Within a few years, French troops were violently suppressing Vietnamese independence movements. At Amritsar in India in April 1919, British-commanded troops massacred nearly 400 unarmed demonstrators. But let us go back to the beginning, to 1909. Lenin is in exile in Paris, living in poverty, his despair made unbearable by the theft of his bicycle. In Russia, Stalin, having escaped from jail, is on the run, and is discovering that the entire Bolshevik movement lies in ruins.
Totalitarianism is entirely unknown across the broad sweep of the planet.
And in London, the literary sensation is The Wind in the Willows, a nursery tale for adults in which the animal kingdom conclusively triumphs over modern technology. The motor-car is routed and Mole and Ratty return to their animal paradise.