Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/52

 secondly, because in these more primitive surroundings, where highly technical capacity was rare among the workmen, the expert skilled overseer dominated the men under him more completely than in the factories of the West; and, finally, because a considerable proportion of overseers and foremen were foreigners—English, French, or Belgians—too often tempted in the naïveté of their national pride to look upon the Russian workmen as the representatives of an inferior humanity and to conduct themselves like the "civilizers" in the colonies.

There were therefore many "accounts to settle." Now the justice of the people is prompt. It is also liable to err. In many cases the innocent suffered with the guilty; many instances of private vengeance were settled on the pretext of public vengeance. Among those whose dead bodies were found hanged from some lamp-post or washed ashore by the waves of the Neva there were more than one assuredly who had in no sense merited the hate of which they were the victims.

But let us add that the cases of death,