Page:Through Bolshevik Russia - Snowden - 1920.djvu/157

 It is the old, old story of force breeding force, and evil producing evil. The inhabitants of Russia lived so long with the evil system of the Czar's bureaucracy, with its Cossacks, and knouts, its prisons and scaffolds, that the thing has entered into their very blood, and under the necessity of maintaining their power, the Communist rulers slip easily and naturally into the same institutions and methods, adopting even the old machinery and the ancient servitors. But the cruelties and suppressions, said by them and their supporters to be necessary and inevitable in all the circumstances, will breed a resistance amongst themselves which will bring the structure tottering to the ground, unless the madness of their foes continues until the grip upon the people becomes too strong. Even so, such a thing will come to an end in time.

In the interests of Russia herself it is for those who care, to stop all alien wars against her, and so give her people a chance of shaking themselves free of tyranny, both within and without.

And for ourselves, we shall be wise to move as quickly as may be along the sure and peaceful paths of political and industrial democracy, seeking by education and by constant endeavour and sacrifice to convince the minds of men and women that the world has something better to give them of culture as well as comfort than the best of them have ever dreamed.