The Confession of a Child of the Century by Samuel Heather: A Novel by Thomas Rogers

Author:Thomas Rogers [Rogers, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781480449893
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-12-10T06:00:00+00:00

21

IT HAS BEEN MY fate to be well ground between the upper and nether millstones of two different systems of moral coerciveness: Father’s and the system represented by Liu. That neither Father nor Liu completely succeeded with me should not be taken as a sign that the systems are at fault. We must never allow ourselves to be discouraged about the possibilities of human perfectibility. Think of all the great Christian saints and Marxist heroes and the host of faithful, cheerful, dutiful, hard-working men and women who actually care about the world around them and the way their societies are developing. Really, one can only admire good Communists and good Christians.

I think what went wrong in my case is that neither Father nor Liu had sufficient control over me. Father subjected me to a Christian upbringing in what is after all a non-Christian world, while Liu’s Communist reforms were applied in what is after all a non-Communist world. But, who knows? Even the Russian Revolution might have turned out better if the whole world, or at least all Europe, had gone Communist in 1917. The isolated and threatened position of the Bolshevik régime certainly accounts for much of the moral and bureaucratic deterioration of the Soviet state. And comparable disasters have overtaken Christianity in the past. The Mohammedan irruption broke up the unity of the Mediterranean world and inaugurated the Christian Dark Ages. Perhaps without the Mohammedans around the Christian Empire of Rome could have held together and the great Papal-Imperial conflict which rent the high Middle Ages would not have occurred. Dante’s Ghibelline dreams might have been actualized and we could have had a high Catholic Imperial civilization to this very day. The point is that neither Christianity nor communism has had a real chance to show what could be done with men, but in both I see great possibilities. Both have shown an amazing ability to recover from their own mistakes and defeats and put forth new, creative life. For instance Protestantism arose out of the Christian failure to achieve what Dante hoped for, while Maoist communism has arisen out of the failure to achieve what Lenin and Trotsky hoped for.

The Chinese Revolution is really a new departure and basically different from the Russian. The Bolsheviks simply shot the Tsar and Tsarina and Tsarevitch and all the poor Tsarevnas (plus their dogs). The Chinese Communists would not have done that because they believe there is hope for everyone. And they have the time, the patience, and the manpower to put such a belief into practice. Thus when Henry Pu-Yi, the last Manchu emperor, fell into their hands, they stuck him into prison for ten years where they struggled with him, worked over him, and finally got him to make his own bed, wash his own clothes, shake hands, speak politely to others, and show a little elementary trust in and respect for other men. Theoretically an ex-Son of Heaven like Pu-Yi should be utterly incorrigible, but the Communists did succeed in reforming him.

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