The Wrangell sentinel., 1920-05-06
Shall Chaos or Reconstruction in Europe Follow the Great
 World War?
SOME LIGHT ON BOLSHEVlSM
Movement Not Anarchistic, as So Many Seem to Think-ProbabIy Is Best Described as "Con-
 sistent Socialism"
Article XIII.
By FRANK coMERFoRD.

By FRANK coMERFoRD.
 If were asked to name the princi- pal cause for the growing unrest my answer would be bolshevism. The al most universal attitude of big business toward Russian bolshevism-an atti- tude adopted by most of the govern ments of Europe-has been, and is, Kill 1t; don't waste time examining 1t i: it isn't worth trying to understand; no good can come out of it; it must be fought; it isn't entitled to a trial. Reams of paper have been used to as sail it. Captains of industry and gov ernment officials have vied with each other in making assault on it. Many of those who oppose bOlshevism are indignant if you ask them what it is and why they oppose it. They charac- teriZe it, attack it, resent it. Great heat has been shown in discussing it, without throwing any light on the sub ject. Absurd lies have been told about bolshevism. Later these unnec- essary and stupid lies have been ex-  has been bred, unrest fed. The effect upon the workers has been to increase their hate for their employers and de- stroy their already weakened faith in government.
 Whether bolshevism is right or wrong. whether 1t Is good thing or a bad thing, it is at least definite pO- litical plan, capable of being examined. measured. weighed and tested. It is few of the things it has been called. It is entitled to a hearing on its mer- It's. It cannot be howled down in abuse.
 Bolshevism Not Anarchy.
 Those who lead the campaign against 1t frequently and confusingly define it as anarchy. If there is one thing that bolshevism is not, 1t is an- archy. Much controversy will be avoided, many differences of opinion dissolved if we come to a fair and open understanding of the bolshevik program. One of the great misfor- tunes is that we form opinions without information, rush to judgments with out understanding, then stubbornly close our minds. Much of the discord and strife of life in big things as we'll as in little matters, is due to this habit. Anarchy is not criminal law lessness, notwithstanding the fact that this is the popular misconception of the term. Say anarchist" and the av- craze man or woman to whom you say it looks frightened, thinks of bomb- thrower, dynamiter, firebrand Such man is not an anarchist; he is a terrorist. criminal, a destruction ist, murderer. Let Us call spade a spade and be sure we know what a spade is, and we will understand each other better.
 ANarchsm is an old and respectable philosophy. The anarchist is an indi- vidualist. He is in favor of free life for the individual. He Is opposed to turning over the individuals power to the state. He argues that great power delegated to government limits the growth and freedom of the indi- vidual. He dreams of an ideal state in which human beings will be so perfect they need no law. His doctrine is an enlargement, an exaggeratiOn of the idea that the government which gov erns least governs best. He isn't a lawbreaker. He is law abolisher. He reasons that when murder leaves the human heart there will be no occasion for laws against killing; that the statute against murder is only printed words on the page of law book, ut terly and entirely without meaning, or existence, to the man who is incapable of killing his fellow man. He says that we should develop our artistic and moral sides and by evolution gradually repeal one law after an other until all law disappears. It is pure idealism-it Is movement to- ward perfection. It is the millennium It is poetry. Kipling wrote its con stitution when he wrote:
 And only the Master shall praise us,
 And only the Master shall blame,
 .
 And no one shall work for fame.
 But each for the joy of working.
 Each in his separate star
 Shall draw the Thing as he sees 1t
 For the God of Things as They Are.
 Merely a Beautiful Dream.
 Few people will contend that this theory is anything more than beauti- full dream. Probably the first and greatest of the anarchists was the great Greek philosopher Zeno, from Crete, the founder of the stOic philosO- phy, who died 27O years B. c. It is disturbing to find dynamiters called anarchists, and in the same breath hear included some of the greatest idealists that have ever trOd the earth. The very mention of the two types in the same class gives respec- tability to the totally ugly, deprayed, ignorant, lawless criminal.
 l went to standard authority for a cOmmon-sense definition of bolshev- ism. I was in Prague on my way up