The Fayette falcon. (Somerville, Tenn.) 190?-current, 1921-05-27
OF NARROW MIND
Writer Denies Lenin Any EIe-
ment of Greatness.
Tragedy In His Early Life Largely In.
fiueneed the Actions Of Sinister
Russian HevoutionIst.

Lenin, that extraordinary Russian, is
well enough known to the world as
politician and leader, but little known
as personality. W. II. f. Basevi, in
the Forum, discloses some interest
ing facts regarding the educational and
moral influences that early shaped the
character of this sinister revolutionary
and that went toward the making of
the man who has turned the tremen-
dous tide of a vast empire.
until 1917" writes Mr. Basevi, 'he
was merely one Of a host of dis
gruntled exiles, wanderers In foreign
lands, who lived from hand to mouth
by free-lance journalism, or picked up
a precarious livelihood as tourists
guides or by lecturing and teaching
Russian, assisted at infrequent and I'M
certain intervals by remittances from
reluctant relatives and loans from
friends. Driven by poverty as well as
by conviction to join the underworld
of revolutionary intriguers, and to join
In plots against the government wher-
ever they might be, they were always
under surveillance by the police, and
were compelled to change their names
as frequently as their homes in order
to evade pursuit and gain little res
pite."
And continuing, Mr.. Basevi says:
Uh
nom de guerre is Lenin, is the son OF
a member of the lower order Of tho
hereditary nobility. The father appar-
emily had revolutionary theories which
Lenin and his elder brother put into
practice. The two boys were educated
ut the Kazan university, and here oc-
CURED tragedy which was probably
the turning point in Lenin's career. His
elder brother was executed for COM
plicity in plot to assassinate the car,
Alexander III. 1t is not difficult to I'M
derstand the effect of this distressing
event upon an emotional and courage
GUS youth, already convinced that abb
solutism was the cause Of all the trou-
bles In his unhappy country. In his
eyes, his brother was martyr, and he
himself was ready for the same fate.
But martyrdom was not his fate. If
that Is yet to come, IL he Is to meet
his death by assassination, which Is
80 frequently the end of REVOLUTIONARY
les, 1t will come by strange irony, not
In the cause of liberty, but for exer-
cising despotic tyranny unknown In
all the history of the cars. Lenin was
expelled from the Kazan university for
participating in political demonstra
tion. He studied law at the Univer-
sity Of Petrograd, and in later years
was exiled to Siberia for his connec-
ton with revolutlonaries in Switzer-
land. Much of his life was spent
abroad, and he married q woman who
had been exiled for voicing extreme
opinions. :.
"What Robespierre was to Gamelin
Evariste, Kari Marx and Engels are to
Lenin. From his own writings II Is
evident that he is man with narrow
but acute intellect and possesses the
purely deductive type of mind, His
tendency is to discard all complex and
confusing facts, and for the sake of
cleamess and simplicity to consider life
and men as distractions.
"To Lenin, Marx and Engels are the
prophets of a new religion, and Das
Kapital holy Koran every word In
spired. To criticize 1t is blasphemy;
to differ from It the most damnable
of heresies. 1t is the first word and
the last, the Alpha and Omega, the be-
ginning and the end of economic doc
trlne. The entire domination which
these works exercise over his in
tellectual faculties is evident through
out his writings. To confute an adj
versary he quotes text and feels the
matter. Is settled"