"Red Europe" is a little blue volume,-published in Australia in 1919. The author is Frank Anstey, a Labour member of the Commonwealth Parliament who was a government representative of the Australian Press Mission in France in 1918. On this work he mixed in high diplomatic circles, and had access to the most detailed, confidential and personal information on the current world situation. As a Socialist, he was profoundly shocked by the cynical betrayal of the aims for which the First World War was meant to, be fought. To him the contrast between the earnest sincerity and vision of the Russian Socialists under Lenin was in striking contrast to the brazen hypocrisy of the hired Iscar-iots of the Western countries. He saw Europe, soaked red with the blood of the millions who had been slaughtered in the great orgy of carnage, to him the clear product of predatory imperialism.

Out of the blood-soaked earth, as from dragon-seed, he saw the armies of revolution rising up, leading the peoples to the new hope of Socialism.

Prophetic?

His personal contacts, his outspoken honesty, and his fearless assaults on what he knew was wrong, even if held sacred by the orthodox, make the book as powerful reading now as it must have been 30 years ago. Is there not something half-prophetic about a reference in 1919 to General Mannerheim as "the White Butcher"? And Wilson as "not a Democrat: not even a believer in the things he said, but the supreme political strategist of American Money Power"? At a time when these men were the heroes of democracy, Anstey saw through the mask, and his Judgment has been upheld by history.

With a keen eye, he saw the unsavoury machinations of the Chur-chills and Ironsides, the Kolchaks and Mannerheims, in their attempts to strangle the Soviet Republic at birth, and shook his head. He saw it all as a puppet show acting Canute with too tide of history. And he seems to have been right. For all the nations of the Entente's "Cordons Sanitaire"—the Baltic States, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, and even China, seem to have become infected with the Red rash.

It was destined, claimed Anstey, to engulf even his native Australia. The system which gave 1 per cent. of adult Australians the ownership of their country's total wealth contained the seeds of its own destruction. No wonder the powers that be were panicky. Anstey's book was instantly banned.

The Auckland pacifist, Mr. H. R. Urquhart, records an interesting incident in his 1946 pamphlet, "Searchlight on Big Business". At the time "Red Europe" came out, local newspapers recorded that Whitcombe & Tombs Ltd. was fined "for importing prohibited goods, namely, a book entitled 'Red Europe'. The books were ordered to be seized and forfeited."

Urquhart's comment is: "I feel that in the final day of judgment this attempt of Messrs. Whitcombe & Tombs to broadcast the contents of 'Red Europe' will be accounted to the firm for righteousness ... .

Drums of Revolution

For the contents of this book are of more than historical interest to us today. They are still vital.

So much of what Frank Anstey wrote 30 years ago has been corroborated by the passage of time that we can well read again the last page:

"During the early part of 1919 President Wilson rose up and said: I want to utter a solemn warning. Great tides of the world do not give notice that they are going to rise and run—they rise in their majesty and might and those who stand in their way are overwhelmed. If we cannot now . . . see how to regulate the affairs of the world . . . there will be no hope and therefore no mercy.'

"But this coming struggle will be different in its manner, character, and purpose from anything previous. No longer undisciplined mobs but masses disciplined by war will give a practical application to Lloyd George's 'success in proportion to audacity'. Centuries old, obsolete, out-of-date machinery of centralised bureaucratic authority will go with a crash. In its place will come machinery adapted to modern needs. It will be there where the people live, where they can watch its operation. All power' in its scope, the right of each locality to work out its salvation, lands, homes and industries, local action, direct action, action quick and on the spot; emulation, stimulation, rivalry, and efforts to the common good, the fore- most are beaten to the backward. The national directory will function for purposes which the localities cannot handle. Banks will function for the people. Finance will be the handmaid of industry—not its master. Security will give the right to currency!—not the whims and wills of a predatory clique. The impatient world will wait no longer. The frail-ties of men, the soul-pawning for the prestige of an hour, the desertions of the timid, of the Iscariots for cash, will furnish no despondency. They will count as part of the inevitable loss in the battle-line.

"Capitalism listens with quaking soul to the drum-beats of the armies of revolution. Those beats grow louder—they draw nearer and nearer."

"Move Then with New Desires"

Alec McLeod, Editor of "Salient" throughout 1947 and the last term of 1948, leaves this country for England next week. He was Men's Vice-President of the Students' Association for two years, and served on Tramping, Socialist and Literary Club Committees. He has been part of Victoria for many years (gathering an M.A. and a B.Sc. in the course of them) and takes with him the best wishes of all the Victorians who knew him.