Frederick Ferdinand Moore

“ Bolshevism can only be smothered by attacking the idea of Bolshevism, for it is a soul-disease which has infected vast masses of people who have been wronged for centuries.
I do not object to the fact that these people wish to correct the wrongs of government, the wrongs of exploitation, the wrongs of enforced poverty which they have endured in a land of great natural wealth. The greatest wrong which has been committed against them is the system which has kept them in ignorance. ”

“ I do doubt that the Japanese motives were wholly to assist Russia in rehabilitating itself as a great and powerful empire; I do doubt that the Japanese Imperial government, sought or seeks to see Russia a united and powerful republic. Russia has been a source of worry to Japan for many years, and the many barracks built in Siberia since the Russo-Japanese war, have not had a tendency to remove that worry. For if the war had not broken in 1914, or if it had ended without smashing the régime of the Czar, Japan would have felt the weight once more of the Bear’s paw. ”

“ When people insist upon having amusement which they cannot afford, they are ripe for the tyrant, and their government goes to pot. Prosperity has done more damage to the human race than adversity—prosperity which is used only for an excess of amusement.
With the sobranias of Chita filled to overflowing every night, with wealthy and poor seeking to be diverted with vodka, dancing and eating all night, and sleeping most of the day, where is it possible to begin aiding them in the forming of a government of their own? ”

“ And when it comes to turning such a nation from an absolute autocracy into a liberal republic, in which one man’s vote is as good as another’s, it is impossible without the element of time. A country so vast and so various, with the blood of so many nations running through the people, and especially a people holding the Asiatic viewpoint of government, cannot be administered immediately according to our ideal. The best that can be hoped for is a constitutional monarchy, and even if that form of government is gained, it will be for some time a dictatorship. ”

“ I do not believe that all capitalists combine power with justice, any more than I believe that all working men understand the laws of economics and would create a régime of justice if they had all power in their hands. They mistake the machine which has been created to produce jobs for them, as the machine by which they themselves create, when as a matter of fact they themselves are only a part of the machine. ”

“ What we want, in Russia and at home, is that the peasant-minded people have comfort and justice though they persist in remaining peasant-minded, and that when an individual reveals extraordinary ability, he may develop it, and not be broken on the wheel for daring to lift himself out of the rut.
My ideal is not a nation of peasants by any means. But I do insist that a large mass of our own population prefers to be peasant-minded, and fights against being anything else. There is but a small proportion of our population which demands art in literature, pictures, or anything else. ”

“ If a law-maker finds that he gets as much credit for making a bad law as he gets for making a good law, neither law being understood, he soon disregards the people and works for his own ends, thus usurping power which has not been delegated to him. He becomes master instead of servant. People are responsible for their government.
A wave of joy swept the United States when the news came that the Czar had fallen. We had a mental picture of two hundred million human beings able now to enjoy a liberty similar to our own. ”

“ Freedom of the press, and freedom of speech, are two of our greatest liberties. But when Russians who have been to the United States, can return to Siberia and tell the population that we are worse than Russia, and that we are going to have a revolution, and read to the people sensational statements and half-baked and distorted information, at the same time that we are in that country trying to prove our friendship for them and asserting that the United States is a free country, something is wrong. ”

“ Thus the Russian peasant reasoned that he had no faults, that if he had the power he could produce an ideal government, and that because the ruling classes ruled badly, all that was needed to run the nation was a kind and generous heart. Thus also the Bolshevist leaders found it easy to take the Empire into their hands. The upper class of Russia made Bolshevism possible by keeping the lower class ignorant. And ignorance is the greatest menace to any nation—the spark in a powder magazine. ”

“ We cannot swing a magician’s wand and hand freedom to these people on a silver salver. We have got to face facts, and realize that the Tolstoys and Gorkys have misled us about the Russian peasant. For once given a free hand, this sublimated peasant has produced a tragedy, with himself the victim, which outdoes any tragedy the human race has ever wished itself into. ”

“ I maintain that it is a great error in governmental policy to attempt to turn a soldier into a diplomat, or a diplomat into a soldier. The soldier should not be called in until the policy of the nation had been clearly defined, and then the soldier should act, free from all political complications. An American military expedition should never leave our shores, till the government can tell its commander what to do, and his instructions should be defined in terms of action. ”

“ I believe that I am helping them in depicting them to the generous-minded people of the United States and other countries.
We cannot leave them alone, even if we would. The point I want to make is that all our agencies for welfare work, all our machinery of government which takes up the Siberian and Russian problem, must realize the difficulties ahead and understand that the problem differs from any other problem we have ever attacked. It is Asia, white man’s Asia. Despite white skin, we have on our hands a race not akin to white, yellow or black. ”

“ National good must stand above the good of parties.
I was more discouraged by the views of the Prinkipo invitation than were the Siberians or the Japanese. They suspected my attitude, for I had always expressed myself as opposed to Bolshevism. But the Cossacks had difficulty in understanding my reticence regarding my private opinions and my avowal that I would stand with my political chiefs. Probably they thought I should ferment an American revolution!
The Japanese understood better, I think, loyalty to government. Probably, knowing I was anti-Bolshevist, they expected me to commit hara-kiri. ”

“ If a man or woman has spent half a lifetime in a stone cell where the temperature drops as low as eighty degrees below zero for merely daring to think of government, criticise it, and demand justice for the ignorant people, that man or woman is not going to worry about cruel methods in retaliation if freedom ever comes. And when such a political convict has been chained to a murderer for work, and lives in such a cell with a murderer, these two will join hands against the common enemy. ”

“ The ideals of a Tolstoy, carried out by assassins, may wreck not only a criminal government, but may topple over the whole structure of civilization throughout the world.
I believe now that the Czar’s government, for all its hideousness, understood that its revolutionists not only threatened the imperial system but also menaced the lives of all the people in the Empire.
Revolution may be necessary when evolution, throttled by a few who control the destiny of a people, is not permitted to operate. The aspirations of the Russian people were beyond their abilities to carry out. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Having it, they were Bolshevists.
You of the United States may laugh at all this. But you must consider two things: First, the abysmal ignorance of the Siberian peasantry; and, second, that from the days of Aladdin, Asia has reeked with legends of magic wealth. So you have a whole people who, like that first moujik, are ready to credit any story—especially a story backed by real money. And the American, or other foreigner, who comes along and says that that money is worthless, and dares to laugh at it, may find himself facing a firing-squad. ”

“ What should we have done in Siberia? We should have done the only thing a military expedition is supposed to do—prevent disorder, insure safety to the inhabitants who go about their business, and demand that the Russians in such places as we occupied get busy with plans for government, and till they did so, go on and administer local government with their coöperation in accordance with our own ideas, and with our future intentions toward the people clearly stated and pledged. ”

“ I have visions of myself carried back to my hotel on a board, and wonder how diplomats ever attain long lives.
The Russian doctor catches my eye across the table once more. He goes around the flank in great excitement, grasps the arm with which I am feeding myself raw shark, and informs me in stentorian tones: “My son—four years Yokohama—she speaks very good English. I study two months.” I swallow the shark and congratulate him.
My eye roves. It cannot evade the semi-circle of friendly eyes which wait like wolves ready to attack, in case I do not drink from the glasses before me. ”

“ In the sixty-degrees-below-zero temperature, their breath came like plumes of white smoke from their nostrils. They looked at the sick man’s money and folded their arms, refusing to take it. “But it is good in Nikolsk,” he pleaded. “Then go to Nikolsk and spend it,” they returned. Shivering and hungry, the sick man climbed back into the coupé of his car. His pockets were full and his stomach was empty! He was as helpless as old King Midas.
In Siberia, a country fairly underlaid with precious metals—gold, silver, platinum and copper—there is no metal money to be seen. ”

“ You soon learn all sorts of devices by which you return to circulation your bad money. You contrive to pay off drosky-drivers hastily, and in dark streets. For the first time in your life you delight in tipping the hat-bandits at the doors of restaurants. By the time these rascals have discovered your iniquity, you have disappeared into the frozen night. Gamblers palm off their faulty currency in the excitement of the game, there being no time to submit the pot to cross examination. But beware, oh stranger, the too-obliging person who would turn your American money into rubles! ”

“ Further, the Bolshevists, through their keen methods of distributing this wealth, were able to convince a poverty-stricken people that Bolshevism stood for everything that was generous and good. Already the Bolshevists had taken over the government. With pockets stuffed full of stage money, the people massed themselves in the defense of that new government.
If you have been desperately poor all your life, and a man thrusts hundreds of dollars into your hands to prove that he is your friend, you believe him. ”

“ In this latter respect I have not found the Russian peasant hard to understand. The Russian noble and land-owner presents to me a greater problem. Here is a country in which the people love the land—they love to sow and reap, to dig and make the land produce. In fact, they demand little else. Yet the history of the Russian peasant is one of a constant fight to use and possess the land, while the great land-owner and the government, have persisted in thwarting him. ”

“ It is an ignorance deeper than we of the United States are capable of comprehending—a childish mentality in a white person who appears good-natured, religious, kind and hospitable under a restraining government, but who will kill his neighbor simply for the purpose of doing something dramatic.
It may be charged that my pessimism on the peasant is exaggerated, and that the Russian in this country disproves my assertions that hundreds of years must elapse before the peasant can meet our standards of intelligence. ”

“ If people whine that they are oppressed by an autocracy, they confess that there is something lacking in themselves. If they howl against capitalism, when all the things they have could only be produced for them by a system of capital invested to good purpose, they lack brains; and if they cannot devise a government which protects them from exploitation they deserve to be exploited. ”