Page:Albert Rhys Williams - Through the Russian Revolution (1921).djvu/198

154 great folk is to forgive and forget—not to retaliate. And vindictiveness is alien to the spirit of working-people. In those early days they strove hard to conduct a civil war in a civil manner.

In a large measure they succeeded. The deathtoll of both Whites and Reds together was not equal to the casualties in a single big battle of the World War.

"But the Red Terror!" someone interjects. That was to come later when the Allied armies were to come to Russia, and under their protecting wing the Czarists and Black Hundreds were to loose upon peasants and workers the White Terror of the Counter-Revolution—a hideous orgy of butchery and lust in which helpless women and children were to be massacred in droves.

Then in defense the workers, goaded to desperation, were to strike back with the Red Terror of the Revolution. Then capital punishment was to be restored and the White conspirators were to feel the swift chastising hand of the Revolution.

There are furious charges and counter charges about Red and White Terrors. Out of the controversy four facts emerge and may be stated here.

The Red Terror was a distinctly later phase of the Revolution. It was a defensive measure, a direct reply to the White Terror of the Counter-Revolution. Both in number and fiendishness the outrages of the Reds pale before the atrocities committed by