Page:Michael Farbman - Russia & the Struggle for Peace (1918).djvu/77

 Rh monstrous profits. The truth was fantastic enough, but rumour made it even more so. It spoke of stupendous salaries taken by bank and company directors—of salaries amounting to millions of roubles a year.

The situation was thoroughly unhealthy. Russia was in a state of disease. In the midst of the most terrible war and amid the general impoverishment, an unprecedented business was done in jewellery, expensive furs and other articles of luxury. It was the prevailing fashion—one might almost call it the prevailing sport—in the vast army of speculators, contractors and profiteers, to pay fabulous prices for champagne and foreign liqueurs, simply because their sale and consumption were prohibited by law.

The Court and Government conducted the war in the spirit and by the methods of a desperate gambler. Their mentality was poor and simple. They played to save their skins; they were in deadly terror of being overthrown, and their one thought was to consolidate their position. Indeed the spirit of the Court and of the Government was gloomy and dejected. Not so was the feeling of the propertied classes. They had no reason to be pessimistic. They bothered themselves very little about victory or defeat. The main thing for them was the continuance of the war, for there never were such fabulous profits in times of peace. The propertied classes lived in an unreal world of millions. They saw only millions, and ran after them.

Russia at that time, in fact, revived the mentality of another stormy period in history. The Court and Government of Russia repeated the principle of the French Government before the Great Revolution—"Après nous le déluge"; and the Russian bourgeoisie revived the watchword, "Enrichissez vous."

And down below there suffered and struggled for existence an obscure and hungry and despondent people. It dimly felt the approaching catastrophe; it saw the Government gambling to save their own skins: it saw the propertied classes poisoned and mad in their