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Show PROBLEMS FACING STRICKEN WORLD Shall Chaos or Reconstruction in Europe Follow the Great World War? MEN TURNING TO BOLSHEVISM Something Profoundly Disquieting in the Constant Repetition of Word Which Seems to Convey Such a Sinister Meaning. Article XII By FRANK COM ERFOR D. I met a young American major Just back from the French front. I had known him for many years. Before the United States entered the war he was one of the many Impatient at our delay. He believed that It was our duty to Join the fight when the ruthless ruth-less submarine campaign torpedoed the Lusltania, sending to cold, wet graves American women and children. I distinctly remember his face as he read the headlines In the papers telling tell-ing of the murderous slaughter of Americans on the high seas. Now when he greeted me be startled me with his first words, "The war is over. I'm a bolshevik." I did not know what the word meant, yet it carried to my mind an Impression, and while the Impression Im-pression was hazy, It was clear at least In one particular. It sounded like the confession of a crime. e had always been of a quiet, conservative con-servative type. Before the war one would have Judged him to be a pacifist ; he was even-tempered, mild of manner, and I still think that before August, 1914, he was a pacifist in head and heart. It was only (he call of a Just cause, the fight for an Ideal In which he believed, that had made him a soldier. sol-dier. In this respect he was typical of 90 per cent of his countrymen. I had spoken to him the day he enlisted, en-listed, for he was one of those who vofunteered, who might have waited for conscription and claimed a just exemption.. He was In the beginning of his married life, with two very young children. By profession he was an engineer. Going to war meant leaving a wife and two babies, leaving a Job that promised advancement. I recall his enthusiasm, the Inlenslty of his patriotism, his quiet disregard of the danger to himself. I am sure that there was little hate In his morale. mo-rale. He saw a danger to the world. The honor of bis country had been offended against. He was an American, Ameri-can, one of those upon whom the duty fell, so he went. lie a bolshevik! Why? I was confounded, con-founded, confused. The only meaning I gave to his remark was lhat he was an anarchist. The word "bolshevik" sounded red to me. It flared of the torch, photographed disorder, lawlessness lawless-ness It registered blood, violence, assassination, as-sassination, force, hate, insanity. I wondered how this nine-lettered word had become the vehicle for so many sensations that disturbed peace of mind and sounded alarm. Where had the word come from and what company bad It kept that so fouled Its soul? What did It really mean bad it a definite meaning? Was it a hug like the "flu" germ? Had It come among nations to destroy them and to the hearts of men to silence the heavenly message, "pence, on earth, good will to men." Would It run around the world as a scourge? Was it a postscript to the bloody war lesson, les-son, prophesying more anguish and tears than four years' fighting had brought? Would the world, coming out of the war bent, now be broken? Or was It a meaningless myth? Was the word a bogie, a bad joke, a nightmare night-mare pressing heavily on a tired, nervous nerv-ous world's head? Seeking Word's Real Meaning. Or was the meaning that men had read Into the word a lie? Was hol-shevlsm hol-shevlsm the message of a new Messiah Mes-siah being cried down by the moneychangers money-changers of our time in the same way their ancestors had silenced the word from the Mount and destroyed the Message Bearer with the lasli and the cross? Id every mind was the thought and from every tongue fell the word. Russia Rus-sia hnd given the world a word. It had encircled the globe. Everywhere people were speaking the word It found lodgment in every brain, a living liv-ing place In every language. Its use had In-come universal. The old. the young, rich and poor, the learned, the uneducated, the serious, the simple, the toller, the artist, the poet, and the peddler, the tinker and the thinker, held the thought and spoke the word. Men. women and children spoke the word, read the word, and felt the thought It carried. To the nine hundred and ninety-nine It was a word of Ill-omen, a word of terror and fear. To the one in a thousand thou-sand It was a word of hope, a light for the feet of a stumbling world, and the nine hundred and ninety-nine said that some of thet' people called bol-I bol-I sheviks were dreamers of a stf:iiii;e I dream, that twisted idealism bad made I them mad, that the majority nf ihnse who profess failh In bolsiievNm wfn1 slek with a strance. soeinl fever, ti.rt tiny were niisebief-m;!ker. m-'.-r-d')-wells. criminals, that they to burn Ihe world. I made up my mind that I would learn the real meaning of the word. The dietinnary di :: ;i ; t ; n Ilivew no ''uM on its meaning. I rame to the conclusion that to learn what bol- ! shevlsm is I might with wisdom adopt j the scientific method used by the doc- j tor of medicine In arriving at a di- j agnosis. The doctor examines "and ' gathers the symptoms, the meaning of , the disease. He then determines what j diseases might produce these symp- j toms. By a process of elimination be discards one possibility after another until at last there Is but one disease left, one thing that the symptoms can mean. 1 discovered at the outset that most of us have the habit of using terms loosely. Seldom do we give time or thought to the exact, real meaning of things. The meaning of holshevism Is too important to the world not to try to understand It. There Is a difference differ-ence between having the acquaintance of a word and knowing; the former Is a mere Introduction, the latter an intimacy. in-timacy. Since the. war, when the fastidious diner wearily orders his consomme and the waiter brings It a bit tardily or cold, he thinks to himself, or If courageous enough to speak his mind, he calls the cook a bolshevik. He has found a word to express his irritation. It serves his profane feelings and at the same time saves his smug respectability. respect-ability. See Bolshevism Everywhere. Once the maid asking for an afternoon af-ternoon off provoked a knowing smile. Her mistress granted the request, charged it up to n possible romance and generally suspected the policeman on the beat. Since the war It Is different. differ-ent. The maid Is looked upon with suspicion. Her motives are questioned. The request Is considered a symptom of the new terrible disease, bolshevisra. The mistress thinks to herself: The maid doesn't want to work any more; she Is down with the epidemic. The office boy, working the reliable excuse that his grandmother has died again, to get an afternoon off to go to the ball game, is trying to shirk work, In the opinion of his employer, who formerly, when such an application appli-cation was made from the same source, chuckled us he granted it, while his memory took him hack to his own boyhood boy-hood days when he used the grandmother grand-mother yarn to answer the call of the ball field. Many captains of Industry see the symptoms of the new dread In every movement and thought of the workers. The demand for living conditions and decent wnges are grudgingly received by minds soured with the thought that it is holshevism. The hirers of child labor, looking hatefully at legislation designed to end child slavery, call the leaders of child life conservation bolshevlsts. When doctors nnd public-spirited men and women insist that an Irreparable Injury In-jury Is being done the nation in allowing al-lowing women to work for a period In excess of the hours they are able to . work without menacing their motherhood, mother-hood, the profiteers from woman labor cry out: "You are Invading the right of private contract; your are mad with holshevism." Every Sort of Definition. The wag with the wit of a barber defined holshevism as a wild idea surrounded sur-rounded by whiskers. The saloonkeeper, saloon-keeper, howled over by prohibition, screams "holshevism. " The anti-saloon leaders come back with the answer, an-swer, "Your 'personal liberty' cry is only a camouflage for holshevism." If anyone disagrees with you, don't grant him the right to an opinion, don't reason with him just call him a bolshevik. The word has become an epithet, a popular Invective, a slur, an insult, an outlet for contempt, contumely con-tumely and hate. Its parenthood influences in-fluences our definition of it. Most of us see the Russians with the eyes of the caricaturists, who for so many years have portrayed the Russian as the moujlk with high hoots, disheveled hair, wild whiskers, the face of an assassin, as-sassin, the body of a terrorist in nc-tlon, nc-tlon, the suggestion of a long dagger smeared with hot blood, under his greatcoat. If a doctor, making an examination of all of the patients in a hospital, discovered they ail had certain symptoms symp-toms In common, such as temperature, weakness and pain, and because of these findings should diagnose the sickness nf all of the patients as pneumonia, pneu-monia, the doctor would be regarded a lunatic, yet there are men in the world today who are as foolish as such a doctor would be. They call every symptom of unrest, without regard to Its history, holshevism. (Copyright. 1520. Western Newunper Union) |