Read Ebook: Bolshevism: The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy by Spargo John

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WHY AND HOW WE WENT TO MADAGASCAR.

Religious Revolution in Madagascar--The Idols PAGES 1-24 burned--Increased Help sent from England to the Mission--A Deputation appointed to visit the Island--Our Journey thither--Marseilles--Naples--Fellow-passengers--The Suez Canal--Aden--The Indian Ocean--Mauritius--The Bullockers--Passage across--Tamatave; the Town, Port, and Market--English and Native Friends--Sunday--The Native Churches and their Worship--Help they need--Importation of Rum into Madagascar and its evils--The Trade of Madagascar

FIRST EXPERIENCES OF MADAGASCAR AND ITS PEOPLE.

East Coast of Madagascar, its Character and PAGES Population--Supplies needed by a Traveller 25-49 to the Capital--Our Journey--Inland Lagoons--Park-like Scenery--Andevoranto--Ascend the Iharoka--"See the conquering Hero comes"--The Pass of T?niak?va--The Sorrows of the old Slave-system--System of our Journey--The great Ridge west of Bef?rona--Scenery of the Forest--The Plain of Ankay--The great Ridge of Angavo and its Forest--The Eastern Valleys of Imerina--Our Arrival and Reception--Population of the East Coast scanty--First Visits--The City empty--Why--Description of Antananarivo--Origin, Name, and Growth of the City--Interest of the Native Churches in our Visit

VISIT TO THE BETSILEO PROVINCE.

The Betsileo Province, its importance and PAGES position--The Mission recent--Journey 51-98 thither--The Ank?rat Mountains, their breadth and height--Encamp at the foot--The Vava Vato--Bet?fo and S?rab?--The River Mania--Ambositra--N?nd?hizana--Ambohinambo?rina--Ik?la--The Matsiatra River--Fianarantsoa--Visit of the Queen to the Province--Worship in the Camp--Examination of the Schools--The Tan?la--Our Visit to Ambohimandroso and Imahazony--The Southern Terrace and hills--The Ib?ra Tribes--Amb?ndromb?--The I?rindrano--Fianarantsoa again--Ifanjakana--Latitudes and Heights--General Conclusions concerning the Betsileo Province: its Population and Resources--Religious condition--New arrangements of the Mission for its Instruction--Return to the Capital

RETURN TO THE CAPITAL.

Return of the Queen and Military PAGES Expeditions--Thunderstorm--Public entry into 99-128 the City and reception by the People--Uniforms and ceremonies on the occasion--Reason and Course of the War--Our Interview with the Queen--Address from the Directors--Rest in the City--Home at An?lak?ly--Visits to the Institutions in the City--Worship with the Native Churches--Festival of the Fandr?ana--Visit to Country Missions in Imerina--Importance of these Stations--Vonizongo--The District: its spirited people: their high principle: many of them Martyrs--Position of an English Missionary in these Districts--Ambohimanga--Journey thither across country--A Royal City: its sturdy people: places around it--Amb?tov?ry: its beauty--Ambatomena and its People--Our return to Antan?nar?vo

HOW IT STRIKES A STRANGER.

Settling in the Capital--My Madagascar PAGES Home--Prospect over Imerina--Family Life and 129-155 Housekeeping--Our Servants--The Garden--Weather, Thunderstorms--Beauty of Imerina--The great City Market: Food, Dress and Manufactures Sold--Low Prices--Money--Settlements of the European Families--Roads--Our Dress--The Sun--The Palace--Social Life in the Capital--Lack of External Stimulus--Sources from which it may be supplied--Memorial Church at Faravohitra--The Martyrs who suffered there--Conference of Missionaries held in January--Topics discussed--Resolutions and Arrangements--Concluding Meeting--Important Re-arrangements resulting from it--Love of the Bible among the People--The Churches in the City--Opening of the Memorial Church at Ampamarinana

THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE OF MADAGASCAR.

The East Coast of the Island--The West PAGES Coast--Travels of M. Grandidier--Maps of 158-188 Madagascar--Mr. Cameron's Survey--Additions made by us--Size of Madagascar--The Mountain mass along its centre--Terraces on all sides--The Malagasy people a single race--Their Three Tribes and their Sub-divisions--The Malagasy not an African race--Their Malay origin--Evidence supplied by their Language--New Words from Arabic, French and English--Reference to Madagascar by Marco Paolo--Early Navigation of the Eastern Seas very extensive--Phoenician, Hindu, Chinese and Malay--Madagascar colonised by Malays--Three independent Movements--Traditions of the Hovas--Their Arrival in Imerina--Conquest of the Vazimba--Increase in Imerina--Their recent History--Ralambo and his Descendants--Imp?in and his consolidation of the Kingdom--Rad?ma--State of the Country, of Social Life and of the Sakalava Tribes in his day--The people still a federation of tribes--Their Institutions--Their steady growth in Civilisation, as well as in Religious Character

LAKE ITASY AND THE VOLCANIC REGION.

South Border of Imerina--Hill of PAGES Antongona--Arivonimamo, the old 189-226 Capital--Great number of beautiful hills--Mi?dana Manj?ka--Lake Itasy--The M?ndridr?no--Religious knowledge of the people--The grass of Madagascar--Numerous craters and crater-lakes--Mahatsinjo and its people--Vin?ny hill--Kitsamby river--Antoby--The Vava Vato--Norwegian Missions--Menabe--Betafo and Sirabe--Volcanoes--Hot springs and Limepits--Votovorona--The East of Ank?rat--Andrar?ty--Our return--Western Imerina--Ambohiveloma--The F?rah?ntsana: falls of the Ikopa

THE SIHANAKA PROVINCE AND PEOPLE.

Special reason for a visit to this PAGES Province--Crossing the Granite Moors--Basin 227-267 of the Manan?ra--Anjozorobe and its People--Spend Sunday with them--"The Gate of Rock"--The Wilderness of Ankay--Capital of the Sihanaka, its Governor and People--Christian work and the Native Pastor--Tour round the District--Ambohidehilahy--Ambodin?noka--Petulance of our Bearers--The great Swamp and its Reeds--Ambohitromby--Reception at Ambohipeno--Amparafaravola and its kind Governor--A Volcanic His parents were very rich and he enjoyed the advantages of a splendid education, as well as great luxury. At twenty-two years of age he was banished to a small town in the Urals, where he spent six years, returning to Moscow in 1840. It is noteworthy that the offense for which he had been sent into exile was the singing of songs in praise of the Decembrist martyrs. This occurred at a meeting of one of the "Students' Circles" founded by Herzen for the dissemination of revolutionary Socialist ideals among the students.

Alexander II was not alone in hoping that the Act of Liberation would usher in a new era of prosperity and tranquillity for Russia. Many of the most radical of the Intelligentsia, followers of Herzen, believed that Russia was destined to outstrip the older nations of western Europe in its democracy and its culture. It was not long before disillusionment came: the serfs were set free, but the manner in which the land question had been dealt with made their freedom almost a mockery. As a result there were numerous uprisings of peasants--riots which the government suppressed in the most sanguinary manner. From that time until the present the land question has been the core of the Russian problem. Every revolutionary movement has been essentially concerned with giving the land to the peasants.

The attempt made by a young student to assassinate Alexander II, on April 4, 1866, was seized upon by the Czar and his advisers as an excuse for instituting a policy of terrible reaction. The most repressive measures were taken against the Intelligentsia and all the liberal reforms which had been introduced were practically destroyed. It was impossible to restore serfdom, of course, but the condition of the peasants without land was even worse than if they had remained serfs. Excessive taxation, heavy redemption charges, famine, crop failures, and other ills drove the people to desperation. Large numbers of students espoused the cause of the peasants and a new popular literature appeared in which the sufferings of the people were portrayed with fervor and passion. In 1868-69 there were numerous demonstrations and riots by way of protest against the reactionary policy of the government.

It was at this time that Michael Bakunin, from his exile in Switzerland, conspired with Nechaiev to bring about a great uprising of the peasants, through the Society for the Liberation of the People. Bakunin advised the students to leave the universities and to go among the people to teach them and, at the same time, arouse them to revolt. It was at this time, too, that Nicholas Tchaykovsky and his friends, the famous Circle of Tchaykovsky, began to distribute among students in all parts of the Empire books dealing with the condition of the peasants and proposing remedies therefor. This work greatly influenced the young Intelligentsia, but the immediate results among the peasants were not very encouraging. Even the return from Switzerland, by order of the government, of hundreds of students who were disciples of Bakunin and Peter Lavrov did not produce any great success.

Very soon a new organization appeared. The remnant of the Circle Tchaykovsky, together with some followers of Bakunin, formed a society called the Land and Freedom Society. This society, which was destined to exert a marked influence upon revolutionary Russia, was the most ambitious revolutionary effort Russia had known. The society had a constitution and a carefully worked out program. It had one special group to carry on propaganda among students; another to agitate among the peasants; and a third to employ armed force against the government and against those guilty of treachery toward the society. The basis of the society was the conviction that Russia needed an economic revolution; that only an economic revolution, starting with the producers, could overthrow Czarism and establish the ideal state of society.

The members of this Land and Freedom Society divided their work into four main divisions: Agitation--passive and active. Passive agitation included strikes, petitions for reforms, refusal to pay taxes, and so on. Active agitation meant riots and uprisings. Organization--the formation of a fighting force prepared to bring about a general uprising. Education--the spreading of revolutionary knowledge and ideas, a continuation of the work of the Tchaykovsky Circle. Secularization--the carrying on of systematic work against the Orthodox Church through special channels. One of the early leaders of this society was George Plechanov, who later founded the Russian Social Democracy and gave to the Russian revolutionary movement its Marxian character, inspiring such men as Nikolai Lenine and Leon Trotzky, among many others. The society did not attain any very great amount of success in its efforts to reach the peasants, and it was that fact more than any other which determined Plechanov's future course.

Along with this attempt to force the whole population into a single mold went a determined resistance to liberalism in all its forms. All this was accompanied by a degree of efficiency in the police service quite unusual in Russia, with the result that the terroristic tactics of the Will of the People party were unavailing, except in the cases of a few minor officials. Plots to assassinate the Czar were laid, but they were generally betrayed to the police. The most serious of these plots, in March, 1887, led to the arrest of all the conspirators.

The revolutionists were roused as they had not been for a decade or more. Some of the leaders believed that the new reign of reaction would prove to be the occasion and the opportunity for bringing about a union of all the revolutionary forces, Anarchists and Socialists alike, peasants and industrial workers. This hope was destined to fail, but there was an unmistakable revolutionary awakening. In the latter part of January, 1895, an open letter to Nicholas II was smuggled into the country from Switzerland and widely distributed. It informed the Czar that the Socialists would fight to the bitter end the hateful order of things which he was responsible for creating, and menacingly said, "It will not be long before you find yourself entangled by it."

When the officials, in obedience to their ruler's wishes, relaxed the severity which had marked the treatment of the Jews and the non-orthodox Christian sects, the change was soon noted by the victims and once more there was a revival of hope. But the efforts of the Finns to secure a modification of the Russification policy were quite fruitless. When a deputation was sent from Finland to represent to the Czar that the rights and privileges solemnly reserved to them at the time of the annexation were being denied to the people of Finland, Nicholas II refused to grant the deputation an audience. Instead of getting relief, the people of Finland soon found that the oppression steadily increased. It was evident that Finnish nationality was to be crushed out, if possible, in the interest of Russian homogeneity.

Worse than all else was the cruel persecution of the Jews. Not only were they compelled to live within the Pale of Settlement, but this was so reduced that abominable congestion and poverty resulted. Intolerable restrictions were placed upon the facilities for education in the secondary schools, the gymnasia, and in the universities. It was hoped in this way to destroy the intellectual leadership of the Jews. Pogroms were instigated, stirring the civilized world to protest at the horrible outrages. The Minister of the Interior, Von Plehve, proclaimed his intention to "drown the Revolution in Jewish blood," while Pobiedonostzev's ambition was "to force one-third of the Jews to conversion, another third to emigrate"--to escape persecution. The other third he expected to die of hunger and misery. When Leo Tolstoy challenged these infamies, and called upon the civilized world on behalf of the victims, the Holy Synod denounced Tolstoy and his followers as a sect "especially dangerous for the Orthodox Church and the state." Later, in 1900, the Holy Synod excommunicated Tolstoy from the Orthodox Church.

The fatal logic of fanatical fury led to attacks upon the zemstvos. These local organizations had been instituted in 1864, by Alexander II, in the liberal years of his reign. Elected mainly by the landlords and the peasants, they were a vital part of the life of the nation. Possessing no political powers or functions, having nothing to do with legislation, they were important agencies of local government. The representatives of each county constituted a county-zemstvo and the representatives elected by all the county-zemstvos in a province constituted a province-zemstvo. Both types concerned themselves with much the same range of activities. They built roads and telegraph stations; they maintained model farms and agricultural experiment stations similar to those maintained by our state governments. They maintained schools, bookstores, and libraries: co-operative stores; hospitals and banks. They provided the peasants with cheap credit, good seeds, fertilizers, agricultural implements, and so forth. In many cases they provided for free medical aid to the peasants. In some instances they published newspapers and magazines.

It must be remembered that the zemstvos were the only representative public bodies elected by any large part of the people. While the suffrage was quite undemocratic, being so arranged that the landlords were assured a majority over the peasants at all times, nevertheless they did perform a great democratic service. But for them, life would have been well-nigh impossible for the peasant. In addition to the services already enumerated, these civic bodies were the relief agencies of the Empire, and when crop failures brought famine to the peasants it was always the zemstvos which undertook the work of relief. Hampered at every point, denied the right to control the schools they created and maintained, inhibited by law from discussing political questions, the zemstvos, nevertheless, became the natural channels for the spreading of discontent and opposition to the r?gime through private communication and discussion.

To bureaucrats of the type of Pobiedonostzev and Von Plehve, with their fanatical belief in autocracy, these organizations of the people were so many plague spots. Not daring to suppress them altogether, they determined to restrict them at every opportunity. Some of the zemstvos were suspended and disbanded for certain periods of time. Individual members were exiled for utterances which Von Plehve regarded as dangerous. The power of the zemstvos themselves was lessened by taking from them such important functions as the provisioning of famine-stricken districts and by limiting in the most arbitrary manner the amount of the budget permitted to each zemstvo. Since every decision of the zemstvos was subject to veto by the governors of the respective provinces, the government had at all times a formidable weapon at hand to use in its fight against the zemstvos. This weapon Von Plehve used with great effect; the most reasonable actions of the zemstvos were vetoed for no other reason than hatred of any sort of representative government.

As was inevitable, revolutionary terrorism enormously increased. In the cities the working-men were drawn mainly into the Social Democratic Working-men's party, founded by Plechanov and others in 1898, but the peasants, in so far as they were aroused at all, rallied around the standard of the Socialist-Revolutionists, successors to the Will of the People party. This party was peculiarly a party of the peasants, just as the party of Plechanov was peculiarly a party of industrial workers. It emphasized the land question above all else. It naturally scorned the view, largely held by the Marxists in the other party, that Russia must wait until her industrial development was perfected before attempting to realize Socialism. It scorned the slow, legalistic methods and resolutely answered the terrorism of Czarism by a terrorism of the people. It maintained a special department for carrying on this grim work. Its Central Committee passed sentences of death upon certain officials, and its decrees were carried out by the members of its Fighting Organization. To this organization within the party belonged many of the ablest and most consecrated men and women in Russia.

Taking advantage of the new conditions, the leaders of the zemstvos organized a national convention. This the government forbade, but it had lost much of its power and the leaders of the movement ignored the order and proceeded to hold the convention. At this convention, held at St. Petersburg, November 6, 1904, attended by many of the ablest lawyers, doctors, professors, scientists, and publicists in Russia, a resolution was adopted demanding that the government at once call representatives of the people together for the purpose of setting up a constitutional government in Russia. It was a revolutionary act, a challenge to the autocracy, which the latter dared not accept. On the contrary, in December the Czar issued an ambiguous ukase in which a number of concessions and reforms were promised, but carefully avoiding the fundamental issues at stake.

Meanwhile the war with Japan, unpopular from the first, had proved to be an unbroken series of military defeats and disasters for Russia. From the opening of the war in February to the end of the year the press had been permitted to publish very little real news concerning it, but it was not possible to hide for long the bitter truth. Taxes mounted higher and higher, prices rose, and there was intense suffering, while the loss of life was enormous. News of the utter failure and incompetence of the army and the navy seeped through. Here was Russia with a population three times as large as that of Japan, and with an annual budget of two billions as against Japan's paltry sixty millions, defeated at every turn. What did this failure signify? In the first place, it signified the weakness and utter incompetence of the r?gime. It meant that imperialist expansion, with a corresponding strengthening of the old r?gime, was out of the question. Most intelligent Russians, with no lack of real patriotism, rejoiced at the succession of defeats because it proved to the masses the unfitness of the bureaucracy.

It signified something else, also. There were many who remembered the scandals of the Turkish War, in 1877, when Bessarabia was recovered. At that time there was a perfect riot of graft, corruption, and treachery, much of which came under the observation of the zemstvos of the border. High military officials trafficked in munitions and food-supplies. Food intended for the army was stolen and sold--sometimes, it was said, to the enemy. Materials were paid for, but never delivered to the army at all. The army was demoralized and the Turks repulsed the Russians again and again. Now similar stories began to be circulated. Returning victims told stories of brutal treatment of the troops by officers; of wounded and dying men neglected; of lack of hospital care and medical attention. They told worse stories, too, of open treachery by military officials and others; of army supplies stolen; of shells ordered which would fit no guns the Russian army ever had, and so on. It was suggested, and widely believed, that Germany had connived at the systematic corruption of the Russian bureaucracy and the Russian army, to serve its own imperialistic and economic ends.

Such was the state of Russia at the end of the year 1904. Then came the tragic events of January, 1905, which marked the opening of the Revolution. In order to counteract the agitation of the Social Democrats among the city workers, and the formation by them of trades-unions, the government had caused to be formed "legal" unions--that is, organizations of workmen approved by the government. In order to give these organizations some semblance to real labor-unions, and thereby the better to deceive the workers, strikes were actually inspired by agents of the government from time to time. On more than one occasion strikes thus instigated by the government spread beyond control and caused great alarm. The Czar and his agents were playing with fire.

Among such unions was the Gathering of Industrial Working-men of St. Petersburg, which had for its program such innocent and non-revolutionary objects as "sober and reasonable pastimes, aimed at physical, intellectual, and moral improvement; strengthening of Russian national ideas; development of sensible views concerning the rights and duties of working-men and improvement of labor conditions and mutual assistance." It was founded by Father Gapon, who was opposed to the revolutionary movement, and was regarded by the Socialists as a Czarist tool.

Let every one be equal and free in the right of election; order to this end that election for the Constituent Assembly be based on general, equal, direct, and secret suffrage. This is our main request; in it and upon it everything is founded; this is the only ointment for our painful wounds; and in the absence of this our blood will continue to flow constantly, carrying us swiftly toward death.

But this measure alone cannot remedy all our wounds. Many others are necessary, and we tell them to you, Sire, directly and openly, as to our Father. We need:

Personal freedom and inviolability, freedom of speech and the press, freedom of assemblage, freedom in religious affairs;

General and compulsory public education at the expense of the state;

Responsibility of the Ministers to the people, and guaranties of lawfulness in administration;

Equality before the law for all without exemption;

Immediate rehabilitation of those punished for their convictions.

Separation of the Church from the state.

Abolition of indirect taxes and introduction of direct income taxes on a progressive scale;

Abolition of the redemption payments, cheap credit, and gradual transferring of the land to the people;

The orders for the naval and military Ministers should be filled in Russia and not abroad;

The cessation of the war by the will of the people.

Protection of labor by legislation;

Freedom of consumers' and producers' leagues and trades-unions;

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