“I’ve just left Lydia.”
“You’re going back to London to-morrow, aren’t you?
Don’t let her sting you too much.
There’s no reason why you should help to get her rotten husband out of jug.”
Charley took the cuttings from his pocket.
“By your article I judged that you had a certain amount of sympathy for him.”
“Sympathy, no.
I found him interesting just because he was such an unmitigated, cold-blooded, unscrupulous cad.
I admired his nerve.
In other circumstances he might have been a useful instrument.
In a revolution a man like that who’ll stick at nothing, who has courage and no scruples, may be invaluable.”
“I shouldn’t have thought a very reliable instrument.”
“Wasn’t it Danton who said that in a revolution it’s the scum of society, the rogues and criminals, who rise to the surface?
It’s natural.
They’re needed for certain work and when they’ve served their purpose they can be disposed of.”
“You seem to have it all cut and dried, old boy,” said Charley, with a cheerful grin.
Simon impatiently shrugged his bony shoulders.
“I’ve studied the French Revolution and the Commune.
The Russians did too and they learnt a lot from them, but we’ve got the advantage now that we can profit by the lessons we’ve learnt from subsequent events.
They made a bad mess of things in Hungary, but they made a pretty good job of it in Russia and they didn’t do so badly either in Italy or in Germany.
If we’ve got any sense we ought to be able to emulate their success, but avoid their mistakes.
Bela Kun’s revolution failed because people were hungry.
The rise of the proletariat has made it comparatively simple to make a revolution, but the proletariat must be fed.
Organization is needed to see that means of transport are adequate and food supplies abundant.
That incidentally is why power, which the proletariat thought to seize by making the revolution, must always elude their grasp and fall into the hands of a small body of intelligent leaders.
The people are incapable of governing themselves.
The proletariat are slaves and slaves need masters.”
“You would hardly describe yourself any longer as a good democrat, I take it,” said Charley with a twinkle in his blue eyes.
Simon impatiently dismissed the ironical remark.
“Democracy is moonshine.
It’s an unrealizable ideal which the propagandist dangles before the masses as you dangle a carrot before a donkey.
Those great watchwords of the nineteenth century, liberty, equality, fraternity, are pure hokum.
Liberty?
The mass of men don’t need liberty and don’t know what to do with it when they’ve got it.
Their duty and their pleasure is to serve; thus they attain the security which is their deepest want.
It’s been decided long ago that the only liberty worth anything is the liberty to do right, and right is decided by might.
Right is an idea occasioned by public opinion and prescribed by law, but public opinion is created by those who have the power to enforce their point of view, and the only sanction of law is the might behind it.
Fraternity?
What do you mean by fraternity?”
Charley considered the question for a moment.
“Well, I don’t know.
I suppose it’s a feeling that we’re all members of one great family and we’re here on earth for so short a time, it’s better to make the best of one another.”
“Anything else?”
“Well, only that life is a difficult job, and it probably makes it easier for everybody if we’re kind and decent to one another.
Men have plenty of faults, but there’s a lot of good in them.
The more you know people the nicer you find they are.
That rather suggests that if you give them a chance they’ll meet you half way.”
“Tosh, my dear boy, tosh.
You’re a sentimental fool.
In the first place it’s not true that people improve as you know them better: they don’t.