BOLSHEVISM AND THE POPE

New Zealand Tablet, 10 April 1919, Page 21

BOLSHEVISM AND THE POPE

The papers tell us the Pope disapproves of 80l- ; shevism, but then the- papers also told us about the • Jewish massacres—and about innumerable other things to which sane men don’t affix the hall-mark of'veracity (says a writer in Australia). You can believe what you will about the Bolsheviks. You can believe Mr. Lloyd George, who* tells you they’re' wicked, nasty anarchists; or you can believe Mr. Arthur Ransome, who thinks differently; . or you can believe yourself, and wait till you get some reliable information about them. One remembers the nursery story about the sheep-boy and the wolf, and the way in which he fooled his neighbors to come to his rescue when Mr. Wolf was far away, until one day the wolf came—but not the rescuers. We have been for so long in receipt of poisoned information on every conceivable subject, that we can hardly be expected to believe what is told us now. The Government lied to us about the progress of- the war, about the question of reinforcements, about a hundred other questions : liars, like leopards, do not change their spots : so we have no very sufficient guarantee that the Governments are telling us the truth anent the Armistice Terms, or Bolshevism One thing certain is that Bolshevism cannot be very much worse than Czarism as it existed in the dominions of our latelamented ally. Suppose it stands r (as it very easily may nut) for the terrorism of the mob. We only hear it denounced because it is the terrorism of the mob, not the terrorism of the few. The classes who have had the exclusive privilege of terrorism don’t like to lose their monopoly; so they do their best to hoodwink us. As a contemporary puts it, “we are taught to stare at the ground for the growth of the Trade Union, and never to glance at the sky that is overshadowed with the growth of the Trust.” Our masters pleasantly horrify us by denunciations of Lenin and Trotsky, to pacify us while we are being sold into the servile state. I do not know what Bolshevism js; if I did, I could speak more clearly. But the thing, whatever it is, which is spreading through Europe and has enmeshed England is an indication of the birth of a fuller democracy, which may work much for the' world if it is not strangled in its infancy by the devil of anarchy. The soldiers of England who have fought like men are demanding, now they have returned, the rights of men —liberty, social and economical for political liberty is of little benefit. They ae refusing to submit to the old cap-lifting, hair-pulling stage of servility. They want to lead a man’s life, in a man’s house not a brute’s life, in a hovel. They may succeed. They will fail if the capitalists play their cards cunningly at the Peace Conference ; if they conciliate President Wilson just sufficiently to allay the suspicions of the people, and then quietly brush him aside. But if they break with Mr. Wilson while the Conference is sitting, their capital will be of little protection to them. They should lay to heart the warning of Mr. Lansing to the capi-talist-inspired press of America “You have 70,000 people as permanent neighbors. If you prefer to have them disorganised, crushed with poverty, and ready for a social uprising, you can; but the rising won’t be confined to Germany.” The capitalist is really the man —or woman offers the greatest encouragement to Bolshevism. We agree with the Scot in characterising as “Kunnisll” the conduct of Lady Gordon Cathcart, proprietor of Benbecula, South Uist, and Barra, three small islands of the Outer Hebrides, whose inhabitants are crofterfishermen, and mainly Catholics. Lady Gordon applied for an interdict against two K cottars op the farm of Glendale, South Uist, whp were

occupying two wooden houses on and cultivating patches of the farm. The defendants stated that the farm included 4500 acres, and was wholly let as, a sheep walk-, about 70 years ago, after it had been cleared of small holders, some of whom emigrated, while others squatted on waste land around the foreshore. The respondents were sons of evicted crofters. . For some time back they had been cultivating land with the farm tenants’ consent. Before erecting , the huts they occupied an old. dilapidated hut on the foreshore , in which there were two families, causing overcrowding so great that five children had to sleep in one bed. They had repeatedly applied in vain for sites for proper dwellings. The judge, to his credit, refuged interim interdict; but the case is one of many ; and not all judges are as conscientious as Lord Sands when adjudicating the cases of his powerful friends. It is small wonder the man in the hut comes to the conclusion that the only remedy is to abolish the judge and the powerful friend ; it is the only remedy, if judge and capitalist refuse to be reformed.