Page:Samuel Gompers - Out of Their Own Mouths (1921).djvu/226

"We quite understand that the British proletariat, deafened by the clamour of the recent world slaughter, not yet recovered from the wave of national chauvinism, would like to see in Russia, in spite of the libels of petty bourgeois penny-a-liners, the living example of how a people, after having shaken off its feet the dust of the old world, has risen on the ruins of the war conflagration to a new work of creation, free and untrammelled by any chains or bonds. We quite agree that some illusions must be left, and that the proletariat of Europe has created "the Red Legend" of a great country where Socialism, unrealisable to Philistine bourgeoisie, has not only been tried, but has now existed for nearly three years, in spite of the civil war, the blockade, and an artificial isolation from the rest of the cultured world, amid the gibes of inimically-inclined people hedging it round. We are well aware that this Red Legend, this Red Myth may exert an elevating influence on the ardour of the proletarian vanguard, causing its heart to beat faster, proudly raising its head, and straining to tenseness its revolutionary muscle. We are loath to confess that this Red Legend must react with a force directly proportionate to the square of its distance, and that the number of models of admirable energy worthy of imitation is far below the number of examples showing us how a Social Revolution should not be accomplished.

We would ask you to try and distinguish among the many strange and Asiatically-savage facts of Bolshevik-Communist dictatorship something more than the mere mad pranks of a Caliban. Do not forget that revolutionary passion carried to fanatical excess, added to the impatience characteristic of an active temperament, often prove fatal. You must always bear in mind that Russia has lived for ages under a regime of all-around oppression on the part of the Government; that the training of the people in ideas of democracy demanded a period of time too long for the patience of a great number