The epilogue to this action might have been easily foreseen. British troops were demanded to assist in the work of carnage. The situation thus created naturally afforded a splendid opportunity for a still louder and more pathetic wail than ever that over the Bashi-Bazouks—a wail alone comparable in its intensity of anguish to the cry of the Nile crocodile in its midnight lair. “Gordon abandoned!” welled up from the organs of Tory-Jingo, Whig-Jingo, and—save the mark!—Democratic-Jingo indifferently. Here was indeed a triumph for the market-hunter. The Pall Mall, St. James's Times, and Telegraph chanting in militant harmony. An expedition could not start at once owing to the climate, but the trick was done nevertheless. A Government whose sole policy is “office” cannot afford to disregard the plainly-expressed wishes of the bulk of the upper and wealthy middle classes, its masters, even if its members individually wish to do so, which, inasmuch as they themselves belong to those classes, is intrinsically improbable. However that may be, nay, however much the Government as a Government even, would have preferred to keep out of the present quagmire, its hand was forced. A pledge was given, an expedition prepared, and at the earliest opportunity, despatched for the ostensible purpose of rescuing the “Christian hero”—who had professedly gone out on a “pacific mission,” with loud protestations of his power by personal influence alone to effect the object of this mission—and to rescue him from a situation he had deliberately created by his aggressive action. Such are the facts which have led up to the Soudan War. Who cannot see in them the hand of that providence that rules our civilisation—the great god Capital, acting through his angels and ministering spirits of the bourgeois press?
Khartoum has fallen amid massacre (we are told). Gordon is killed. Who is to blame? We answer proximately Gordon himself, and ultimately the English capitalist class. Had it not been for the latter Gordon would never have been sent out. Had it not been for Gordon's inducements the inhabitants of Khartoum would never have fought against their own countrymen, and thus excited the fury of the Mahdi's victorious troops. What quarrel had they with the Mahdi? Little doubt but they would have gladly accepted the deliverance from the tyranny of the Pachas he came to offer, but for the gold and promises proffered by English spread-eagelism through its representative, Gordon.
Of course we must have the regulation gush, the regulation mock heroics, the regulation howl of indignation, the regulation yell for the re-establishment of British prestige. Spartanlike bravery, truly, to slaughter ill-armed and ill-disciplined barbarians with the odds, as proved again and again, a hundred to one in favour of your coming out with a whole skin. It may be excellent sport, rather better than pigeon shooting, to catch hordes of Arabs in a trap as at Kirbekan, and then mow them down while they are trying to escape; but do not call it fighting, and spare us talk about its involving prestige.
Let the working classes of England remember that this organised brigandage was deliberately planned from the beginning, and that Gordon's “pacific mission” was only too obviously a blind. Had the relief of the garrisons been really an object of solicitude it could have been easily effected even when the “hero” was already shrieking for British troops to help him “smash the Mahdi.” Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, not a “Christian hero,” perhaps, but an honest man, and one whose disinterested love for the Arab race is beyond question, was in a position to guarantee successful negotiations, had the opportunity been given him of making them. But such an issue was not quite good enough for the “influential” public for which the Pall Mall Gazette and its congeners write. Annexation would have thereby indefinitely postponed, and the syndicate of stock-jobbers wanted to “leave their damnable faces and begin” at the earliest possible juncture. And they have got their way.
THE ACTUAL POSITION OF RUSSIA.
(Narodnaia Volia's “Messenger,” January, 1885.)
In a country like Russia, where all manifestations of public opinion are checked, and every exposure of public wrongs considered as a crime, the clandestine papers have a twofold interest. Whilst tracing the progress of the revolutionary idea, and furthering this by means of propaganda, such publications are at the same time the only windows through which one can have insight into the internal conditions of the country, as no other publications are allowed to lay bare the truth.
A paper like Narodnaia Volia's Messenger—a large review, published abroad, and having no urgent questions of daily politics to deal with—is particularly adapted to this double office. It is from that point of view that the paper has particular claims upon the attention of foreign readers. Let us, then, gather up some hints as to the actual condition of Russia as reflected in the newly-published number of Narodnaia Volia's paper.
The movement first. Arrests, sentences, deportations, executions—here is the only measure of the intensity of a struggle carried on by conspiracy. If this is so, we may fairly presume the battle to be as fierce and unrelenting as ever. There are arrests everywhere. In some of the principle cities of the empire the number of arrests is very considerable. In St. Petersburg it reached 200 in a few months; in Moscow 250 for the year 1884. In Odessa in a few days there were 65 arrests. Hardly a single considerable city has been spared. Every class, every grade of society, is represented in the lists of proscription. There are numbers of students and young people generally, but these make no more than half of the whole number of victims. Workmen and magistrates, tradespeople and men of the liberal professions, functionaries of the government, professors of the universities, painters, singers, stage-players, members of municipalities or provincial assemblies, men of letters, men of the sword—all society is faithfully represented. No clas—hardly a section of a class—is missing. There is even a clergyman (John Voinoff, of Toula) arrested for having proclaimed from the pulpit that “it is a sin to call the present emperor ‘pious,’ because he is the most impious of all the tzars, having inflicted loss and sorrow on all honest families.” For Russia such a fact is the same as if a Turkish pasha proclaimed the sultan a scoundrel. The general discontent, the growth of opposition and the spreading of revolutionary tendencies through all the country are obvious.
But what is more alarming still for our present masters is the fact that the revolution is in a fair way to inflame a large part of the class that is now the only support of the Government—the army. The progress of revolutionary ideas in the army is certainly a point of great interest. But I will not dwell on this subject, already exposed by M. Tichomiroff to the readers of Socialist papers.
I pass to the general condition of Russia. Many interesting documents received by the editors give us a picture of the corruption at which official circles have arrived. A full account of the last disorders of Kieff University, so misrepresented in official reports, shows us what the head of a learned body and who is but a common informer, sending denunciations even against the chief of the Kieff police, M. Mastizky, accusing him of helping the Socialist propaganda. And when this rector be his pusillanimity and lying, produced a student “rebellion,” the government, without asking information even from the Governor-General of the province, expelled 1,000 students from the university.
The general administration is represented by a series of extracts from the private reports presented to the emperor by Senator Polov-Zeff. It is shown to demonstration how in Russia every swindler can obtain complete immunity if he contrives to make a partner of some police-agent. And as there is no country where you cannot find a heap of swindlers anxious to take advantage of impunity, it results that Russia is given as a prey, not to a reactionary policy, but to a gang of rogues who, under the cover of imperial irresponsibility, are plundering the country, ruining the state, and reducing to a chronic starvation the too patient peasantry.
But even the bovine endurance of Russian peasants seems to have its limits. At the same time that in the upper strata of the nation we witness the progress of revolutionary movement, there are facts showing that in the lower strata not all is quiet and safe. The marshalls of the nobility of the districts Uffa, Sterlitamak, Belebeier, Birsk and Slatoustorsk, have stated in the name of their electors, that the nobility of their respective districts are quite unable to enjoy their landed property. peasants of Russian as well as Bashkir origin, who commit from time to time acts of plunder on their property, have within the last two years declared open war against them. In open daylight in bands of 50, 80, even 100 men, armed with axes, clubs and guns, they come, take possession of the land and behave themselves as masters. They mow down dozens of acres of grass and cut entire forests of wood, carrying their booty on cars (under escort) to their respective villages. At the slightest sign of resistance from the manager, proprietor, servants, or representatives of local authority, the peasants use arms, inflicting severe injuries or death upon their enemies, and plunder or burn the buildings. There are many cases where their audacity goes further. The peasants turn out the third labourers of the proprietors and begin to work on their own account large pieces of land belonging to landlords. Sometimes they are still bolder. To M. Rall, for instance, they sent a message intimating him that they had passed at their meeting a resolu-
