Page:Through Bolshevik Russia - Snowden - 1920.djvu/59

 speech. If the speech were a blood-red revolutionary speech in the recognised style, the whole of the three verses was sung. If the speech were of a quieter pattern, two verses followed. If, as happened in one case, the speech kept close to the facts of the situation and lacked vim, one verse only was its reward. All this may have happened without design, but it happened so. And anyhow, we learnt the tune of "The Internationalé" unforgettably that night, for it was sung whole or in part, exactly seventeen times!

"Are you not afraid," I asked, of a Communist who was near me, "that the people will get tired of that song if you sing it so often? I can imagine nothing more tiresome to the ears of our king than the public prayer for his salvation put up for him every time he pays a public call."

"Why, yes," he replied, "the people are a little tired of it; but it is necessary to supersede the old National Anthem and such songs as are associated with the old order, and instil into them revolutionary melodies. It is good propaganda."

Shades of the departed! Will the music of the country also be sacrificed to the insatiable spirit of Karl Marx?