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same study that convinces me of its crudities and cruelties convinces me also that by its heroic attempt to make bread and education as common as air, by its aspiration for a world brotherhood and a world peace, by its repudiation of the imperialism that is based on the exploitation of coloured races, by its grand gesture of restoring to China and Persia the territories grabbed by the old Russia, it is the first attempt in history to create a model Commonwealth.
It is true that in attempting to set up by force this kingdom of peace and goodwill, Bolshevism has fallen into the paradox of all military crusades. It is true that to destroy poverty it has ruthlessly impoverished the rich. But just as after five years of world slaughter my dulled nerves can no longer be shocked by Bolshevik bloodshed, so after my own Government has taken annually a fourth of my income, forcibly borrowed my stocks, commandeered without compensation hotels in which I might have had a share, threatened through Bonar Law a levy on my capital, nationalised railways and shipping, and told me through Mr. Winston Churchill that the achievements of the Ministry of Munitions constitute the greatest argument for State Socialism that has ever been produced, I cannot pump up any horror at a Government which goes a little further and demands to utilise for life and construction, the forces we have devoted so successfully to destruction and death.
The British Government is only Bolshevism in embryo, and Bolshevism is only Socialism in a hurry, Socialism while you won't wait. America, going one better, has Bolshevised the drink trade at one blow. It is a recognition that not property but society is sacred.
Fun has been made of the unceasing flow of Bolshevist decrees, but can they compare with the innumerable progeny of D.O.R.A. who had the indecent fertility of a cod-fish, and is still spawning? My refugee Russian friends try to make my flesh creep by telling me what "the dictation of the proletariat" will be like. But I say, my dear friends, as a freelance I shall assuredly not relish it. But I am broken in. I have lived under the British War Government, subject to provisional arrest without reason given; subject, had I been a C.O., to court-martial five times over for the same offence: my correspondence censored, articles and plays of mine forbidden, my journeys impeded by procrastinated passports, or even liable to prohibition by the Soviet of Sailors headed by Mr. Havelock Wilson.
That Soviet now presumes to threaten the Peace Conference itself, if any food is shipped to enemy countries against its views. But the Government cannot tolerate lawlessness when that happens to be on its side, and exclaim against anarchy when
