Baron d'Aiguliers persuaded the chiefs to refer the question of terms to the men, some 1000 of whom were in the hills about a league away. When, however, the party approached them, Roland was at once seized and taken back by his men, the two deputies were knocked off their horses, and the Baron with five or six guns at his stomach, as he says, and a pistol at each ear, declared his readiness to die for his country; but after a spirited harangue the Camisards let him go, admitting that he was a well-meaning man though wholly mistaken. Cavalier, who was a little behind, realised the position, turned his horse and galloped away. Roland now had under his command some 1800 men, and Villars, who was sick of the war and wanted to get back to Versailles, made a final offer to give him a higher rank than Cavalier and to make his brother a Colonel, but it was no use. Nothing could shake Roland's determination to fight to the end for liberty of conscience, and the protection of his fellow-Protestants, and it is certain that Villars would not have been allowed by the King to keep faith even if he had wished to. In June 1704 Roland was nearly captured and only escaped through the devotion of an Englishman. The allies urged Roland to hold on, and on July 26, with nine hundred men, he attacked the French troops at Pont de Montvert, the scene of the opening of the insurrection in 1702, and now of its close.

On Aug. 13 Roland went to Castelnau to meet his fiancée, Mlle de Cornély. Here he was betrayed by one of his men for 100 louis d'or. He woke to find the house surrounded by dragoons. With one or two of his men he got to the stables, but the horses had already been taken. He then tried to escape through the grounds, but finding himself surrounded he set his back to a tree determined to sell his life dearly, and 'defia le plus hardi d'approcher, et sa fière contenance déconcerta également et l'officier et le soldat,' till finally a dragoon shot him dead. Five of his companions who surrendered were broken on the wheel at Nîmes three days later. Roland had kept his word that he would die sword in hand rather than abandon the cause of the Protestants.

With Cavalier's flight and the death of Roland the back of the insurrection was broken; there were a few more hostile risings, the last in April 1711, but the

pastors at Geneva discouraged violence. One of them had said 'tuer les prêtres brûler les églises, cela n'était ni de la doctrine de l'évangile ni de la pratique des premiers chrétiens.' This was perfectly true, but as Louis XIV and his Ministers, urged on by Madame de Maintenon and the Roman Catholic clergy, had persecuted the Protestants with deliberate brutality, and their favourite punishments were the galleys, the gallows, burning alive, and breaking on the wheel, it is not to be wondered at that the Protestants of the Cévennes replied in kind to the best of their ability. The war was a savage and a brutal one, but my sympathies at any rate are wholly with the Camisards. With no resources, not even arms to start with, they put up for over two years a splendid fight against the overwhelming forces of the Crown, and though they were beaten, there can be little doubt that the cause of liberty of conscience had advanced one stage forward. It may also be that the Southern fury in the French Revolution was due to memories of what the Protestants had suffered in the South of France eighty years before.

As for the leaders, Roland and Cavalier had risen, as it were, out of space, both of them men of natural genius, both splendid fighters, but it was inevitable that they should part. Cavalier, clear-headed and cool, followed where his reason led him. Roland, resolute, emotional as I take it, almost quixotic in his high sense of honour, was constitutionally incapable of giving up convictions once definitely formed. So he came to his gallant end and is to this day regarded as the hero of the Camisards. Cavalier may have been right in despairing of their cause, his clear judgment may have convinced him that nothing more was to be gained by fighting, and that negotiation was the only course open, but he himself came well out of it. An uncharitable world does not easily forget this, and wisdom is less attractive than death in a noble but hopeless cause. Yet I think that both these men in their different ways were cast in heroic moulds, and there is a place for both in the spacious courts of history.

REGINALD BLOMFIELD.

Art. 7.-THE PHILOSOPHY OF BOLSHEVISM.

1. The Mind and Face of Bolshevism. By René Fülöp-
Miller. Putnam, 1927.

2. Communism. By Harold J. Laski. Home University
Library. Williams & Norgate, 1927.

3. Bolshevist Russia. By Anton Karlgren. Allen &
Unwin, 1927.

4. Lenin and Gandhi. By René Fülöp-Miller. Putnam,

1927.

It is a matter of common agreement that the Russian
revolution of 1917 was the most important event in
modern history, calculated to have an even more radical
influence on the development of human society than
the French Revolution of 1789. The world had grown
much smaller in one hundred and twenty-eight years.
The French Revolution affected social and political con-
ditions all through Europe. But the Bolshevist revolu-
tion has not only stimulated revolutionist enthusiasm
in the European cities; it has vitally affected the course
of events, if not from China to Peru, certainly from
China to Mexico.

Its influence is largely due to its definite political
and economic doctrines. The revolution of 1789 was
the almost fortuitous result of a combination of political
and economic causes, and was brought about by the
alliance of men of vastly different faiths, blundering
together whither they knew not. Robespierre had the
haziest idea of what he wanted when he went from
Arras to Versailles. Lenin had an exact idea of what
he wanted when he was smuggled into Russia from
Switzerland. The Bolshevist revolution was the victory
of a small number of political-economic theorists, led
by a man of great and dominating personality, who
contrived to exploit to the full the circumstances result-
ing from generations of misgovernment and the disasters
of a great war.

Bolshevism is an international menace, and it is evidently of the first importance that its principles should be thoroughly understood and its objects accurately realised. The scanty and contradictory news that comes

1

across the Russian frontiers has taught the world something of what Bolshevism has achieved. It is of far greater moment to know exactly what the Bolshevists set out to do, and to be informed of the nature of the new society which they are seeking to create. With his 'The Mind and Face of Bolshevism,' Herr Fülöp-Miller has put the inquirer under a heavy debt of gratitude. His book is the most complete and thorough analysis of Bolshevism that has yet been published-comprehensive, well-balanced, judicial, with its text made the more impressive by what 'Punch' has well called 'the nightmare of its illustrative photographs.' With Herr FülöpMiller's exhaustive volume, Prof. Laski's little book on Communism, published in the Home University Library, should also be read. It is a model of compression and clear and accurate statement. These two books together make it possible to understand what is at once the most interesting and the most threatening movement in the modern world.

Bolshevism is a development of the Social Democracy of the later years of the 19th century. The orthodox Social Democrats, of whom the late H. M. Hyndman was the best-known English representative, hoped for the capture of the machinery of the State by the proletariat by means of Parliament and the ballot box. The machinery captured, the State was to acquire the land and the instruments of production, expropriating landlord and capitalist, and carrying on the whole work of the nation as a co-operative concern. This crude Socialism was materially modified in England by the thinkers of the Fabian Society, who, in their early days, were denounced by the revolutionists as 'gas and water Socialists. The development of municipal enterprise in British cities was largely due to their influence, and they looked forward to the gradual extension of national and municipal enterprise under the guidance of expert and devoted bureaucrats. There was a Socialist left wing, who called themselves Anarchists and Communist Anarchists-William Morris had considerable sympathy with them-and who recognised that the tyranny of the bureaucrat would be far more complete and irksome than the tyranny of the private master. They believed that salvation could come only from the destruction of

the State and of all law, men being left free to live together in the idyllic circumstances described by William Morris in News from Nowhere.'

The Bolshevist shares to the full the anarchist's scorn of Parliaments, democratic action and evolutionary progress to the new heaven and earth. He sees that, owing to the manipulations of political parties, the workers, even in such advanced countries as Great Britain and the United States, have a far smaller influence on government and the making of laws than the classes which they vastly outnumber. With the anarchist, his ultimate aim is the disappearance of the State, but he is convinced that this can only happen after a long period of preparation. The first business is the forcible destruction, not only of bourgeois control of public affairs, but of bourgeois culture and civilisation, that is to say, of the accepted theories of life and morality. When that destruction is attained, there must be instituted a dictatorship of the proletariat, in effect government by a minority of determined and convinced Communists, who will train their fellows for life in the new world. The State, as we know it, will disappear, not to give place to groups of gaily dressed young men singing while they mend English roads on a summer's day, but to companies of robots, without will, without soul, without hope, cogs in a machine to which they have been taught to bow down and which they will, more or less willingly, worship.

The character of Russian Bolshevism and the course of the Russian revolution have been fundamentally affected by the personality of Lenin, who must remain for all time one of the key figures of European history. There is superficial resemblance between Lenin and Robespierre, though Lenin was by far the greater man. Both men were able to compel a nation to submit to a theory. Both were ruthless. But Robespierre was compelled by a fanatical faith into a policy of terrorism at which he always shuddered, while Lenin always acted according to plan. He saw many moves ahead. He was consistent to his theory, though he was strong enough to qualify it at times, possessing, as he did, a complete understanding of the conditions with which he had to deal. Robespierre was a finicky sentimentalist, Vol. 250.-No. 496.

X