IN
10
THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH,
TUESDAY,
OCTOBER
18,
1938.
Twenty-One Years Ago
A TYRANNY
the way wo reckon the life
of nations, twenty-one years ere hardly more than a moment of time. But in Soviet Russia they have been years more signi- ficant than any two centuries which preceded them,
momory:
Tonrism is but a twenty-one years ago it was a grim reality alliance with which wo reconciled an beat we could with our conscienco,
Russian Capitalism bas boen overthrown; twenty-one years ago there was but a handful of thinkers who dreamed that it could be destroyed in our life timo.
Twenty-one years ago, to the working masses, the symbols of Rusala were the Cossack knout and the prisons of Siberia; to- day they are the hammer and sickle and the gigantic Industrial achlovements of Magnitogorvk.
Twenty-one years ago, the Im- perialist ambitions of Tharist Russia were
to the menace 1 peace of the world; to-day there in no realist in foreign politics to whom the power of the Soviet. Union has not become a symbol of peaceful purpose.
T
no
HERE hon been greater dramu in his-- record tory than the of these years. At the dawn of the February Revolution there have been no voice that did not welcome its coming.
can
A bloody tyranny had been over- thrown; the world was a cleaner place for its going. But those who made the February Revolution had no perception of its immanent dynamic.
They could overturn the Tsar: they did not know how to bring to the masses either peace or bread. Pale phantoms of a crowded hour, history had done with them almost before they had stopped upon its stage.
Lvov, Milmkov, Kerensky, Thereteli-they oro airendy corpse: which the historical surgeons dir- acct for their students.
Power want to the men of iron will and unquenchable purpose-- the men who know what the inasses wanted and did not shrink In the hour of crisis, from respond- Ing to their claims.
There is nothing more unforget- table in modern, annals than the supromo insight of Lenin into the possiblities of his moment.
Let us admit that he did not
To-day's Thought
NO fear is so ruinous and un- controllable as panic fear, For other fears are proundless. bat this fear is witless.
-SENEUA.
DIED
-by- HAROLD
LASKI
make his revolution with rose- water. In the terror and the civil war there are blunders and crimes Yot when which cry to heaven.
the Inst word of criticism has been made, no intelligent Socialist can deny that the Revolution repre- sents one of the supremely benefl- cent epochs of history,
It has awakened a whole people from its slumber. In education, in public health, in economie con- struction, in the degree to which it han ended the exploitation of man by man, in its reclamation of wealth from the few for the masses, in its opening-up of the potentiall tles of production for the many, revolution has made possible in Russia a new epoch in the history of the world.
We need not deny that the price this generation has had to pay for the change has been a heavy
one.
We need not deny, elther, that, In its accomplishment, hopes have been betrayed, dreams destroyed, for which, even in twenty years, one might have sought a richer fuifliment.
There is in the new Russia for the masses what there was never' for them in the old: the right to hope. That is what gives the Soviet Union to-day a significance for the working-class which it is funda- mental to recognise.
Compared with the Tsarist re- gime, there has been in every aspect of life immeasurable Im- provement. It is not yet adequate; it is not yet so profound that there is either time or occasion for the new Rusain to rest upon its once.
B
UT where the old Russia faced its future with faces dread, the new
its future with confidence. Where life for the peasant and the indus- trini worker in the old Russia was, as Hobben put it, "nasty, brutish, and short," llfe for them in the new offers the right to a sense of mas. tery over their lives,
It is that sense which, amid all the pain and suffering, bas given the citizens. obove all the young, of the new Russia that new morale. that new energy. that new deter-
Keronsky (in car) roviawing the Russian troops on the Eastern Front in 1917.
sons of Russia." "We will go forward, froe
ho said.
mination, which even its most hostile critics are compelled to recognise.
the 13 The career open to talented; privilege. In the new Russia, is a function of service. The cultural heritage of Western civi- lisation is, increasingly, at the ser- vice of the massca. There is an exhilaration in life, a feeling of wider vistas opened to the many. which betoken the advent of a spacious age.
It is too early yet to say that the traditions of the old world have been destroyed; it is possible to as- sert that a new and umpler tradi- tion has begun, at the foundations. to take its place.
EW and immense re- serves of talent and energy have been re- vealed which, in the old Russia, it was dangerous even to explore. As new wealth is discovered, it does not go to the few; it is garnered to the service of the many.
Compare the status of women in the old Russia with that of the new. Measure the significance of children in the epoch of the Tsars with that in the epoch which Lenin founded.
Bet the Red Army alongside the army of the Tsars. Realise the place of science in the Revolution with the fear it invoked in the old regime.
Quality for quality in civilisation, It is not possible to doubt that those who have made the Revolu- tion have called a new world into existence to redress the balance of the old.
Immense things remain to be done. The standard of living is. still low compared with that of Great Britain or the Unite: States. There is a grim disease of ortho-
Odd Holiday Incidents
doxy which still claims too many victims.
In housing, above all, in efficient level of the workmanship, in educational technique, the new Russia bas su to attain the level of the advanced European nations.
That is still only to say that in twenty years the new Russia has not outdistanced whit has been achieved elsewhere in the century and a quarter since the close of the Napoleonic wars.
And there have gone from the new Russla grim shadows which bestrado like colossi the Russia of the Tsars.
There is no longer the haunting dread of unemployment. There is no longer the privilege of the few standing as a barrier in the way of the many's hopes. There is no by war to conquer foreign need markets. There is no edlonial en- sinvement There are no dis- tressed areas to proclaim the bankruptcy of capitalist states- manship.
The note of 'Soviet literature is not, as under the Tsars, the note of angry pessimism, Jews are not persecuted; nationalities are not suppressed.
When the account is cast, the makers of the new Russia need not fear the comparison with Tsardom.
It has given the world what every potentially great civilisation brings in its train-a new idea;
L
IKE the Renaissance,
Freedom CANADIAN PACIFIC
''
Of The Head
STEAMSHIPS - HOTELS
- RAILWAYS - EXPRESS
BERTHING PLANS FOR 1939 ARE OPEN
MAKE BOOKINGS EARLY -- to secure accommodation desired
IN a hundred-years-old print which TO CANADA, UNITED STATES and EUROPE
shows a crowd, you would not,
I think, see a batless man. Look up an Edwardian photograph which gives you the summer-time throng of a city street or a holiday front, and you will see how straw hats dominate the trene.
Just as those straw hats date pleture ns of Billain some time be- tween the beginning of the century and the first suminer of the War, so
bare heads dete a picture a Britain of the past few усата.
Perhaps, in time to come, one of the clues given by the snaps in the album to the decade of the 1930's will be the hatlessness of man as he goCA about his lawful occasions, But some of us hope that he will keep for good the freedom he has won-lo do with- out a hat,
There are men who are not happy unless they have a hat. Others are not happy with one. They find gorely irks the head, particularly in
summer.
For years they suffered the hat as a convention of respectability, The War made the hat or cap rather more than a convention, stressed it as duty. The good soldier wore his cap
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for as many of his wuking minutes BARBER-WILHELMSEN
-
us he could. He was even given cap-comforter, a woolly thing that also served an a searf, which he could wear at night.
Tin Hat and All
I remember a gunner in our battery who wore his comforter under his
hat. To my thinking the hero who could bear that double burden
deserved a stripe.
The War, them, confirmed the hat upon man's head. He came back to ponce with the feeling that unless he wore a hut he was improperly dressed out of doors. That sulted the hum- our of some men who could not have too much of hats.
I remember going in 1924 to see a contractor who did his business from
an office in a villa. "Oh. keep your hat on," he said. and feel at home." That was a kindly thought, but how hot my head became in the stuff room! He didn't think of it, that I wanted to bare my brow after a long walk.
I wore n.hat then, but was already in revolt against it. So zoon as I came to open ways, to country runds and or field paths, I uncovered, carried my hat in my hand, and did reached no; put it on again until built-up areas.
As yet I could not bring myself to go about in town without keeping few my hint on my nead. Only a men did that, and they were under suspicion of being cranks-or, worse, Reds. The world looked askance at such lawless fellows.
A Big Company
It is hard to believe that only that little while back the hofless man hind to run the gauntlet of hostile eyes. It is harder still to believe that we felt guilty of wrong-doing the day when we first gave up a hat,
To be sure, bare heads were the exception, and so conspicuous. To- like the French Revolu-day we of the hatless brigade are a tion, amid all its blood big company. In some places during week-ends we outnumber the hatted And tears, the Russian Revo-
men. Even in the elty ntreets 11 lution marks an immense stage In
good workaday hourg we malte We the liberation of mankind.
showing. think differently because it oc- curred; we think more amply because it occurred.
Its purposes and its achieve- ments entitle us to hope for the future; the old Russia was a grave- yard of men's dreams. The new Russia, it may be, is like a giant awakened; it arouses fear as well as gindness.
But, almost everywhere, those in whom fear has been aroused are those who hug privileges they can- not jusufy before the bar of his- tory. Almost everywhere, those who would destroy the new Russla. TUTER
WHERE are few of us who have not it had been a most trying experience things adjusting itself to the new.
On one occasion while on holiday who minimise its achievements. We moved into our lodgings, and some thing to tell about our just as we were unpacking there fell I helped the children to sull their are the men who put the rights of holiday experiences, even if it is only on our cars what we took to be the yachts in a small boating pool by the property above the rights of the the kind of lodgings we have had or sound of distant thunder. It came tea. I had repeatedly been warning human spirit.
rocks and They are akin to those who could the people we met.
nearer until it seemed to strike the them nut to slip on the house with a mighty erach. Then fall into the pool, when quite sudden- not recognise humanity upon the I remember one hollday especially we suddenly realised it was the pass- ly my feet went, from
march even if they saw that the because It began, continued, and end- ing of a train on the railway which finished up in the water. I can still tents had been struck. They are shut my eyes and hear the wild the descendants of those who, an ed to an accompaniment of incidents, ran beside our hollóny house.
We had never considered this when shriekts of laughter, and especially Paine cald of the antagonists of taking the rooms, and Indeed, wonder- one boy shouting, "Mummy, come ed why such a delightful place should und see the fat man fall in the 1700, "pitted the plumage, but for- have been so easily got. We wonder- pool!" It would not have been so got the dying bird.”
connected with trains. I had taken
a train to Glasgow, there to get
21
connection for the West Coast.
!
me and
ed no longer. Each night wo could bad had my wife not accused me of never dream of going to bed till the doing it on purpose to amuse the midnight mall had passed with a children."-
hunderous roar,
There must be thousands and thou- sands of us. What a break with con- vention! And what a relief to heads that did not bear easily with the pressure of a brim!
It amuses us, perhaps, to look back on the early days of our daring. When we called on friends they made A search in the hall for our hai as we left. There was reproach, perhaps, in their pretended disbelief that wo could have cone without one. It was hardly respectful OT respectable that we had. Such things were not done in polite circles,
scent.
And when bare heads were few it seemed to be taken for granted that જો we belonged where we were So in shops we were asked where this or that counter was, and in the corridors of buildings where we were strangers, the way to Mr. Smith's
room.
In far-away roads it was supposed that we were only just outside our gates, and folk were aggrieved when we could not tell them where So- and-so lived. "But you must know "we were told. "A little fellow with a grey moustache."
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OUR BRITISH CROSSWORDS
116
116
125
27
ACROSS
186)
3 No giant but apparently belli-
cose (5),
8 A plant that flavours cups (0). English river or other source of water (8).
10 Foreign soldier (5).
11 A "prophetic" garment? (0). When we arrived in Glasgow Gol
So it was, not so very long ago. 12 No, the soldier employed as this Do not belittle the prico
Now no une remarks that a man goCA in battle is no coward (0). out at the station to purchase some
men have had to pay for
without a hat for ho is only one of 13 "The ox knoweth his owner and fruit. Imagine my horror when
In the days when there were not
the Russian Revolution.
many. Its lo longer thought of him the-his master's crib" (Isalah) I remember
the
prico
that he necessarily inclines to the
(3). Sometimes we were wakened in the the restriction on motor driving nor But returned to the platform and dis- covered that the Edinburgh portion middle of the night, only then it was the regulations which prevail now, I exanted for that revolution of Left and holds dangerous bellets 14 "Cat cried" (anag.) (8).
three centuries which brought the because he braves bla hajr to the sun 17 An essential to human life (6). had been shunted on to another train, the slow-going goods train so it did holldayed in an island in the North
and wind and rain. His good citizen-20 Curry into effect perhaps with And in the holiday rush nobody not round so terrible. But if any of Scotland. The farmer with whom capitalist system to power.
Those wh
fatal result (7). who made the price in-ship is not in question. seemed to know which train that body had been in that house and we lodged had been prevailed on to would buy at market a second-hand car in been confined to bed they
Once the favourite bogey of the evitable are not the men respon- by. becoming exchange for his horse. It was duly My family was somewhere in lave Onished
bigots, who puffed out their Hips in sible for the achievement of these the twenty
disgust and ecorn of him as one who They the train with my hat, coat, and all nervous wrecks. To complete the delivered to him, along with
twenty years.
are the
must be a Communist, a vegetarian, Korniloa and the Wrangels, the the Juggage, while I was left with the circle, we had lost our luggage in the most elementury intructions to how
an intellectual, or romething else that | Kolchaks and the Deniking and
he ought not to be, he now goes, as tickets and two large bags of fruit, train going home, and it did not turn to drive.
the forces which lay behind them. up till we had been a week home,
honest in repüle as any man down Trales are
They
are the men who have put
the street
WILD.
I had a couple of minutes to make,
not always to blame,,
evidently also served as the local
We turned out to watch him on
Mussolini in power in Italy, Hitler him. He in Germany, who would, if they
The lesson of the Russian Revo- lution is the eternal lesson of the ultimate power of the masses. Their victory may be postponed; in the end, it is a certain victory.
For only where, by the owner- ship of economic power, they have masters of their become the destiny, is the system they bulld one in which there is a prospect of justice and freedom.
22 Where at any rate one fairy
Burvives in Ireland (7).. 35 Chance start to many a
(6). 28 Instruction to the
game
orchestra making this noise before start ing (8).
32 One's son may follow this. for No one who would rather not have. a gay time in town (3). a lint need wear one now. And there | 33 Not wide (0). are thousands and thousands of men 34 A good convict, perhaps` (0),°` who enjoy the new freedom. It does 36 Jargon from a great (5). not call for courage to-day to
30 Creed that is partly false (6), 37 Wes without (0). forth, leaving the Hat at home,
It was rather different when
WP who were pioneers of the movement, did that Really, we were almost as brave as woman when she took to smocking and to doing other things that were shocking because they werd not in the book.
up my mind either to take the train however, for 1.remember making his first trip, and no one accepted his which was on the eve of departure most uncomfortable journey in the invitation to do with for my holiday resort, and chance Bighlands in a very ancient bus. It started off, half-circled round a feld, could, impose General Franco upon whether the Edinburgh portion was carrier, for at one place a goat was broke through the paddock gate, al-Spain. attached to it, or walt at the station brought in and, becoming untied, most ran into a ditch, and finally the in the hope of eventually discovering threatened to butt all the passengers car went on fire, which, fortunately, and secured he was able to put out at once with some potato bags by the farm roed. the coaches whore my family were. until the driver came
R again. I chose to travel. The Edinburgh
To his wife's remonstrance he said, portion was not on that train, and
Every now and then the bus would "Ach, woman, Jean (his old horse) when I got to the destination nobody
stop, The driver would get down far away like that the first time I
hind her out." knew anything about it.)
and deliver a bottle of milk or a newspaper, pass the time of day, and Aye," retorted his wife dryly, "but discuss the local news. Twice he Jean didna go on fire" Fortunately, it did arrive with the retraced his journey, one having for-
On the same island there WAE noxt train, which had left five gotten to deliver a parcel, and the
which did touring, I for- second time to pick up a passenger small car minutes later, und still tunately my family had decided to he had promised to call for off the thought the driver turned, corners car went on fire, whch, fortunately, stay in it and hope for the best. to main road at a farm. But we did very quickly and seldom seemed to don't work." That was an end to a hat. There are still many men
sao the countryside, end get an slow up much. I wondered until our tourinat. "all was well that unded well, even if inkling into the old way of doing he calmly informed me, "It's a grand{
moro
.
I. T.
And she is not to think, in her contempt for weak, alavish man, that we have given up hats just to be in the fashion. The man who KOOS through the world bareheaded docs so because he does not like wearing
who are fond of hats sud wear themTL.
12. 11. Brvikurtoss
38 Common vegetable growth (5).
DOWN
1 Epithet, for a famous Law or a
fine door perhaps (8),
2 This is made by cook, not
cricketer (0),
3 Rest for maintenance
4 Living (7).
(0).
5 The sort of game of golf some
got about tos Limp (0). Not much of a score for a crie- ket team (0)
7 A bit of clothing that is
changed for Leveen" (6);
14 A sentry has to keep this (5). 15 This was the end of the Duchess In Wonderland and is men- tioned in Through the Looking Glass (5).
16 Bird (3).
18 The girl that often starts the
ment (5).
10 County in short (8).
21 Oficial reminder to the parting.
guest (8). 23 Thin'la mixed in 28 across (3). 23""Get rags" (anag) (7); 20 Exit (0),
27 At rest, but might make top
rooms, (6).
20. "It is no use killing-s to grow
docks"
Roya #proverb (8).
30 Vessel That, often starts an-
other's career (6).
31 This material would be more valuable it its end were in (0), YESTERDAY'S SOLUTION
COMPLETE TIME)
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