Page:Through Bolshevik Russia - Snowden - 1920.djvu/70

 The Russian official speeches were all of one quality and directed towards very definite ideas. These speeches soon became so familiar that we learnt to anticipate the phrases. When a little boy of ten was brought forward at one of the schools to repeat to us his Communist lesson, we recognised the words of the father on the lips of the child. There was the same talk of the dictatorship of the working masses, the same passionate appeal to the British workers to drop their old method and march into the streets and to the barricades, the same prophecies of a world-revolution, the same sneers at those who hope to achieve their object by peaceful and democratic means, the same wearisome exclamatory phrases at the end. "Long live the Soviet Republic!" "Long live the Workers Revolution!" "Long live the international solidarity of Labour!" Admirable phrases were some of these, but incongruous in the mouth of a pale little fellow of ten, undersized on his cabbage soup and black bread; and unspeakably funny tripping from the unaccustomed lips of sober-speeched Britons, anxious not to be outdone in the delivery of explosive perorations. "Long live Soviet Russia!" "Long live the Russian Communist Party!" "Long live the Workers Revolution!"

A few phrases from the speeches of the Russian