New Mexico state record. (Santa Fe, N.M.) 1914-19??, 1920-04-30
Shall Chaos or Reconstruction
in Europe Follow the Great
World War?
RUSSIA'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

sia waited for morning. 1t was a tel
rible night. Brutal dreams torture
her. She writhed in despair. Tim
moved slowly. The clock tickle,
agOnies. The air was thick witt
groans. Motherhood bore slaves. TIL,
cradle was a coffin. Feast days wer'
celebrated by massacres. Cars iron
Ivan the Terrible, 1914, TO Nicholas
the last of the Romanoffs, executed
in 1913, used the bodies and souls o
human beings as manure TO fertiliZ'
the soil in which the rank weed o.
Imperialism grew. History calls then
emperors. truth labels them brutes
torturers. murderers. They bore the
brand of Cain.
1t was Il lightless day, a hopeless
night, for Russia. which began with
tie 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
were 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 AS men. Sweat formed
into red froth as it 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. 1t was left, right, left,
right; tramp, tramp, and always or
the treadmill steps in the hopeless
dark. They mumbled prayers, but God
couldn't hear. the curses of their mas
tiers drowned out their petitionings.
Ii 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
1t was kind. The only thing they
owned was their pains. They lived a
communism of suffering, n 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,
,..ra Lnxnilynrol T., Al. f., -
a new delight they rushed on. 1t isn't
strange, 1t Is pathetic, that eyes blind
ed by ages OF darkness blinked I'm 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 n task before them, the
building of n free mans house, a house
In the light, II house without a dark
They knew little about free
dom. except that they wanted it with
all their hearts. Their experience hal
been with slavery. They knew little
about the practical work of building
house In which freedom might live
and secure.
They saw civilization with the eyes
a surgeon. They gasped when they
saw that its body wal covered with
/ malignant sore. 1t was an ugly,
'estering, RAINING, growing sore. They
earned Its name, IL was written IN
he lOudest of ch~ronicles-it was the
ncurable, horrible leprosy Of the
world. Ii was CONFECTIONERY.
They were told that IL was the cause
# the nasty thing religion labeled sin,
hat poverty had transformed Christ
images struck In clay into hunch-
,acked souls, that the sickening mat
running from sores caused the red
lotches on the worlds body known
$ red-light districts; that other ef-
were the swollen blacklist blue
oils. the tenements and slums. They
huddered. Even the darkness of the
had not produced worse.
They learned about poverty. They
Fad its autobiography. In 1t they
Fad how 1t had robbed children Of
heir childhood. erased faith from the
of men. mobilized women I'm
traffic. They learned that
luch Of the thing called crime was
work. that normality and
are matters of education.
nat TO be good requires knowledge
{ right and wrong. They read that
tatesmen called poverty THE PROB ,
EN-. Reformers called II a curse and :
unpopular because of their /,
ersistent attacks upon II. In the /
of a t~houghtless world those /
no fought poverty were called long I,
men and short-haired women (
did not stop to remember that I
Iese long haired men and short-haired 4,
omen gave of their time and strength G