Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/415

Rh English parliamentarism, this gigantic treadmill which seems specially created to demonstrate the internal arrest and marasmus of bourgeois liberalism, whilst French republican formalism is of identical character. A bourgeois republic is worth just as much or just as little as a monarchy. The very men, the very bourgeois, who brought about the great revolution, hastened thereafter to set Napoleon and then the kings upon the throne. After the July revolution came Louis Philippe. After the February revolution, as early as June, and under the republican regime, the workers were shot down by Cavaignac (Herzen and Turgenev were confined to their dwellings by the police, and listened to the rattle of the musketry; these writers gave brilliant descriptions of the June days). The masquerade terminated with the accession of Napoleon III.

What is the significance of these chronic revolutions and restorations? Hitherto the revolutions have been mere Don Quixotisms, the republics nothing but forms of the old regime, which must be destroyed from its foundations if the revolution is to have any real meaning. The sentiments of the European masses remain monarchical and Christian, and, pending the destruction of authoritarianism and religion, political scene-shifting is devoid of significance. A true revolution to-day must be socialist, atheist, and materialist. While the masses, while the revolutionaries themselves, are still Christian believers, bourgeois revolts terminate in cæsarism. The struggle of the non-possessors with the possessors, communism, will destroy cæsarism, but therewith will destroy civilisation, to which the masses owe nothing but tears, misery, ignorance, and debasement. Socialism will conquer, but will do so in utterly foolish forms. In the struggle between the revolution and "order," Europe will be transformed until it comes to resemble Bohemia after the Hussite wars; civilisation will take flight to England, or more probably to America, where the new social order is already flourishing. But the new order will be driven out by a yet newer order, the minority will once again revolt—the flux and reflux of history. "Thus will revolutions break forth anew, thus again will blood flow in streams. And the upshot? Who can tell! But come what may it is enough that in this flaming up of folly, hatred, revenge, and strife, there will perish the world which oppresses the men of the new time, which restricts their lives, which forbids the realisation of the future. Long live chaos, therefore, long