ESSAYS IN PERSUASION

PART

298

politicians, lay "or ecclesiastical, are concerned)of hypocrisy. Like other new religions, it seemsto take the colour and gaiety and freedom out ofeveryday life and to offer a drab substitute inthe square wooden faces of its devotees. Likeother new religions, it persecutes without justiceof pity those who actively resist it. Like othernew religions, it is unscrupulous. Like othernew religions, it is filled with missionary ardourand oecumenical ambitions. But to say thatLeninism is the faith of a persecuting and pro-pagating minority of fanatics led by hypocritesis, after all, to say no more nor less than that itis a religion and not merely a party, and Lenin a Mahomet, not a Bismarck. If we want tofrighten ourselves in our capitalist easy-chairs,we can picture the Communists of Russia asthough the early Christians led by Attila wereusing the equipment of the Holy Inquisition and the Jesuit missions to enforce the literaleconomics of the New Testament; but when wewant to comfort ourselves in the same chairs,can we hopefully repeat that these economicsare fortunately so contrary to human nature thatthey cannot finance either missionaries or armiesand will surely end in defeat?

There are three questions to answer. Is thenew religion partly true, or sympathetic to thesouls of modern men? Is it on the material sideso inefficient as to render it incapable to sur-vive? Will it, in the course of time, with suffi-cient dilution and added impurity, catch themultitude?