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of wholesome exercise, I admit, but also a leading up to a too-heavy luncheon at the club afterwards.

"To be well balanced; to keep the blend at a high state of perfection that seems to me so worth while; as a man often does it in England, with his never-ending interest in the Latin he got at Eton, his refusal to forsake forever his little Greek or French, simply because the world at large knows little and cares less for the true fragrance of life.

"To keep our dreams of a higher standard-and you know very well that when we were younger we thought solemnly of standards-is the thing that will enrich a man beyond any reckoning. To hold in the heart, unashamed, some deathless line of Keats or Shakespeare will make a man almost an angel, mentally, and help him to be more generous, more companionable, more to be desired than rubies, when we go back to meet him and talk with him after the lapse of years.

"For the beauty we keep is the only beauty that counts in the final summing up. What is education, if we forget it and lose it? A boy in the war, captured by the Germans and sent to a forlorn and lonely prison camp, told me that his remembrance of Shelley saved his reason. Over and over he would say lines of magic, fragments from this or that favorite poem, and he took on the very essence of that 'blithe spirit' which Shelley has made the skylark's own.

"Is it, then, a little thing to remember all that we once loved; that which was poured into our poor brains by teachers who knew that in the coming days this beauty would stand us in good stead?

"I think not. On the contrary, I wish I could impress upon the generation now growing up the worth of that vast store of literature, from the Bible down, that has helped not only the martyrs and the dreamers, but the practical men of all ages."

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spondent is that the report of a church commission as rendered is not a defense of the strikers, but a judge's decision against an accused whom he has tried. Our answer to the second is that it is one thing to condemn injustice and another to determine who are the unjust; one thing to condemn every form of industry which enriches some at the expense of others, quite another thing to decide that the steel trust is guilty of this injustice. Jesus condemned Pharisees who devoured widows' houses and for a pretense made long prayers, but he never tried and condemned individual Pharisees for being guilty of this crime. "I judge no man, he said. And again: 66 I came

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not to judge the world, but to save the world."

The Church is admirably equipped to arouse the public conscience against every form of injustice, but it has neither the equipment nor the personnel for an investigation of persons, whether individual or corporate, who are accused of wrong-doing. It cannot compel the attendance of witnesses, nor require them to submit to cross-examination, nor administer oaths, nor convict them of perjury if they testify falsely, nor deperjury if they testify falsely, nor demand the production of books and papers; nor are its leaders generally fitted either by temperament or training for the task.

We do not pass judgment on the correctness of the report of the Interchurch Commission, but we take this incident as an occasion to restate our conception of the function of the Church of Christ.

Christ was not in any strict sense a re-former. He made no attempt to reconstruct the existing order of society. Slavery was universal; he said nothing about slavery. War was the chief honorable profession; he said nothing about war and did not condemn the army. Government was an absolute monarchy; he uttered no protest against monarchy and proposed no changes in the form of government. Gluttony and drunkenness were far worse in his day than in ours; he advocated neither total abstinence nor prohibition. He strongly affirmed the permanence of the marriage tie and the stability of the family; otherwise he said nothing about the institutions of his day.

It does not follow that Christians are not to be reformers. Even Jesus Christ is not to be blindly followed. The duties of the citizen in a free republic are not the same as the duties of a citizen in an imperial despotism. But to his Church Christ gave a definite commission: "As the Father hath sent

me, even so send I you." And the purpose for which his Father had sent him he made clear in a single sentence: "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." It was not the purpose of Jesus to give the world new laws or new institutions, religious or secular. He came to give the world new life— "the life of God in the soul of man;" and he trusted that life to work out the necessary reconstruction of forms and institutions. Doubtless they were to be worked out by his disciples, but not directly by his Church.

It is of the utmost importance that our presidents and governors, our legislators and judges, should be inspired by the spirit of Christ; but it is very undesirable that they should be ecclesiastics. The attempt has often been made by the Church to assume legislative and judicial functions. We do not recall any instance in history in which this attempt has been beneficial to the community. The Church of Rome governed Italy. No patriotic Italian desires to go back and re-establish the States of the Church. Luther in his battle with Rome entered into political partnership with the princes of Germany, partly to protect the Protestant Church, partly to purify the German Government. The partnership furnished some political protection but no political purification. The State pulled the Church down; the Church did not lift the State up. The Church in England sought to modify the proceedings of the civil courts by establishing ecclesiastical courts, and so ameliorate the harshness of law by the introduction of what was called equity. The result was so unsatisfactory that in this country in almost all the States of the Union courts of equity have been abandoned and powers which they once exercised have been transferred to the courts of law. The bishops of the Established Church were given seats in the House of Lords. It is said, and we believe history justifies the saying, that they have always been found as a body not to promote but to hinder political progress. The Puritan ecclesiastics succeeded no better. The sons of the Puritans in New England have no wish to go back to the era when the Puritan Church was the dominant power.

The prophet Micah defines religion as doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God. To organize our political, educational, and industrial institutions on the basis of Micah's definition is of the first importance. But this cannot be done unless the spirit of Micah's definition is inspired in the

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hearts of the men and women who constitute the community. Every indication on the part of the Church or the ministry to do the work rather than to inspire the workers we look upon with regret. It may not be more important to feed the springs that run among the valleys than to dig the channels and direct the water into its appointed courses; but there is no institution so well equipped as the Church and no individual except the mother so well situated as the minister to feed the springs, and unless they are fed the channels, however skillfully dug, will remain dry.

Since this article was begun we have received a letter from the widow of a clergyman widely known for his effective preaching of what may be called Social Christianity, from which we make the following quotation:

We wanted to join in a world-encompassing compact that war should be no more. And we seem to be getting farther and farther away from that dream. The simplicity of the teaching of Jesus, to love God and our brother as ourselves, to live with the spirit of love and fellowship-we seem so far from that ideal.

T

The great Interchurch World Movement for Christianity had a splendid sound to our ears. We had been dealing in world movements, and this seemed to satisfy our hopes for healing the wounds of the nations.

That hope, too, has disappointed us, and our churches are not thronged with home-coming soldiers, whose hearts have been touched by the awful experiences and their own nearness to eternity.

Is the Church overlooking some of the things that are her own? Is she claiming all of the triumphs of her Leader that rightly belong to her? It may be we have looked for the leaven, which the Church is supposed to have, within the Church. Possibly the leaven we find there is stale, like the leaven of the Pharisees. Our leaven should be like that of the woman Jesus noticed, who hid it from sight in the meal.

Yeast must be hidden to be found, and then we can only find it in its effects. It is like the wind; we hear the sound thereof, but no man can tell whence it comes or whither it goeth.

And our correspondent gives a glowing account of two industrial meetings largely composed of employers, which she has recently attended, in one of which the four points of the principal address were Contact, Con

ference, Confidence, Co-operation, and in the other of which the greatest applause and most enthusiasm were for the addresses which presented the real Christian side of industrial relations; "Honest to God friendliness " was one expression which brought down the house.

We share our correspondent's fear that the Church may be overlooking some of the things that are her own, that she may be losing something of her moral power in the community, because she is substituting the ambition to do the work of other organiza tions for the ambition to inspire all organizations to do their own work well.

We believe that it is the function of the Church to furnish this hidden yeast; to inspire with a passion for righteousness men who will carry into industry the spirit of human brotherhood, into education eagerness to impart faith in the values of justice, mercy, and humility, and into our courts and our legislatures more and more that spirit of righteousness, peace, and good will which make the Nation great. LYMAN ABBOTT.

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THE SITUATION IN SOUTHEASTERN RUSSIA

THE Bolshevik debacle in Poland furnishes convincing proof, if proof were needed, that the armies of Lenine and Trotsky are by no means so formidable as their recent victories in southeastern Russia and Siberia would seem to indicate. The apparent ease with which they defeated Kolchak and Denikine led the world to believe that there was no force in Russia capable of withstanding them, and that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to prevent them from overrunning Poland, the Caucasus, Asia Minor, and even Persia. For this belief, however, there never was any substantial foundation. The Bolsheviki no doubt are skillful and successful propagandists; but as fighters they are not to be compared with the disciplined armies of western Europe, or even with the hastily assembled and imperfectly trained soldiers of Poland. Their previous victories were due not to fighting efficiency, nor to exceptional skill in strategy, but rather to lack of cohesion, unanimity, and patriotic enthusiasm in the forces that were opposed to them. This was particularly the case in southeastern Russia. General Denikine was a sincere patriot and a fairly competent military leader, but he had little administrative capacity; he could not understand or did not regard the thoughts, wishes, and

BY GEORGE KENNAN aspirations of the common people, and he failed, therefore, to gain the wholehearted support of the class that might have been most useful to him. No army can long continue to be victorious if it has behind it an apathetic, discontented, or hostile population, and Denikine was defeated not by exceptional strength or efficiency in the Bolshevik forces that confronted him, but by dissatisfaction and dissension in his rear. The peasants and Cossacks upon whom he was mainly dependent for support were alienated or made apathetic by administrative errors that he might have avoided if he had had more political sagacity.

One of the reasons for the unsympa thetic attitude of the peasants toward him was his treatment of the land question. Land, to the Russian peasant, is the most important and valuable thing in the world. Under the old régime he never had enough of it to satisfy his urgent needs, and when the Revolution gave him an opportunity to steal a few acres from a neighboring landlord he did not hesitate to enlarge his holdings in that way. But he knew nevertheless that he was not acting fairly and that under some later form of government his claim to the land thus seized might not be recognized. He was extremely anxious, therefore, to secure something like a legal title, and in order to obtain

it he was quite willing to give reasona ble compensation to the previous owner.

When General Denikine practically assumed civil as well as military control in southeastern Russia, he ignored this natural desire of the peasants, and, following the lead of Kolchak, declared that he had no authority to settle the land question, and that it must be left for the consideration of a Constituent Assembly, to be elected by the whole nation at some future time. This disap pointed and irritated the peasants, not only because they regarded it as an evasion of their demands, but because it seemed to confirm a suspicion which they already had that Denikine and his advisers were acting in the interest of the nobility and the great landed proprietors of the old régime.

Another grievance of the peasants was the arbitrary and often unauthorized confiscation of their grain and other personal property by Denikine's subordinate officers. These seizures in many cases amounted almost to looting, and although they were made upon the plea of urgent military necessity the people resented them, just as they resented similar acts of injustice on the part of the Bolsheviki.

Finally, the peasants were displeased when Denikine refused to recognize or co-operate with their own partisan lead

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ers-men like Makhno-who had organized independent bands of volunteers and were fighting the Bolsheviki on their own account and in their own way. From a military point of view, the commander-in-chief was perhaps justified in declining to have anything to do with irregular troops operating independently, even though they were fighting a common enemy; but he would have had heartier support from the peasants if he had taken a more sympathetic attitude toward their representatives in the field.

The main grievance of the Cossacks, who compose so large a part of the population of southeastern Russia, was the failure of General Denikine to give them the full measure of local autonomy to which they thought they were entitled. They had always held an exceptional position, as compared with the great mass of common peasants, and it did not seem to them that Denikine recognized this fact, or that he gave due consideration to their hereditary right of self-government in local affairs. They therefore cooled toward him; large numbers of them deserted him, and at the most critical moment in the campaign, when the Bolsheviki counterattacked in force, he found himself practically unsupported by the most militant part of the whole population.

All these things taken together weakened General Denikine, so that when the crisis came he was unable to withstand the assault of even a mediocre

Bolshevik army. But his defeat was

due to administrative rather than military incapacity. He did not deal tactfully with the political and civic problems that were presented to him, and consequently lost popular confidence and support.

order to remove the causes of popular discontent that had existed under his predecessor, lie took up, first of all, the land question. In solving this difficult problem he followed in general outline the plan adopted at the time of the emancipation of the serfs in 1861; that is, he combined allotments of land to the peasants with compensation to previous owners. Under this plan the peasant secured what he most wanted, viz., legal title to his actual holdings; but he was required to pay a certain sum annually into a Government fund for the future reimbursement of owners from whom he had taken land unlaw

When Denikine was compelled by pressure from the Bolshevik forces to withdraw from the northern Caucasus, he retired with the remnants of his beaten army to the Crimea, and there, disheartened by defeat, he turned over his command to General Wrangel. The latter, as soon as practicable, organized a Provisional Government, with Peter B. Struve as Minister of Foreign Affairs and M. N. Bernatzky as Minister of Finance; but at the same time he publicly declared that he was taking control only temporarily, and that, so far as he was concerned, the future government of Russia should be what the people wished it to be. Then, in

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1 Struve is an eminent publicist and a prominent Constitutional Democrat who first became widely known as editor of the Russian journal "Liberation," published in Stuttgart. After his return to Russia, in 1905, he edited the daily newspaper "Polar Star" in St. Petersburg and the monthly review "Russian Thought' in Moscow, and in 1907, as one of the candidates of the Constitutional Democratic party, he was elected a member of the Second Duma. He is the author of a number of books on political and economic subjects, and has been influential for many years in Russian political affairs.

M. N. Bernatzky is a well-known economist, who was Minister of Finance in the coalition Government of Kerensky.

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ment with their hetman, concluded on April 13, they were given complete local autonomy, and were required' only to recognize General Wrangel as their commander-in-chief and to refrain from negotiating independently with any foreign government or power.

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In order to do away with another popular grievance, General Wrangel popular grievance, General Wrangel strictly prohibited the unauthorized seizure of grain and other property belonging to the peasants, and gave orders that if his officers or soldiers resorted to confiscation or looting they should be tried by court martial and shot. At the same time he notified the people that, whenever possible, his officers would loan them army horses in order to help them get in their harvest. He also directed that volunteer peasant organizations which were fighting the Bolsheviki independently should not be interfered with or treated as bandits, but should be aided and encouraged so long as they opposed the common enemy and observed the laws of civilized warfare.

The effect of these various decrees, concessions, and reforms was to unite peasants and Cossacks in loyal support of General Wrangel and his Government. Thousands of volunteers flocked to his standard, and early in the summer he felt strong enough to move out of the Crimea and attack the Soviet armies on the northern side of the Sea of Azov. In the course of a short but brilliant campaign he drove the Bolsheviki out of Berdiansk, Melitopòl, and Alexandrovsk, and he now dominates practically the whole of the Taurida province and a part of the province of Ekaterinoslav, a territory that has more than twice the area of Belgium.

With the Don Cossacks General Wrangel soon re-established friendly relations. By the terms of an agree

This aggressive movement of General Wrangel is evidently regarded by the Soviet Government with serious concern. On July 10 the Communist Central Committee in Moscow sent to all its branches throughout Soviet Russia the following telegram:

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During the most terrible moment of the struggle of the Russian and Ukrainian peasants against Poland General Wrangel has launched an offensive in south Russia, intending to capture the most fertile sections of the Ukraine and the Don. His offensive has already caused the Soviet Republic great difficulties. Each success of the General, even the most modest one, deprives Soviet Russia of great quantities of grain, coal, and oil and causes a spread of starvation, destitution, lack of fuel, and destruction of the means of transportation. The Communist party should understand that the liquidation of General Wrangel's undertaking is an absolute necessity for Soviet Russia. The Central Committee demands that all party branches and trade unions support with all possible energy the offensive started against Wrangel. No defeat of the Poles is possible without a defeat of Wrangel. The red banner must wave over the Crimea."

General Wrangel's Government has now been recognized by France; his armies are more generally and heartily supported by the peasants and the Cossacks than the armies of General Denikine ever were, and his campaign north of the Sea of Azov has thus far been successful. If he is able to withstand the forces that the Bolsheviki will perhaps throw against him after they abandon the attempt to capture Poland, his movement into the fertile valleys of the Dnieper and the Don may be the beginning of a really national uprising against the despotic oligarchy which has ruled Russia for nearly three years. In Siberia such an uprising seems to be already in progress.

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