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NINETEENTH

CENTURY

AND AFTER

XX

XIX

No. DLVII-JULY 1923

THE BOLSHEVIST INFERNO

'How long halt ye between two opinions?' cried Elijah in

If the Lord be
Dare we halt

passionate appeal to the erring house of Israel.
God, follow Him: but if Baal, then follow him.'
for a moment longer between the God of eternal righteousness
and the Baal of Bolshevism? Are we to sell our birthright of
truth and integrity for a mess of red pottage prepared by the
hands of Lenin and Trotsky, red with the blood of countless
innocent victims? Are we to crucify our good name on a cross
of murder and pollution? Can we yet save our soul alive, or
must we make friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, and
fall on the neck of unrepentant prodigals and kiss them?

Oh, their offence is rank: it smells to heaven;

It hath the primal eldest curse upon 't,

A brother's murder,

aye, a father's, mother's and sister's destruction, a whole country's ruin, desolation and woe.

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'Delenda est Carthago,' said the Roman of old. Delenda est Britannia,' is written in the heart of the Bolshevik to-day. The British Empire is to be wiped off the face of the earth. The sacrilege that these advocati Diaboli have perpetrated upon their own nation is to be ruthlessly extended to ours. Nothing is too sacred to be spared. The fame of Nero as a persecutor of the Church has paled before the tyrants who have seized the power in Russia. The blood of Butkievich and Benjamin and countless other martyrs cries out to Heaven for vengeance on these unspeakable horrors-horrors which were not the result of a momentary spasm of madness, but which have gone on systematically for close on six years. Could these fiends in human shape but work their will we in England should see the crown in the dust, the Royal Family assassinated, bishops and archbishops murdered, morality laughed to scorn, decency trampled in the dust, no man or woman safe from death or imprisonment, no one's property secure from confiscation.

Their

Power like a desolating pestilence

Pollutes whate'er it touches.

Had they power they would

Pour the sweet milk of concord into Hell,

Uproar the universal peace, confound

All unity on earth.

Are these the people, these liars and murderers from the beginning,' that we ought to have any dealings with? Are we to take under our ægis this

Monstrum, horrendum, informe, ingens ?

Nay, rather we should bear in mind the saying of Ecclesiasticus, 'He that touches pitch shall be defiled therewith,' and stoutly reiterate,' Rethro Satanas' ('Get thee behind me, Satan ').

Oh for the organ voice of Edmund Burke, which spoke with no uncertain sound 130 years ago, when the reign of terror followed on the French Revolution! He would have neither part nor lot in any understanding with the authors of these abominable outrages.

By following those false lights [he said in his famous Reflections] France has bought undisguised calamities at a higher price than any nation has purchased the most unequivocal blessings. France has bought poverty by crime ! France has not sacrificed her virtue to her interest; but she has abandoned her interest that she might prostitute her virtue. All other nations have begun the fabric of a new government, or the reformation of an old, by establishing, originally, or by enforcing with greater exactness, some rites or other of religion. All other people have laid the foundations of civil freedom in severer manners, and a system of a more austere and masculine morality. France, when she let loose the reins of regal authority, doubled the licence of a ferocious dissoluteness in manners, and of an insolent irreligion in opinions and practices; and has extended through all

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