the great family of the freo workers.

In the streets of the dead city which had been built by slaves, in the streets of the city where cruelty had reigned, there grow and prospered the belief in mankind, the belief in its final victory over itself, and the victory over everything that it had in the world. In this chaos of a restless, joyless existence there shone one bright light, a beacon of fire of the future, that plain, simple word as deep as a soul; Comrade!