Omaha daily bee., 1921-08-09
Famine and Revolutlon.
Historic Connection Between the
Two Repeats Itself in Russia.
(From the New York Times.)

The news from Russia that millions are
starving in one Of the worlds most productive
sources of food surprises none OF those familiar
with the doctrines OF the revolutionaries In
clares that famine is essential to any revolu-
ton, and that it is welcomed because it drives
the hungry to cooperate with the revlution-
aries. That must be bracketed with Marxism
and Leninisn-if there is any difference be-
tween them-as another theory promising the
millennium, but proved by experience to lead
through purgatory to the unknown bourne OF
economics. Neither the peasants nor the pro-
letariat are working to support the Russian
revolutionaries. Rob Europe to Eat" is the
heading over Trotzky's trucuent declaration
OF intention "to take violently what Europe
describes vast trek by millions of starving,
devouring the land they pass over as though
they were locusts, or rather as the Goths and
Vandals ravaged in the early ages.
The Girondis,s are starving, -uuss US was the
Girondists were guillotincd The Mountain
and the Commune followed, the bakers were
hanged, and still Frenchmen were hungry.
Servants and duchesses lost their heads in a
sense different from the mob's loss of its head,
but want grew with the number of corpses.
Reaction and the white terror followed, just
as now the Russian whites are blamed by the
revolutonists.
1t was the same in the French revolution
of 1848. The workers volunteered three
months OF starvation for the revolution, and at
its futile end made one last bloody effort. In
1871 the commune separated church and state,
but perished for lack of cambatants because it
did not feed the people. Communal kitchens
soldiers of Versailles. Reviewing these events,
Prince Kropotkin as mild revolutionary as the
world may hope to sec, said:
Bread-it is bread that the revolution
needs. Be it ours to see from the first day of
revolution to the last that not single man
lacks bread, not single woman stands OUT
side the bake-house door that haply a coarse
loaf may be thrown to her in charity, that
not single child pines for food. 3. We
have the temerity to declare that all have
right to bread, that there is bread enough
for ALL and that with this watchword the
revolution will triumph.
1t is the boast of capitalism that it has
achieved what revolutionaries assert as their
objective. Capitalism is not yet centuries old
the economic revolution dating roughly from
our political revolution-but it would have per-
ished generations ago if it had not substituted
comparative abundance of all good things for
the relatively worse earlier conditions. The
Russian revolution is pershing because it has
the worlds experience under capitalism, and is
substituting economic reaction under the form
Of a political revolution. Czarism was faulty,
but it was benevolent compared with the
iiidicuStHt IL NOT IIldieVOlcHt, dispensers OF an
earthly millennium by the Russian route. The
British promisers of benefits by the political in-
stead of economic means-that is, for example,
by naturalization of the coal mines instead of
by increase of product by efficiency and indus
try--failed because of dsillusionment of Eng
land by the Russian object lesson In like man
ner the prestige of the alleged British reforms
through socializing the surplus wealth for the
common good has lost is force in observing
other countries, of which s,is is one of the lead
ers. Our institutions are buttressed upon the
solid fact that, with all their faults, they are
the worlds nearest realization ofsprovsion Of
the greatest good for the greatest numbers.
The cable quotes Lenin: "We must now
employ all our forces. cost what it will, to the
end that the small bourgeois industry shall inn
prove . i. . the new policy will be of long
duration the country is run way down
economically. If capitalism is the only refuge
for Lenin. there is not remnant of reason why
any other country should initiate Russia in
peace any more than Germany in war. The
economic war on want will not be won until
there is acceptance of the idea that the worlds
wants are better supplied by the workshop than
by revolution, by sweat rather than by blood,
by maximum of goods rather than by minimum
of work.