XXVII THE JOKER IN BOLSHEVISM

The Bolshevists of Siberia hate wall-paper. After traveling in that country, I came to the conclusion that a Bolshevist operates on the theory that there can be no freedom for anybody so long as a single strip of wall-paper remains on any wall. Neither can there be any freedom while glassware is unbroken, furniture unsmashed, curtains are whole, windows intact, books unburned. And the parlor Bolshevists of the United States, if they were really consistent, would stop talking and start a little freedom in their own homes by pulling everything down that is up, and pulling everything up that is down, sweeping the total into the street and putting a match to it.

There is a joker in this “new form of government” known as Bolshevism. In fact, the joker is the very core of the whole matter. Mutilated wall-paper gave me my first inkling of that joker. In Chita, the searchers after freedom had done a thorough job. For not only were the interior walls of the town everywhere stripped clean, but, according to the proprietor of a local store the stock in the different shops had gone to feed the bon-fires.

“So the Bolshevists hate wall-paper even before it is hung,” I said to this merchant.

“Yes,” he replied through my interpreter. “I heard from a friend in another town that soon we’d be able to get some from Japan. But a German prisoner of war, who helps my wife with the cooking, says to wait till the railroad opens up to Petrograd, and then I’ll be able to get cheaper and better wall-paper from Germany.”

I lunched that day at the Hotel Dayooria. A German prisoner of war was my waiter. He was a meek sort of person who had set out from home with Kultur on the point of his bayonet and now found himself a slave in a foreign land. He served my tea in a glass that had been made from a wine bottle by cutting the top off. The upper edge of the glass was dangerously sharp.

“I am sorry, captain,” said the waiter; “—no other glasses now.” (He spoke in English. He had learned it in a German school. He gently hinted that any stray magazines I might have would be welcome.)

“Well, when is the boss going to order some regular goblets?”—which was more or less an attempt at humor on my part, since in Siberia at that time there was small chance of getting anything from anywhere.

“Pretty soon we’ll have glassware from Germany,” the waiter assured me proudly. Then with a click of his heels, he went back to the kitchen.

That was my second glimpse of the joker.

Across the street from the Dayooria was a much larger and more modern hotel, the Select. The lower windows on the street were all boarded up, for these had been the fronts of banks and shops when the Bolshevists cut loose on the town, and, in order to become free, found it necessary to smash the plate-glass, and loot—all of which was done to the (I was going to say King’s) proletariat’s taste.

But the interior of the Select had not suffered so complete a wrecking as the Dayooria. An American consul had once occupied a room at the Select, and through the kindness of the Cossack chief of staff, I was allowed to rent this room, with another for my interpreter. (The rent was raised each week, a mere detail even in Bolshevist Siberia.)

There was a shortage of electric globes in Chita. But the commandant managed so that I had globes for the three wires hanging from my ceiling, and a globe for the drop-light on my desk. In the halls of the hotel, as in my room, the globes hung from the ceilings on wires. One evening in a hall I observed a German war prisoner shorten the loop in one wire so that the globe fell as low as his shoulder. The next time he came through from the kitchen to the officers’ mess with a tray, he bumped the globe in such a manner that it crashed against the wall, and broke.

The same night I noticed that one of the lights in my room was not burning. I called the German prisoner who acted as janitor, and asked him to fix it. He brought a ladder, climbed up, unscrewed the globe, dropped it, and broke it. He said he felt rather bad about it, too. It was a blot on his efficiency.

The next night another globe gave no light. I investigated myself, by moving my bed and piling my two lockers on it. The globe burned all right when it was screwed into the socket. I unscrewed it until it again failed to burn, moved the bed and lockers back into place, and called the same German. He came with his ladder, examined the globe, told me it was burned out, and took it away.

When the third globe went dark, I found that it too, had been unscrewed enough to break the circuit. The German came, climbed his ladder, and with pliers, when he thought I was not looking, pried off the glass tip, rendering the globe useless. Then he told me the globe was no good. And—there were no more globes.

Now all I had left was the globe in the drop-light. Every morning I hid it, and thereby worried the German. There was evidence that he hunted for it when I was out of my room. Why were the janitor and the waiter destroying globes that were a necessity even to themselves? I clinched my suspicions by asking a former merchant of electrical supplies this question: “Where did you buy your electric globes and fixtures before the war?” Well, they came from Moscow—mostly made in Germany.

Here was another corner of that joker! When Russian Bolshevists were afraid they would get caught breaking things, the German prisoners helped the game along by doing a little sly smashing on their own account!

Because I had the room of a former American consul, the Russian owner of a gold mine near Chita called upon me, thinking I was the present American consul. He said he wanted advice as to where he might, some time in the future, buy mining-machinery.

The Bolshevists had wrecked his entire plant. Their leaders had told the peasants that the mines of Siberia belong to all, and that in time a Bolshevist government would work the mines, and divide the gold among the people. In that way no one would become richer than someone else.

“The German prisoners,” he said, “now tell my workmen that if I have machinery I will need only a few men, and so hundreds of workmen will be thrown out of jobs. Of course, if I could put machinery in I would employ ten times as many men as I do now. I can’t make my mine pay without machinery, and for the present I am employing only common labor to clean things up so as to be ready for better times. If we Russian mine owners can’t make our mines pay, we’ll have to sell out. During the revolution, German capitalists have bought up a lot of companies in European Russia at bankrupt prices.

“But assuming that Germany takes the mines, how can the Germans hope to operate them if the workmen refuse to allow machinery to be used in them?”

“You do not know our moujiks,” he replied. “They will not believe what I tell them for their own good. But they will believe the lies of an outsider—any childish story told to swindle them. By the time Germany is ready to sell us machinery, maybe the moujiks will be told not to smash it—if the machinery is German.”

And picture the amount of mining-machinery that Siberia will be able to use! For two thousand versts to the north of Chita there are gold fields. The fields which have been developed make scarcely a dot on the map. No. One Russian mine-worker will not become richer than another when that vast country is worked. If Germany’s plans do not miscarry, those who will profit first will be the German machinery manufacturers.

It was brought to my attention in a certain part of Siberia that wool, cow hair and camel hair, valued at nine million rubles, purchased just before the revolution by a Boston company through its Moscow agency, was to be seized. Who was going to seize it is not a matter for me to discuss here, but I can say there was good evidence that it would have gone in the direction of Germany.

The warehouses containing this material were in three cities, and somehow escaped being burned. Whenever Bolshevist bands broke loose to loot and burn, the word must have been passed from some mysterious fountain-head to spare the warehouses containing that wool and hair—for, mind, those warehouses were in three different cities, far apart. This would indicate that, after all, there is a system to Bolshevism. The system appears to be, “Smash machinery and manufactured goods but spare raw material.” As the wool and hair was owned by an American company, an inference might be drawn that the protection was due to its being American property. If so, why—when there was a rumor that American troops might soon be in the vicinity of the warehouses—was it to be seized and moved toward Germany?

Siberian Bolshevists with whom I talked told me of the great yearning for education among the masses, and how the Bolshevists would provide plenty of schools. I examined the condition of several schools where the Bolshevists had been in control for a time. Every possible book had been destroyed—geographies, grammars, spelling-books. It was a case of spurlos versenkt. Pens, paper, pencils, maps, erasers, rulers, ink and all other school accessories went the way of the books—to the bon-fires in the streets. A yearning to learn? Certainly. One might describe it as a burning desire. And will it not be fine for Leipsic to print Russia’s new school books, with some German propaganda thrown in free? Also, lieber Gott, vot a market for pencils and other little things! (Note for Leipsic: Printers in Japan are already printing Russian books!)

There is a significant angle to the smashing and burning that has gone on in Russia—an angle which the American working man should bear in mind when he is told that Russian Bolshevists are on the right track for turning a moujik into a magnate over night. Russia is a great producer of raw material. Smashed machinery there means that whatever raw material escapes destruction must seek a foreign market. Naturally, if such material cannot be sold to a Russian factory, the factory abroad buys it much cheaper than if there were a home demand for it. Also, smashed machinery in Russia means no production in Russia of manufactured goods; and no manufactured goods in Russia means that the very working men who smashed the machinery must buy goods manufactured abroad.

Further, if there are no goods manufactured in Russia, the foreign manufacturer makes his own prices, both for what he buys from Russia and what he sells to her. In other words, he gets raw materials from her at low prices, and sells manufactured goods to her at high prices. This forces all Russian labor, skilled as well as unskilled, into working at low wages on the production of raw materials, and the cost of the raw materials is constantly being pulled down because, with no Russian demand for factory-skilled labor, there is a surplus of labor. So the Russian manufacturing capitalist is wiped out, sure enough, along with all machinery. Also, in time, Russian skilled labor will be wiped out!

And for this condition of affairs, Russians can thank themselves!

Germany realized how crude were her methods when she sent to Belgium and France a force that, operating behind her fighting men, wrecked or burned factories, and seized raw material. That was a job she did herself, and she had to take the blame of the whole world for it. She had to devise a scheme by which she could get the same results elsewhere without having to bear any blame.

That scheme was Bolshevism. The craftiest criminals always use fools as their tools. And in Bolshevism Germany found the Ersatz, or substitute, for an army of thieving and destroying Germans. It has been estimated that more than a million Germans are prisoners of war in Russia. These men whispered anti-capitalistic propaganda into the ear of the poor moujik, who wants education so badly that he is willing to burn school books, and who thinks he can attain freedom by ripping off wall-paper. And the moujik, under skillful leadership, did Germany’s work, and did it for nothing. That same Ivan who had died by millions to beat the Germans ran home from the trenches and wrecked his own country to the Kaiser’s taste, at the Kaiser’s word—wrecked it more thoroughly than the German armies would have been able to wreck it. For he smashed everything but the ikons and the rubber-plants. Why he did not destroy the rubber-plants we cannot understand. Is it because Germany does not wish to sell rubber-plants to Russia?

So keen were the Germans to help the Russian Bolshevists to “overthrow the Russian capitalists,” that the German capitalists loaned the Bolshevists armored cars and cannon made in Germany by the Krupp works and in Austria by the Skoda works. Evidently the German capitalists had suddenly fallen in love with the Russian proletariat! (This is a nut for our own parlor Bolshevists to crack.)

I can guess how they will crack it. They will say, “Yes, the Russian Bolshevists took help from the German capitalists, but in time they will turn those guns upon the very capitalists who loaned them.” Yet what I ask to know, as Hashimura Togo would say, is, “Why did the German capitalists ever begin to help the Bolshevists?”

After all, Russian capitalists are the only people who can give Russian working men jobs. By the same token, German capitalists are the only people who can give German working men jobs. If the German capitalists do not want the Russian capitalists to be able to give jobs to Russians, are the German capitalists who loaned guns to Russian Bolshevists, friends of the Russian working men?

The first parlor Bolshevist who answers that question correctly will explain the joker in Bolshevism.

Germany mobilized the fools of Russia. Why not, she asked herself, extend a scheme that worked so successfully with the moujiks to the working populations of other countries? She began to have hopes (with the aid of Bolshevist propaganda) of mobilizing the malcontents everywhere. Capital, if not wiped out, could at least be frightened or forced into a period of non-production—or production at high prices. High prices, in turn, create demands for higher wages—demands that usually take the form of strikes. Labor troubles may lead to riots, or even revolution—with consequent destruction. And to judge by Belgium, northern France and Russia, destruction is what Germany wants.

Meanwhile, rumors of riots in the Fatherland encourage Bolshevism in other countries. We have had copious news of Bolshevist troubles in Germany. The fact that we get this news over German wires is evidence that Germany wants us to get it. It makes a fine smoke-screen behind which stand her great untouched factories with their unsmashed machinery.

The Germans told the Russians that the great war was a “capitalistic war.” Germany was right. But she neglected to say that it was designed to aid the German capitalists. And if enough fools in every other country can be induced to smash and tear and burn, saving only (take note) some raw materials, then with her own factories and machinery intact, Germany can flood the world with her own cheap manufactured goods.

For this is the joker in Bolshevism: The providing for Germany, of colossal markets!

And if she has these markets created for her, the indemnity which the Allies have demanded, and which Germany says is “staggering,” will be to her a mere handful of small change.