Hunger brings an absorption in
the question of food, which, to most people, makes life almost purely
animal. The general shortage makes people fierce, and reacts upon the
political atmosphere. The necessity of inculcating Communism produces
a hot-house condition, where every breath of fresh air must be
excluded: people are to be taught to think in a certain way, and all
free intelligence becomes taboo. The country comes to resemble an
immensely magnified Jesuit College. Every kind of liberty is banned as
being "_bourgeois_"; but it remains a fact that intelligence
languishes where thought is not free.
All this, however, according to the leaders of the Third
International, is only a small beginning of the struggle, which must
become world-wide before it achieves victory. In their reply to the
Independent Labour Party they say:
It is probable that upon the throwing off of the chains of the
capitalist Governments, the revolutionary proletariat of
Europe will meet the resistance of Anglo-Saxon capital in the
persons of British and American capitalists who will attempt
to blockade it. It is then possible that the revolutionary
proletariat of Europe will rise in union with the peoples of
the East and commence a revolutionary struggle, the scene of
which will be the entire world, to deal a final blow to
British and American capitalism (_The Times_, July 30, 1920).
The war here prophesied, if it ever takes place, will be one compared
to which the late war will come to seem a mere affair of outposts.
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