money went to Russia, the English press suddenly developed leanings
towards the Greek Church, and deplored the unofficial execution of
Stolypin as deeply as it had rejoiced in the like fate of Bobrikoff. The
upshot of it all is that western civilization is at present busy
committing suicide by machinery, and importing hordes of Asiatics and
Africans to help in the throat cutting, not for the benefit of the silly
capitalists, who are being ruined wholesale, but to break up the
Austrian Empire for the benefit of Russia and the Slavs of eastern
Europe, which may be a very desirable thing, but which could and should
be done by the eastern Powers among themselves, without tearing Belgium
and Germany and France and England to pieces in the process.


*The Red Flag and the Black.*

Will you now at last believe, O stupid British, German, and French
patriots, what the Socialists have been telling you for so many years:
that your Union Jacks and tricolours and Imperial Eagles ("where the
carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered") are only toys to keep
you amused, and that there are only two real flags in the world
henceforth: the red flag of Democratic Socialism and the black flag of
Capitalism, the flag of God and the flag of Mammon? What earthly or
heavenly good is done when Tom Fool shoots Hans Narr? The plain fact is
that if we leave our capital to be dealt with according to the
selfishness of the private man he will send it where wages are low and
workers enslaved and docile: that is, as many thousand miles as possible
from the Trade Unions and Trade Union rates and parliamentary Labour
Parties of civilization; and Germany, at his sordid behest, will plunge
the world into war for the sake of disgracing herself with a few rubber
plantations, poetically described by her orators and journalists as "a