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Into the active conduct of the war, and into the reorganization of his army, Kitchener threw the whole weight of his immense personal influence. He instilled a new spirit into the war when he dashed off to Bloemfontein to hurry along columns for the pursuit of De Wet, and he left no stone unturned to improve the quality of his army. He raided clubs, hotels, and rest camps to beat up loiterers, appealed to all parts of the Empire for mounted men, stimulated the purchase of remounts, raised mounted men from his infantry and artillery, created a new defence force in Cape Colony, and in every possible way prepared to meet like with like and to impart a new spirit of energy and enterprise into the conduct of the war.
The first months of 1901 were marked by the invasion of Cape Colony by De Wet and other leaders, and by a great driving operation in the Eastern Transvaal under French. Both movements failed to entrap the main Boer forces engaged, but the active conduct of the operations, and the losses suffered by the Boers, began that process of moral and material attrition by which the war was ultimately brought to an end.
The winter campaign from May to September, 1901, eliminated about 9,000 Boer fighters, leaving 35,000 still in the field, but this number was much under-estimated at the time. With the spring rains there was a general renewal of the war on the part of the burghers, their leading idea consisting of diversions in Cape Colony and Natal. Severe fighting followed in many places. As the months wore on both the offensive and the defensive virtues of Kitchener’s system became more striking. The blockhouse lines became more solid and began to extend over fixed areas of the country. Strengthened by infantry, they flanked the great drives, and became the nets into which the Boer commandos were driven. There came at last a dawning of perception in the Boer mind that further resistance, however honourable, was hopeless.
The Peace
An offer of mediation made by the Netherlands Government on January 25, 1902, gave an excuse to both sides for ending the war. Though this offer was not accepted, a copy of the correspondence which followed it was transmitted to the Transvaal Government on March 7, without any covering letter, explanation, or suggestion. It produced an immediate effect. President Schalk Burger asked for a safe-conduct for himself and others to enable them to meet the Free State Government to discuss terms, and a meeting took place in Kitchener’s house on April 12. A Convention at Vereeniging was arranged. Sixty Boer delegates there assembled on May 15. Terms were at last agreed to by the delegates in concert with Lord Kitchener and Lord Milner, and, after revision by the British Government, were finally accepted by 54 votes to 6 on May 31, only half an hour before the expiry of the time of grace.
Returning once more to England Kitchener was made a Viscount, and received the Order of Merit, the thanks of both Houses of Parliament, and a substantial grant of public money. Once again he was not allowed to enjoy for long his new honours in peace, and was appointed Commander-in-Chief in India in the same year that he had returned home.
Work in India
At the time when Kitchener reached India, the army in India, though possessing many war-like qualities, was suffering from serious organic and administrative defects. It did not present the offensive value which might have been expected from its numbers and its cost. It did not exploit all the martial races available for its service. The distribution of the troops had not been altered to correspond with new railway facilities and a changed strategical situation. It was not self-supporting in material of war, and the armament of the troops was behind the times. There was scarcely a single military requisite that had been completely supplied to the four poorly-organized divisions which formed the inadequate field army, and scarcely any provision had been made for maintaining the army in the field. The content of the Indian Army had not been inspired by adequate provision for its material well-being. Lastly, the higher administration of the Army was under a system of dual control, which produced conflicts between the responsibility pertaining to the Commander-in-Chief and the power which rested in the Military Department.
The history of Kitchener’s seven years in India is a history of sustained and in the end almost completely successful efforts to overcome these serious defects. He did not act in a hurry. He began by making extended tours over India, including a journey of 1,500 miles on horseback and on foot round the North-West frontier, and he consulted every officer of eminence and experience in India. Lord Curzon, who had urged Kitchener’s appointment, was heartily with him in his plans for Army reform up to the unfortunate moment when a difference of opinion arose between Viceroy and Commander-in-Chief on the question of the Military Department and the higher administration of the Army. The difference gave rise at last to a serious crisis. Kitchener fought his own battle alone and unsupported in the Governor-General’s Council, and the decision of Mr Balfour’s Government and the settlement finally made by Lord Morley were in his favour. Mr Brodrick’s dispatch of May 31, 1905, placed the Commander-in-Chief in India in charge of a newly-named Army Department, which became in the end invested with most of the rights and duties of the old Military Department, but large powers were reserved for the Secretary to the Army Department. Lord Curzon resigned in 1905.
Kitchener’s projects for the reform of the Army had begun to take shape in 1904. On October 28 of that year an Army Order divided the country into nine territorial divisional areas, and arranged the forces contained in them into nine divisions and three independent brigades, exclusive of Burma and Aden. The plan was to redistribute the troops according to the requirements of the defence of India, to train all arms together at suitable centres, and to promote decentralization of work and devolution of authority. Kitchener proposed to secure thorough training for war in recognized war formations, to enable the whole of the nine divisions to take the field in a high state of efficiency, to expand the reserve which would maintain them in the field, and to have behind them sufficient troops to support the civil power with garrisons and mobile columns. In May, 1907, another Army Order created a Northern and a Southern Army. The commanders of these Armies became inspectors whose duty was to ensure uniformity of training and discipline. The administrative work was delegated to officers commanding divisions.
Kitchener’s plan for the redistribution of the Army was much attacked because it was misrepresented and misunderstood. The cantonments given up were those which no longer required troops. The troops were not massed by divisions but by divisional areas, and in drawing up his plans for obligatory garrisons and the support of the civil power Kitchener worked closely with the civil authorities and left unguarded no likely centre of disaffection. The new distribution corresponded with strategical exigencies, and the various divisions were échelonned behind each other in a manner to utilize to the full the carrying capacity of the railways. There was no concentration on the frontier as was popularly supposed. The point of both Armies was directed to the North-West frontier, but there was nothing to prevent a concentration in any other direction.
Kitchener’s scheme was not one for increasing the Army, but for utilizing better existing material. He improved and widened the recruiting grounds of the Army. He did much for the pay, pensions, and allowances of the Indian Army, established grass and dairy farms all over India, and was very successful through his medical service in combating disease. It was his object, as it was that of Lord Lawrence, not only to make the Army formidable, but to make it safe. The principle of keeping the artillery mainly in the hands of Europeans was maintained. By creating the Quetta Staff College Kitchener enabled India to train her own Staff Officers, and by building factories he rendered the Army self-supporting in material of war. The total cost of these reforms was £8,216,000.
Australasian Defence
Kitchener, who was made Field Marshal on September 10, 1909, returned home by way of Australasia, having been invited to examine the land forces and the new Military laws of Australia and New Zealand and to suggest improvements in them. He did his work as thoroughly as usual. He left behind him a memorandum of a very impressive character, and had the satisfaction to learn that his recommendations were approved. On his return home he was made a kp, and was appointed High Commissioner and Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean in succession to the Duke of Connaught, who had resigned. Kitchener only accepted this post at the desire of King Edward, and when the King released him from the obligation, he resigned the appointment. In 1911 he purchased Broome Park, with 550 acres, near Canterbury, and occupied his unaccustomed leisure in beautifying and rearranging the house and grounds. The failure of the Government to employ Kitchener aroused unfavourable public comment, but in 1911 the death of Sir Eldon Gorst created a vacancy in Egypt, and Kitchener was offered, and accepted, the post of British Agent and Consul-General.
Egypt and the Sudan
Kitchener landed at Alexandria on September 27, 1911. He arrived in a cruiser, and this fact did not fail to make an impression (upon which he had doubtless calculated) on the natives, who had already been somewhat chastened by the news of his appointment as British Agent.
When Kitchener assumed office at Kasr-el-Doubara, he found a fierce religious controversy still raging between the Copts and the Moslems, and political unrest and seditious journalism still sufficiently active to cause some anxiety. Scarcely had he had time to take stock of his surroundings than there broke out the Italo-Turkish War, which, since its seat was at Egypt’s door, threatened to create in this country a situation which might at any moment have become very serious owing to the large Italian colony and the community of religion, and in many cases of interest, that binds the Egyptians to Turkey.
There seems little doubt that Kitchener’s presence and his prestige were solely responsible for the safe passage of Egypt through the critical periods of the Tripoli and the two Balkan Wars. But for him, the Egyptian Government would not have been able to prevent collisions between the Greek and Italian colonies and the natives, and certainly it would not have succeeded in forcing the Egyptian Moslems to maintain the neutrality which was obviously so essential to the country’s welfare. From the very outset he dealt most firmly with the malcontents and the seditious Press. The tone and the higher standard of the vernacular Press today are an all-sufficient justification of his ruthless enforcement of the Press Law.
Whilst the adoption of a strong policy had a great deal to do with the pacification of the country, there was undoubtedly one other important determining factor. Kitchener came to the conclusion that the best means of counteracting the exciting influence of the Turkish wars and of cutting the ground from under the feet of the sedition-mongers was to keep the country occupied with the contemplation of matters of a more personal and local nature. He therefore initiated a policy of economic reform which, owing to its far-reaching character, should make its beneficial effects felt generations hence.
A beginning was made with the savings bank system, which was extended to the villages, where the local tax collector was authorized to receive deposits, the idea being to encourage the fellaheen to pay in part of the proceeds of their crops against the day when the taxes fall due, and so prevent their squandering the money and having to borrow to pay the imposts. A Usuary Law was introduced forbidding the lending of money at more than three per cent and empowering the courts to inflict fines and imprisonment on infringers of the law. Kitchener also caused Government cotton halekas (markets) to be opened all over the country, which remedied the exploiting of the fellah by the local dealers in the matter of short weight and market prices of cotton. Next he introduced the Five Feddan or Homestead Law, which briefly laid down that distraint could not be levied on the agricultural property of a cultivator, consisting of five feddans or less, and which thus tended to create a system of homesteads. As a companion to his schemes for improving the material lot of the fellah Kitchener caused to be created a new form of jurisdiction, called the Cantonal Courts, which dispense to the fellaheen justice according to local custom. Local notables sit on the bench and this system of village justice for the people by the people has proved a great success.
With a view to protecting the country from the evil results of the fellah’s ignorance, Kitchener gave much attention to the consideration of the agricultural question. He supported through thick and thin the then newly formed Department of Agriculture, and in due course had it transformed into a Ministry. Since Egypt depends entirely on the cotton crop, every aspect of the question was studied. Cotton seed was distributed on a large scale by the Government in order to stop adulteration. Laws were introduced for combating the various pests that attack the crop; demonstration farms were created at strategic points to show the fellah the best means of cultivating the land, and a hundred and one measures have been, and are being, taken to safeguard and effect a permanent improvement in the agricultural position of the country. The remainder of Kitchener’s economic policy is represented by the gigantic drainage and land reclamation work that is being carried out in the Delta. For years a scheme had been talked of, but it remained for Kitchener to put it into execution. The cost will be about £2,500,000, but most of this will be reimbursed from the sale of land and the increase in the rate of taxation.
On the political side Kitchener was no less successful. He attempted what every one admitted to be an urgent necessity, but what all his predecessors had feared to undertake – viz., the reform of the management of the Wakfs – Moslem endowments – and he transferred the control from the hands of a Director-General nominated by the Khedive to those of a Minister directly responsible to the Council of Ministers and controlled by a superior board nominated by the Government. The reform was hailed with unbounded delight by the entire population. His other great achievement was the reform of the system of representative government.
Meanwhile, Kitchener did not neglect the military situation. He pushed to the utmost the construction of roads throughout the Delta, thus increasing the mobility of the troops; he stopped the Khedive from selling the Mariut Railway to a Triple Alliance syndicate, and by enabling the Egyptian Government to purchase it placed at its disposal (and at that of Great Britain) a line of communication of great potential strategic value in the future. The army of occupation was increased by the bringing of every battalion up to full strength. Points of vantage for strategic purposes were secured in Cairo under the guise of town-planning reforms.
Secretary of State for War
On August 5, 1914, Kitchener, who happened to be in England at the moment, was appointed Secretary of State for War. The post, as will be remembered, had been held since the end of the previous March by Mr Asquith, who now, ‘in consequence of the pressure of other duties’, handed it over to a man in whom the country at large placed perfect confidence. The fact that, for the first time, a soldier with no Cabinet experience was to become War Minister was seen to be an advantage rather than otherwise. What was needed was not a politician but an organizer – and organization was believed to be Kitchener’s especial gift. He was, too, exceptional in not under-rating his enemy. His first act as Minister was to demand a vote of credit for £100,000,000, and an increase of the Army of half a million men. In an interview with an American journalist, published in December, he was reported to have expressed his opinion that the war would last at least three years. In an official denial next day, ‘the remarks attributed to the Secretary of State’ were declared to be ‘imaginary’. In any case, it is certain that in the appeal which he issued, within two days of his appointment, for 100,000 men, the terms of service were given, as ‘for a period of three years or until the war is concluded’. In an article published in The Times of August 15, the reason why his plans had been based upon a long war were explained, and the wisdom of this recognition, at a moment when the world in general, including the Germans, cherished the belief that the war would be soon over, should always be remembered in forming any estimate of Kitchener’s work as Minister of War.
The curious inability of the authorities to come straight to the point, which was to dog the steps of the voluntary system as long as it lasted, at first concealed the fact that these 100,000 men were to be not an expansion, it was supposed, of the Territorial Force, nor even an addition to the Regular Army, but the beginning of an entirely new Army, to which common parlance quickly gave the name of ‘Kitchener’s’. Considerable difference of opinion existed in military circles as to the wisdom of Kitchener’s method of creating it. Many eminent officers, including Lord Roberts, considered that he would have been better advised if he had merely expanded the Territorial Force, the cadres of which would have provided a ready-made organization. But Kitchener preferred to do things in his own way.
In spite of the difficulties inevitable in the absence of machinery capable of coping with a rush some 50 times greater than any contemplated in normal circumstances, he was able by August 25, on his first appearance as a Minister of the Crown, to inform the House of Lords that his 100,000 recruits had been ‘already practically secured’. He added:
‘I cannot at this stage say what will be the limits of the forces required, or what measures may eventually become necessary to supply and maintain them. The scale of the Field Army which we are now calling into being is large and may rise in the course of the next six or seven months to a total of 30 divisions continually maintained in the field.’
It would be an ungrateful task to recall the series of appeals, misunderstandings, and recriminations which attended the course of the recruiting campaign. Its varying fortunes seem trivial enough today, when the task is complete. Kitchener was a sincere believer in the voluntary service which had given him the Armies with which he had won his fame. And amid the chaos of political controversies which surrounded him in the Cabinet he applied himself unsparingly to the task of raising men.
At the beginning of the war he lived at Lady Wantage’s house in Carlton House Terrace, but early in 1915 he went into residence at York House, St James’s Palace, which was placed at his disposal by the King. He worked all day and every day, only spending a few hours occasionally at Broome Park. Of relaxation he took practically none, unless the inspecting of troops maybe described by that name.
As time went on it became evident that Kitchener was attempting more than lay in the power of any one man. In May of last year the disclosures of the Military Correspondent of The Times as to the shortage of shells at the front came as a sudden shock to the country, although they were merely the culmination of a series of previous warnings. It is proof of the immense belief which Kitchener inspired in the country that The Times was falsely accused of ‘attacking’ him in calling attention to an admitted deficiency. But the prompt institution of the Ministry of Munitions relieved him of that part at least of his heavy burden, and enabled him to devote himself more strenuously than ever to the attempt to maintain under the voluntary system the enormous Army gradually assembling in the field. With the reconstitution at the beginning of October, 1915, of the General Staff Kitchener was relieved of yet another part of his overgrown duties, and the War Office gradually assumed shape and organization.
Kitchener naturally paid several visits to France on tours of inspection. He was also present at the Allied Conferences at Calais and Paris, where his knowledge of French, superior to that of most of his colleagues, gave him a certain advantage in the discussions.
In November last the announcement that, ‘at the request of his colleagues’, Kitchener had left England for a short visit to the Eastern theatre of war brought home to the general public the seriousness of the situation in Gallipoli. The part played by him in the military aspects of the decisions arrived at before and during the Dardanelles Expedition can only be conjectured. After a short stay in Paris, he visited the Dardanelles, and later had an audience of King Constantine in Athens, returning home by way of Rome, the Italian front, and Paris. The result of Kitchener’s investigations, confirming as they did the recommendations of General Monro, was the evacuation of Gallipoli.
The remarkable and unprecedented occasion on which, five days ago, he received a considerable proportion of the members of the House of Commons, making a statement to them and replying to recent criticisms of Army administration, is fresh in the public memory.
Kitchener was made a kg in 1915. During the war he also received the Grand Cordon of the Legion of Honour and of the Order of Leopold. He was never married. The earldom which was conferred on him in July, 1914, passes by special remainder to his elder brother, Colonel Henry Elliott Chevallier Kitchener, who was born in 1846. The new peer served in Burma and with the Manipur Expedition in 1891, being mentioned in dispatches. At the outbreak of the present war he offered his services to the Government, took part in the campaign in South-West Africa, and is now on his way home. He is a widower, and has one son, Commander H. F. C. Kitchener, rn; and a daughter.
V. I. Lenin
Dictator of Soviet Russia.
World revolution as goal.
21 January 1924
Nikolai Lenin, whose death is announced on another page, was the pseudonym of Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov, the dictator of Soviet Russia. His real name has almost passed into oblivion. It was under his nom de guerre that he became famous. It is as Lenin that he will pass into history.
This extraordinary figure was first and foremost a professional revolutionary and conspirator. He had no other occupation; in and by revolution he lived. Authorship and the social and economic studies to which he devoted his time were to him but the means for collecting fuel for a world conflagration. The hope of that calamity haunted this cold dreamer from his schooldays. His is a striking instance of a purpose that from early youth marched unflinchingly towards a chosen goal, undisturbed by weariness or intellectual doubt, never halting at crime, knowing no compunction. The goal was the universal social revolution.
Lenin was born on April 10, 1870, at Simbirsk, a little town set on a hill that overlooks the middle Volga and the eastward rolling steppes. His father, born of a humble family in Astrakhan, had risen to the position of district director of schools under the Ministry of Education. The atmosphere of the home was that of the middle-class urban intelligentsia, which ardently cultivated book-learning, was keenly interested in abstract ideas, but had little care for the arts and was at best indifferent to the Russian national tradition.
Of Lenin’s early life little is known. He attended the local high school, the headmaster of which was Feodor Kerensky, father of Alexander Kerensky, whom Lenin was one day to overthrow from political power. The boy appears to have been diligent in his studies, but retiring and morose. In 1887 his elder brother was executed for taking part in an attempt on the life of Alexander iii. This event may possibly have intensified Lenin’s revolutionary sentiments, though emotion never played a great part in his personal life. He was guided by cold logic though he well knew how to work on the feelings of others and to transform them into the motive power he required for his own purposes.
From the high school he passed on into the University of Kazan where he became a student in the faculty of law. Here he came under the suspicion of the authorities, and was expelled from the university on account of his ‘unsound political views’. He continued his studies privately, and finally took his degree at the University of St Petersburg.
Marxism in Action
In the early ’nineties the radical intellectual circles in St Petersburg were stirred by a new development of the Socialist movement. From the ’forties onward Socialism had been the accepted creed of a large proportion of Russian intellectuals, but it was a romantic Socialism, mainly of an agrarian character, and based on an extraordinary sympathy for an idealized peasantry. At the beginning of the ’nineties a small group of young men became enthusiastic advocates of what was known as the scientific Socialism of Karl Marx, and, in articles in reviews and in the theoretical public debates on economic subjects that the autocracy permitted at that time they raised a revolt against the ‘Populist’ Socialism that had become traditional in the intelligentsia. Peter Struve, who later became a Liberal, and even developed Conservative leanings, and Michael Tugan-Baranovsky, who in the end became a popular and highly respected Professor of Political Economy, were the leaders of the Marxian group. Lenin joined them and was greatly assisted by them in his early, literary, efforts, which consisted of polemical articles on the aspects of Socialism that were then in debate. At that time he wrote under the pseudonym of Ilyin.
Lenin never wrote a first-class scientific work. He was not primarily a theorist or a writer but a propagandist. For him articles and books were but means to an end. It was when the Marxists turned from theoretical discussion to the organization of party effort that Lenin found his true vocation. In 1898 the Russian Social Democratic Party came into being. It was of course a conspirative organization. Political activities were under the ban. No political parties, whether Liberal, Conservative, or Socialist, were permitted publicly to exist. The secret parties, or rather clubs, organized by the revolutionaries, recruited their adherents among the intelligentsia, and only to a very small extent among the workmen and peasants. The Marxists organized among the workmen of St Petersburg and other towns clandestine classes for instruction in Socialist doctrine.
It was dangerous work, but Russian revolutionaries were never deterred by the fear of imprisonment or exile. Lenin began his career as an active revolutionary in this comparatively innocuous form of effort. He was caught by the police, as many others were, imprisoned, and sent to Siberia. As compared with many others, his experience of police persecution was brief indeed, but it is significant that during his banishment in Siberia his character as a deliberate fomenter of discord among the revolutionary parties was already, sharply, revealed. The older exiles, who held fast to the ‘Populist’ tradition, were for the most part gentle, humane, and easy going. They formed a class apart with a strong esprit de corps, with fixed habits of comradely intercourse. When Lenin and the other Marxists came, the peace was broken, a new aggressive tone was introduced, and perpetual intrigue led to perpetual dissension and suspicion.
How Bolshevism Began
Lenin escaped from Siberia to Western Europe in 1900, and took up his abode in Switzerland. Here he became one of the leaders in the revolutionary activities of the band of refugees organized under the name of the Russian Social Democratic Party, and in 1901 he joined the editorial staff of their review, Iskra (the Spark). The party retained until the Bolshevist Revolution the title of ‘The One (or United) Russian Social Democratic Party’. As a matter of fact it was not long before Lenin himself split the party into two warring sections. At the second congress of the party, held in London in 1903, a fierce discussion arose over questions of tactics, and ended in a vote which yielded a majority (bolshinstvo) for the view advocated by Lenin. The supporters of the majority view came to be known as Bolsheviki, while the adherents of the minority (menshinstvo) were called Mensheviki. Lenin stood at this conference for an extreme centralization of the party organization and for the adoption of direct revolutionary methods, as opposed to the educational and evolutionary tactics advocated by the other side. He displayed then the temperament that moulded his career. A man of iron will and inflexible ambition, he had no scruple about means and treated human beings as mere material for his purpose. Trotsky, then Lenin’s opponent on the question of tactics, and later his chief colleague in the Council of People’s Commissaries, has given a vivid description of Lenin’s conduct on this occasion.
At the second congress of the Russian Social Democratic Party (he wrote) this man with his habitual talent and energy played the part of disorganizer of the party… Comrade Lenin made a mental review of the membership of the party, and came to the conclusion that the iron hand needed for organization belonged to him. He was right. The leadership of Social Democracy in the struggle for liberty meant in reality the leadership of Lenin over Social Democracy.
Dictatorship as a Principle
It is unnecessary to dwell at length on the theoretical side of the controversy between Lenin and the Menshevists. Both sides published in support of their views a large number of fiercely polemical articles and pamphlets, which for the uninitiated make extremely dull reading, though for the patient historian they may provide a vivid illustration of revolutionary mentality. Lenin’s idea was that the Central Committee should absolutely dominate every individual, and every local group in the party. He was opposed to any sort of democratic equality or local autonomy in the party organization. Dictatorship by a compact central group was the principle on which he worked. ‘Give us an organization consisting of true revolutionaries,’ he wrote, ‘and we will turn Russia upside down.’ He regarded his opponents in the party as opportunists and no true revolutionaries. He was for direct action, for cutting loose from all entangling compromise with Liberals and more cautious Socialists.
The Social Democrats argued vehemently and incessantly, but this did not prevent them from agitating, organizing, and conspiring in Russia. While the rival party, the Socialist Revolutionaries, agitated among the peasantry and planned and carried out a series of terrorist acts, of which several Ministers, Governors, and the Grand Duke Serge were the victims, the Social Democrats developed their propaganda among the factory workmen, with but slight success until 1906, when the discontent caused by the Japanese War and the shooting of workmen in St Petersburg on Red Sunday, January 22, provoked an openly revolutionary movement throughout Russia. The movement culminated in the granting of a Constitution on October 30, 1905. During the months immediately preceding and following this event the Socialist agitation was at its height. Then, for the first time, the masses of the Russian people became acquainted with Socialist principles, and the agitators gained experience in dealing with the masses.
Propaganda at Work
Lenin’s name was not prominent during the first Revolution. He was very active behind the scenes, organizing, directing, pushing things in his own direction, noting the readiness of the masses to respond to extreme and demoralizing watchwords, sneering at all hints of compromise, at every stage forcing a disruption between the Social Democrats and the bourgeois parties. It is curious that he refused to become a member of the first short-lived St Petersburg Council of Workmen’s Deputies, formed after the promulgation of the Constitution. Trotsky played a prominent part in this Soviet. It is characteristic of Lenin that he only adopted the Soviet idea at the moment – 12 years later – when it suited his own purposes.
From 1905 to 1907 Lenin lived in Russia under an assumed name, endeavouring to keep alive and to organize the revolutionary movement, which, in the end, the Stolypin Government ruthlessly suppressed. His name is connected with several cases of ‘expropriation’. Apparently he did not personally organize these armed raids on banks and post-offices, but considerable sums seized in such robberies were handed over to the Bolshevists and used by Lenin to develop his propaganda at home and abroad. He left Russia when the collapse of the 1905 Revolution became apparent and resumed his activities in Geneva. On the whole his position among the revolutionaries had been greatly strengthened and among the mixed crowd of new exiles who had been thrown out of Russia by the failure of the first revolutionary offensive he found many instruments suitable for his unscrupulous purpose.
In 1912 he moved to Cracow so as to be in closer touch with his agents in Russia. A singular episode, characteristic of his contempt for bourgeois morality, was his intrigue, in collusion with the Secret Police, to split the small Social Democratic Party in the Duma through a certain Malinovsky, who visited him in Cracow with the knowledge of the Head of the Department of Police.
In 1914, at the outbreak of war, Lenin was in Galicia. As a Russian subject he was arrested by the Austrian authorities, but he was released when it was discovered that he would be a useful agent in the task of weakening Russia. He returned to Switzerland, where he carried on defeatist propaganda with the object of transforming the war between the nations into a revolutionary civil war within each nation. He was joined by defeatist Socialists from various countries. The funds for these operations were perhaps provided by Germany, since the sums Lenin had received from expropriations during the first revolution were exhausted. The activities of this little group of Socialists were hardly noticed amid the great events of the war. The conferences of Zimmerwald and Kienthal in 1915 had the appearance of insignificant gatherings of crazy fanatics. Yet they drafted the defeatist revolutionary programme and framed the watchwords which later acquired enormous power in Russia and influenced the working classes throughout Europe. Lenin regarded the vicissitudes of the war purely from the standpoint of revolutionary tactics. He noted the lessons of war, industry, and State-control, and the effects of war on mass-psychology.
The Revolution of 1917
The revolution that suddenly broke out in Russia in March, 1917, gave Lenin his long-sought-for opportunity. The Provisional Government formed after the abdication of the Emperor Nicholas proclaimed unrestricted liberty and encouraged the return of the political exiles, who came flocking back in thousands. There was some difference of opinion in the Government about permitting the return of such a notorious defeatist as Lenin. He came nevertheless, transported through Germany with the help of the German General Staff. Ludendorff considered that he was likely to be a most effective agent in disorganizing the Russian Army, and wrecking the Russian front. In this he was not mistaken; what he did not foresee was that Lenin would provoke a violent revolutionary movement that was later to react on Germany herself.
Lenin was received in Petrograd with all revolutionary honours. Searchlights from armoured cars lighted up the Finland railway station, which was thronged with people. Socialists of all parties made speeches, but Lenin was not to be led away by any external success. He wanted real power. On April 14, the day after his arrival, he laid his programme before the Social Democratic Conference, a programme which six months afterwards he carried out to the letter in his decrees. At the time his speech was ridiculed by the moderate Socialists. Only a small group of Bolshevists applauded their leader when he declared that peace with the Germans must be concluded, at once, a Soviet Republic founded, the banks closed, that all power must be given to the workers, and that the Social-Democrats must henceforth call themselves Communists. His motion was rejected by 115 to 20.
Lenin had at his back a compact organization well equipped with money. The Bolshevists displayed extraordinary activity in demoralizing the Army and the workmen and in provoking riots among the peasantry. There was no power to restrain them. In Petrograd, Lenin took up his quarters in the house of the dancer Kaszesinska, and from the balcony addressed large crowds day after day. In July he attempted a coup d’état, but failed. He went into hiding, but continued to direct subversive movement. The Provisional Government under Kerensky shrank from coercive measures. The Socialist Revolutionaries and Social-Democrats who controlled the Petrograd Soviet partly sympathized with the Bolshevists, partly feared them, but in their appeals to the masses they were always outbid by Lenin’s followers, and speedily they lost ground.
After the failure of Korniloff’s attempt in August to re-establish law and order the general demoralization increased. The Army went to pieces and, taking advantage of this disorganized host of armed men, to whom he promised immediate peace, Lenin effected a coup d’état on November 7, 1917, this time without any difficulty. Lenin appeared with his followers in a Congress of Soviets, and was acclaimed as Dictator. The members of the Provisional Government were imprisoned, all but Kerensky, who escaped. There was a sharp struggle in Moscow, where for several days boys from officers’ training schools defended the Kremlin, but they finally succumbed.
Master of the Terror
Lenin took up his residence in the Kremlin, and from that ancient citadel of autocracy and orthodoxy launched his propaganda, of world-revolution. Outwardly he lived as modestly as when he had been an obscure political refugee. Both he and his wife – he had married late in the ’nineties Nadiezhda Krupskaya – had the scorn of sectarians for bourgeois inventions and comforts. Short and sturdy, with a bald head, small beard, and keen, bright, deep-set eyes, Lenin looked like a small tradesman. When he spoke at meetings his ill-fitting suit, his crooked tie, his generally nondescript appearance, disposed the crowd in his favour. ‘He is not one of the gentle-folk,’ they would say, ‘he is one of us.’
This is not the place to describe in detail the terrible achievements of Bolshevism – the shameful peace with Germany, the plundering of the educated and propertied classes, the long-continued terror with its thousands of innocent victims, the Communist experiment carried to the point of suppressing private trade, and making practically all the adult population of the towns servants and slaves of the Soviet Government; the civil war, the creation and strengthening of the Red Army, the fights with the border peoples, the Ukraine, with Koltchak and Denikin and with Poland, culminating in 1920 in the defeat of the White Armies and the conclusion of peace with Poland. Never in modern times has any great country passed through such a convulsion as that brought about by Lenin’s implacable effort to establish Communism in Russia, and thence to spread it throughout the world.
In the light of these world-shaking events Lenin’s personality acquired an immense significance. He retained control. He was the directive force. He was in effect Bolshevism. His associates were pygmies compared with him. Even Trotsky, who displayed great energy and ability in organizing the Red Army, deferred to Lenin. Both the Communist Party and the Council of People’s Commissaries were completely under Lenin’s control. It happened sometimes that after listening to a discussion of two conflicting motions in some meeting under his chairmanship Lenin would dictate to the secretary, without troubling to argue his point some third resolution entirely his own. He had an uncanny skill in detecting the weaknesses of his adversaries, and his associates regarded him with awe as a supreme tactician. His judgment was final.
He was ultimately responsible for the terror as for all the other main lines of Bolshevist policy. He presided over the meeting of the Council of People’s Commissaries which, in July, 1918, approved the foul murder of Nicholas ii and his family by the Ekaterinburg Soviet.
The Communist experiment brought Russia to economic ruin, famine, and barbarism. Under Soviet rule the Russian people suffered unheard of calamity. To Lenin, this mattered little. When the famine came in 1921 he remarked, with a scornful smile, ‘It’s a trifle if twenty millions or so die.’
He did realize, however, that the effort to maintain undiluted Communism was endangering the existence of his Government. In March, 1921, he called a halt. Against the wishes of the majority of his followers he proclaimed a new economic policy, consisting of a temporary compromise between Socialism and Capitalism, with the Communist movement in complete control. His hope was that this policy would secure a breathing space during which the Communists might rally for a new attack on world capitalism.
The famine raged. Russia sank deeper and deeper into the mire. The resources of the Soviet Government, the gold reserve of the Imperial Government which they had squandered in their wild propaganda and in their feeble pretence of foreign trade, were almost exhausted. Their one hope lay in bluffing Europe, and to this task they set themselves with great zest and incomparable skill.
Last Illness
In the midst of the rapid crumbling of all his plans, Lenin fell ill towards the end of 1921, and for many weeks was unable to take any public part in affairs. The nature of his complaint was obscure. Experts were summoned from Germany, and a bullet was extracted that had been fired on Lenin when an attempt was made on his life by the Jewish socialist revolutionary, Dora Kaplan, in 1918. There was a brief interval, during which Lenin’s health was apparently restored, and he made speeches declaring that the new economic policy would go no farther, and that concessions to capitalists were at an end. He was unable to attend the Genoa Conference, and shortly after the conclusion of the Conference the reports as to his health became more alarming. German specialists were again summoned, and his condition became so grave that steps were taken by his associates to establish a directorate, to carry on his functions.
One paralytic stroke followed another, and it became clear that Lenin would never return to affairs, that his days were numbered. He was removed to a country house near Moscow, where, under the care of nurses, he lingered on till his name grew shadowy and his party was divided by an open dispute for the succession.
Giacomo Puccini
A famous opera composer
29 November 1924
Giacomo Puccini, whose death is announced on another page, had held first place among the composers of opera in his generation so decisively that to the majority of opera-goers he seemed to stand alone. Musicians may find among his contemporaries a dozen or more names whose works for the stage they will prefer before his. Humperdinck, Strauss, Charpentier, Bruneau, and Debussy have all displayed qualities which in their different ways are beyond the range of Puccini’s art, yet no one of them competes for his position of favour in the eyes of the general public. A conservative operatic management such as we have known in London may try experiments in one or other; ever since the success of La Bohème there have been no experiments in Puccini. The only question was how quickly each new work could be hurried on to the stage. In fact, an opera of his entitled Turandot was announced for production next spring; and he had almost finished it.
Once he was regarded as a member of a group of brilliant and sensational representatives of Young Italy. The comparatively early death of Leoncavallo, the failure of Mascagni to follow up the meteoric success of Cavalleria, and the lack of any decisive characteristics in Giordano enabled Puccini to outdistance his companions in that group, and Italian opera still has the advantage in the world over that of any other country in that it rallies to its standard the great voices, whether those voices are the product of Italy or of Australia, or Ireland or America.
Puccini was born at Lucca in the same year as Leoncavallo (1858) and was, like Bach and Mozart, the inheritor of a family tradition of musicianship. He represented the fifth generation of musical Puccinis, the earliest of whom, his great-great-grandfather, bore the same Christian name, Giacomo, and, was a friend of Martini, the master of Mozart. Puccini’s father dying when the boy was six years old, it was through the determination and sacrifice of his mother, who was left poor, that he was given the opportunity of study at the Milan Conservatory. There he worked at composition with Bazzini and with Ponchielli, the composer of La Gioconda. The production of a student work, a Capriccio for orchestra, called forth praise of his possibilities as a symphonic writer, but Puccini never mistook that as an indication that he should write symphonies. He subsequently put his powers in this direction to good use in devising those running orchestral commentaries which, supporting the dialogues of his characters on the stage, form the links between the great lyrical outbursts.
For some time Puccini lived in Milan with his brother and a fellow-student, enjoying the delights and sorrows of a Bohemian existence, enduring a sufficient amount of hardship to give him a place in the long roll of struggling geniuses, and incidentally storing up memories which were to give him the right local colour for his first accepted masterpiece.
His first opera, Le Villi, a modest work suggested to him by Ponchielli, was given at the Teatro dal Verme in Milan in 1884. Its production was an important moment in his career and the success was considerable, even if one discounts something from the tone of the telegram which he sent off to his mother after the first performance: ‘Theatre packed, immense success; anticipations exceeded; 18 calls; finale of first act thrice encored.’ The substantial part of it was that Le Villi was bought for a small sum by Messrs. Ricordi, who published it eventually, but not until Puccini’s fame had been established by his subsequent works.
Le Villi in an enlarged form brought Puccini on to the stage of La Scala in the following year, but it was not until 1889 that his second opera, Edgar, arrived and was actually produced there. Edgar was a failure, the one decisive and permanent failure which Puccini ever encountered. Possibly it helped him, as many such failures have helped, to realize the necessity of making ‘every stroke tell’, as Weber said in another connection. At any rate, Puccini must have seen in it the error of accepting too readily a weak libretto, for he became exceedingly fastidious, and each one of the works by which he is known is the result of a personal choice of subject framed to his wishes by his librettists, of whom L. Illica and G. Giacosa have been the chief.
The first was Manon Lescaut, which was produced at Turin in 1893, the drama of which, like its successor, La Bohème, is treated rather as a series of episodes than as a whole. Considering how well known the Abbé Prevost’s novel was, the operatic version might have carried this treatment further. Indeed, the attempt to remodel the story so as to make the deportation of Manon in the third act consequent upon the events of the second produces considerable incongruity. As the opera stands there is either too much or too little connection between its parts to be dramatically satisfactory. Outside Italy it had at first to contend with the popularity of Massenet’s opera, but in this country at any rate it has steadily increased in popularity, and its success rests largely on the skilful musical handling of details, such as the scene of Manon’s levée, and on the passionate love music of the last act, which Caruso first realized to the full.
From the time of the production of Manon onwards Puccini’s most famous operas follow in a series with three to four years between each. La Bohème, also at Turin, came in 1896, La Tosca at Rome in 1900, Madama Butterfly at Milan in 1904. The Carl Rosa Opera Company first brought La Bohème to England and performed it in English a couple of years before it was produced at Covent Garden at the instigation of Mme Melba. Puccini came to England for the first performance of The Bohemians at the Theatre Royal in Manchester, on which occasion, it may be remarked, he was much amused by the makeshift fashion in which the brass and drums of the orchestra had to be accommodated in boxes. La Bohème having won its way both in London and the provinces, La Tosca was quickly secured and was given at Covent Garden in 1900 with Mme Ternina in the principal part. The extraordinary ill treatment which Madama Butterfly received from the Milanese public on its production at La Scala in 1904 really had very little effect on Puccini’s position with the wider public. The performance under Signor Campanini had scarcely begun when it was interrupted by hisses and cries of disapproval; it was carried through in spite of continued disturbance, and at the end Puccini took the score away with him, refusing to risk a second performance there. Yet so firmly fixed was he in the estimation of the English public that the Covent Garden authorities did not hesitate to stage it in the following year with the distinguished cast (Mme Destinn and Signori Caruso and Scotti) who were its most famous interpreters.
It is on these three works that Puccini’s fame most principally rests, and, while each of them possesses to the full his salient characteristics of glowing melody and strong characterization, the variety of their subject matter brings wide differences of musical treatment. There is a freshness and simplicity about La Bohème which does not fade with frequent repetition. La Tosca, at first rather looked askance at by serious musicians for the crudity of its melodrama, yet contains some of the most forcible musical moments in the whole of Puccini’s work. The broad tune with which the orchestra pictures Tosca’s sense of horror after the murder of Scarpia is in itself enough to proclaim Puccini’s genius for emotional melody. The whole of the music of the later scenes of Madama Butterfly, depicting the phases of hope, fear, disillusionment, heroism, shows an insight for which neither of the previous operas prepares us.
After this there was an interval of seven years before Puccini wrote another opera. He was said to have considered a number of subjects, including the story of Marie Antoinette. When one thinks of the increasing power with which he had delineated the characters of women, it seems a pity that he turned aside from his subject. When the opportunity came of a production in America he was seized by a play of David Belasco’s, which had been successful in New York, one of those hectic romances of California, in which rascality and sentiment alternate with bewildering rapidity. La Fanciulla del West was announced in the autumn of 1910 for simultaneous production in New York, Boston, and Chicago, and the composer went to New York to superintend the performance there, for which Mme Destinn and Caruso were engaged. In the circumstances it is hardly necessary to say that the arts of advertisement were used to the full and that the work was clamoured for in the principal opera houses of Europe. It is refreshing to find that the benefits of advertisement are, after all, comparatively short lived, for the boom given to The Girl of the Golden West, to quote the original title, did not blind anyone to the fact that, in spite of moments of beauty and a wealth of striking detail, it was not to be placed in the same class with its predecessors.
A still longer interval divided it from the set of three one-act operas which was completed in 1919 and which was given at Covent Garden in 1920 after performance in Italy and America. In planning his triptych, Puccini sought an opportunity to display again his power of dealing with widely different situations, involving strongly contrasted types of emotion. Il Tabarro is one of those pieces of sordid violence which have attracted all Italian composers since Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. Suor Angelica aims at an atmosphere of religious mysticism, and Gianni Schicchi is caustic comedy. In the first he was doing again what he and others had already done with success. In the second he failed by mistaking a self-conscious sentiment for a real emotion. In the third he succeeded in what for him was an entirely new genre and produced a masterpiece of opera buffa which captivated every one; that this was the general opinion in England was shown by what happened at Covent Garden. For the first few performances the three were given in sequence, and it was pointed out that Puccini wished them to be given together; then Suor Angelica was dropped, and finally Gianni Schicchi alone remained, the places of the others being filled by performances of the Russian Ballet.
In one respect Puccini set a practical example by which other composers might profit. He always gave his personal supervision to the first productions of his works, and he never conducted them. In this way he was able to assure himself that the regular conductors had a sympathetic understanding of his musical intentions and could secure what he wanted in his absence. He was ready to acknowledge the great debt which he owed to his interpreters, both conductors and singers, and his appreciation of their efforts went hand in hand with an unerring instinct for gauging their capabilities. By writing music which it was a joy to sing he could be certain that the singer would convey his own pleasure in it to the hearers. Puccini could use his orchestra for any thing that he wanted to say, either to describe the draught by which Mimi’s candle was extinguished or to enhance the first ardours of Rodolfo’s love. Even in the most lurid moments of La Tosca and Il Tabarro he handled the orchestra without a sense of effort. He knew all the tricks of modern orchestration, yet rarely, save in some passages of La Fanciulla del West, seemed to set much store by them. His unerring sense of what would be effective in the theatre was a power shared by most composers of his country, but he employed it to finer purpose than the majority in his generation. If Puccini’s was not the greatest music, at least there could never be any doubt that it was music.
Claude Monet
The great painter of light
5 December 1926
Judged by the nature and extent of his influence, Claude Oscar Monet, whose death is announced on another page, was the most important artist within living memory. Others, such as Manet and Renoir, may have excelled him in personal achievement and even in the number of their evident followers, but for what may be called infective and pervasive effects upon the body of painting there is nobody to compare with him except Cézanne, whom he long outlived, and Cézanne was not his equal in accomplishment. Monet did not invent a new thing; he would hardly have had such a widespreading influence if he did; but, happening to be born at the right moment with an instinctive bent for that expression of light which both Turner and Constable had attempted, he carried it on to fulfilment and dominated the field of painting until Cézanne, inheriting his gains, recalled the attention of artists to the claims of solid earth. He may be said to have irradiated landscape painting, and the gleams penetrated into quarters where any conscious acceptance of his influence would have been hotly disclaimed.
Though he came to be associated with the North of France, Normandy in particular, Monet was actually born in Paris, in the Rue Laffitte, on November 14, 1840 – the same day as his future friend, Auguste Rodin – his mother being a member of a Lyons family. His childhood was spent at Havre, where caricatures drawn by him and exhibited in a shop window attracted the attention of Eugène Boudin, who initiated him into painting in the open air. As early as 1856 the two were exhibiting together at Rouen, and Monet always spoke of Boudin with gratitude, saying that he had ‘dashed the scales from his eyes and shown him the beauties of land and sea painting’. The following year Monet went to Paris, but without immediate results, and in 1860 he left for Algeria to complete his military service in the Chasseurs d’Afrique. He returned invalided, with his instinct for light further confirmed. Back at Havre he fell in with Jongkind, the Dutch artist, who, like Boudin, may be said to have prepared the way for Impressionism, and the three of them worked together.
In 1863 Monet went again to Paris with the intention of entering the studio of Gleyre, and here he made the acquaintance of Renoir, Sisley, and other painters, who, with differences, were carrying on the tradition of the Barbizon group, Corot in particular. Monet quickly decided to work out his own salvation. He made his first appearance in the Salon of 1865 with two marine subjects – ‘Pointe de la Hève’ and ‘Embouchure de la Seine à Honfleur’. His work at this period showed affinities with both Boudin and Jongkind, and also with Manet – a broadening of the facts under the influence of light into atmospheric values, but without any decided attempt to realize light itself on the canvas. Its characters may be seen in ‘Plage de Trouville’, in the Courtauld collection at the Tate Gallery, though that picture was not painted until 1870.
Monet’s first attempt to paint a large landscape with figures in the open air bore the same title as a famous picture by Manet, ‘Déjeuner sur l’herbe’. It introduced him to Courbet and the two men became fast friends. An amusing story is told of a visit paid by them to Alexandre Dumas the Elder, who was stopping in Havre. This was in 1866, when Monet’s ‘Camille’, afterwards known as ‘Dame en Vert’, was attracting attention in the Salon. Neither of the artists had met Dumas, but Courbet insisted that they should call. At first they were told that Dumas was not at home, but Courbet said: ‘Tell him that it is Courbet who asks for him; he will be in.’ Dumas came out in shirt and trousers; he and Courbet embraced with tears; and the two painters were invited to lunch, cooked by Dumas himself, who afterwards paraded them through the streets of Havre in his carriage.
The following year Monet’s ‘Women in a Garden’ was rejected by the Salon, and its exhibition in a shop window brought him the acquaintance of Manet and introduced him to the group of writers, including Zola, who were then championing Manet and his friends. It was between this date and the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War that the informal association of artists began which, consolidated by the attitude of the Salon, led to the Impressionist school. They included Monet, Camille Pissarro, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Sisley, Cézanne, Berthe Morisot, who was Manet’s sister-in-law, and Mary Cassatt among others. Not all these artists were Impressionists, as the word came to be understood, but they had common sympathies in refusing to be bound by authority.
Visit to England
During the siege of Paris, in 1870–71, Monet and Pissarro paid a visit to England, and there can be little doubt that the acquaintance with Turner and Constable which they made then had considerable influence in confirming their aims – just as the exhibition of Constable’s ‘Hay Wain’ in Paris had profoundly affected an earlier generation of French painters. It was in 1874 that the word ‘Impressionism’ was first coined, and by accident. Under the title of ‘Société anonyme des artistes peintres, sculpteurs et graveurs du 15 avril au 15 mai 1874’, the artists already named, with others, arranged a collective exhibition at Nadar’s, in the Boulevard des Capucines. Among the works by Monet there was one entitled ‘Sunrise, an Impression’, merely by way of description. The word ‘Impressionists’ was seized upon as a term of ridicule for the whole group, and though many of them had nothing in common with Monet they cheerfully accepted it as a battle-cry. Financially the exhibition was a disaster, the works being sold by auction the following year at prices averaging about 100 francs. It was at this time that Manet, who was well off, suggested to Duvet a way of helping Monet, then very poor, by buying ten of his pictures between them for 1,000 francs without disclosing the purchasers.
