The Emmett index. [volume] (Emmett, Idaho) 1893-1925, 1920-07-08
Shall Chaos or Reconstruction
in Europe Follow the Great
World War;
RUSSlA'S LONG, BLACK NIGHT
Little Wonder People of That Unhappy
Land Are Blinded by freedoms
Light After Four Centuries
of Suffering.
Article XIV
BY FRANK coMERFoR.D.

rible night. Brutal dreams tortured
her. She writhed In despair. Time
moved slowly. The clock licked
groans. Motherhood bore slaves. The
cradle was a coffin. Feast days were
celebrated by massacres. Cars from
Ivan the Terrible, 1914, to Nicholas,
the last of the Romanoffs, executed
In 1918, used the bodies and souls of
human beings as manure to fertillze
the soil In which the rank weed Of
Imperialism grew. History calls them
emperors, truth labels them brutes,
torturers, murderers. They bore the
| brand of Cain.
1t was a lightless day, hopeless
night, for Russia. which began with
| the curses of Ivan and ended with the
execution of Nicholas. During this
| night of three hundred and seventy
| five years they marched the treadmill.
The world heard the endless tramp of
feet. In the dark, great bodies swayed
with WEAKNESS. Heavy shoulders
we're bent forward Strong legs
marked time on the treadmill steps.
They kept time to the lash of the
whip. 1t laid bare their backs, the
backs of young and old, of women and
children as well us men. Sweat formed
into red frOth as ii mingled with their
blood. They grew blind in the dun
geon darkness. They stumbled and
halted, only to be called back to the
monotony and drudgery of the tramp
by the lash and the bludgeOn. Their
legs rose and fell-they marched, but
never forward. II was left, right, left,
right; tramp, tramp. and always on
the treadmill steps in the hopeless
dark. They mumbled prayers, but God
couldn't hear. the curses of their mas
ters drowned out their petitionings.
1t was so dark in the treadmill that
even God could not see, and so God
forgot Russia. Forgotten, abandoned,
they bent their great weary backs to-
ward the sod, the grave offered rest
it was kind. The only thing they
owned was their pains. They lived a
communism of suffering, socialism
of slavery.
The revolution of 1917 battered
down the door of the treadmill. Seized
with wild joy, they madly rushed to-
ward the light. When they got out
in the open. saw the sky and sun,
they were bewildered. In the fury of
a new delight they rushed on. 1t isn't
strange, it is pathetic, that eyes blind
ed by ages of darkness blinked In the
light. 1t isn't surprising that they
tried to reach the center of the sun.
Suffering in the light is different from
suffering in the black the Russians |
knew.
When their eyes became accustomed
to the light they looked around them /
to see where they were-to learn what
had been happening in the strange,
beautiful world.
Tremendous Task Before Them.
They had task before them, the
building of free mans house, house
in the light, house without dark
corner. They knew little about free
dom, except that they wanted it with
all their hearts. Their experience had
been with slavery. They knew little
about the practical work of building
a house in which freedom might live
pure and secure.
They saw civilization with the eyes
Of surgeon. They gasped when they
saw that its body was covered with
a malignant sore. 1t was an ugly,
fostering, running, growing sore. They
learned its name. 1t was written IN
he loudest of chronicles-it was the
ncurable, horrible leprosy of the
world. 1t was cancer-POYERTY.
They were told that it was the cause
If the nasty thing religion labeled sn,
hat poverty had transformed Christ
images struck In clay into hunch-
hacked souls, that the sickening mat
er running from sores caused the red
,lotches on the worlds body known
IS red-light districts; that other eff
ects were the swollen blackish blue
'oils. the tenements and slums. They
Murdered. Even the darkness of the {
readmill had not produced worse.
They learned about poverty. They
cad its autobiography. In it they I
cad how it had robbed children Of
heir childhood, erased faith from the
Minds of men. modified women In
readful traffic. They learned that
1uch of the thing called crime was d
overty's work, that normality and 0
lorality are matters of education. IL
hat TO be good requires knowledge a
( right and wrong. They read that II
tatesmen called poverty THE PROB al
EN-. Reformers called 1t a curse and I
ecame unpopular because of their OF
attacks upon it. In the IN
erdict of a thoughtless world those b
no fought poverty were called long W
aired men and short-haired women. III
eopie did not stop to remember that tn
Iese long-haired men and short-haired Vf
ogno4, Cnvp NJ their fine and etranoth CO