Page:Ossendowski - The Shadow of the Gloomy East.djvu/205

Rh Europe; on the ruins of monarchism and socialism it founded a new empire. Only its ruler needs not one crown, but five, or sixty-three. &hellip; Full-fledged autocracy is being floated upon the sea of social-communistic slogans, which remain an empty sound.

Europe, enchanted, listens to the wonderful song of words—fetishes—and does not perceive the spreading licence, disease, famine, and death, remains deaf to the cracking of human bones devoured by human beings, does not look into the caves of the Cheka, does not want to understand that everything in Bolshevism is and will remain as of old, although the scenery is changed, and sometimes the names and even the persons are changed.

Bolshevism rolls on like a ball of snow, and threatens, not only through the propagation of its slogans, but through millions of hungry, despondent men, grown wild, whom it can throw against the West; threatens through "awakened Asia," where the conflagration is already blazing. The flame will have abundant food—eight hundred million men—who gnash their teeth and clench their fists, while treacherous Bolshevism and Communism, concealing its true face, whispers:

"Forward against the white man! Away with Christian civilisation! We are on your side!"

Now they do not whisper it only; they proclaim it aloud and gravely in Thibet, India, Mongolia, and China.

The Circassians, the Calmuks, the Djungars, the