The Chevalier de Boufflers
The French Revolution
World Revolution
The Socialist Network
The Surrender of an Empire
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette: Before the Revolution
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette: During the Revolution
Spacious Days
"There is in Italy a power which we seldom mention in this House ... Imean the secret societies.... It is useless to deny, because it isimpossible to conceal, that a great part of Europe--the whole of Italyand France and a great portion of Germany, to say nothing of othercountries--is covered with a network of these secret societies, just asthe superficies of the earth is now being covered with railroads. Andwhat are their objects? They do not attempt to conceal them. They do notwant constitutional government; they do not want amelioratedinstitutions ... they want to change the tenure of land, to drive outthe present owners of the soil and to put an end to ecclesiasticalestablishments. Some of them may go further...." (DISRAELI in the Houseof Commons, July 14, 1856.)
It is a matter of some regret to me that I have been so far unable tocontinue the series of studies on the French Revolution of which TheChevalier de Boufflers and The French Revolution, a Study inDemocracy formed the first two volumes. But the state of the world atthe end of the Great War seemed to demand an enquiry into the presentphase of the revolutionary movement, hence my attempt to follow itscourse up to modern times in World Revolution. And now beforereturning to that first cataclysm I have felt impelled to devote onemore book to the Revolution as a whole by going this time further backinto the past and attempting to trace its origins from the first centuryof the Christian era. For it is only by taking a general survey of themovement that it is possible to understand the causes of any particularphase of its existence. The French Revolution did not arise merely outof conditions or ideas peculiar to the eighteenth century, nor theBolshevist Revolution out of political and social conditions in Russiaor the teaching of Karl Marx. Both these explosions were produced byforces which, making use of popular suffering and discontent, had longbeen gathering strength for an onslaught not only on Christianity, buton all social and moral order.
It is of immense significance to notice with what resentment this pointof view is met in certain quarters. When I first began to write onrevolution a well-known London publisher said to me, "Remember that ifyou take an anti-revolutionary line you will have the whole literaryworld against you." This appeared to me extraordinary. Why should theliterary world sympathize with a movement which from the FrenchRevolution onwards has always been directed against literature, art, andscience, and has openly proclaimed its aim to exalt the manual workersover the intelligentsia? "Writers must be proscribed as the mostdangerous enemies of the people," said Robespierre; his colleague Dumassaid all clever men should be guillotined. "The system of persecutionagainst men of talents was organized.... They cried out in the sectionsof Paris, 'Beware of that man for he has written a book!'"1 Preciselythe same policy has been followed in Russia. Under Moderate Socialism inGermany the professors, not th