Читаем Byzantium Endures полностью

The train stopped after about two hours. We were on the empty steppe. An apparently orderly military camp was set up on a nearby ridge. Soldiers began to trudge across to us. They carried large cans of soup. These were distributed the length of the train. We had made a scheduled food-stop. Bandit or not, Hrihorieff knew enough to keep his lines of communication clear. His logistics were excellent. He controlled a wide radius of track. The track and the telegraphs gave him the power of rapid transport and the ability to modify orders quickly. The Whites further South had far less rolling stock or track available to them. They were fundamentally more suspicious of technical innovation. Here the Reds, to their credit, had the advantage. They had fewer aeroplanes, but they were prepared to use them. The Whites put their faith in cavalry charges. They were brave romantics. It was calculating Jews who looked into the Future. But they did not see everything. I do not deny it was a crime. But it was a crime of revenge. It was not coldblooded. I have literature which claims only two or three million died in the camps. I believe it was six million. Stalin killed more. Death dominated the twentieth century just as it had the sixth, the fourteenth and the seventeenth. Memento mori. The Western democracies should recall the Golden Age of Florence. Savonarola destroyed it in a month. Freedom and responsibility are the same thing. The young have forgotten. Self-discipline, not swords, saved Sparta. Brotherly-love saved Sparta. But it did not save those poor, noble Greeks at Kherson when the servants of Satan descended upon them. They say I know nothing of religion. But I have come to religion. My heart and my brain brought me to the noble faith of Russia which resisted Africa and Asia, took root here, in London; in New York, in Paris, everywhere. Is that a dead faith? The true faith of Constantine, who made Rome Christian, who founded Byzantium? There is no purer faith. It is the faith of the Greeks who invented the Christian religion. The Jews borrowed it and handed it back to them as if it were new. Jews have always traded so. Paul understood this. The Greeks give us everything, yet we betray them over and over again. Look at Cyprus. The British are in love with Islam. They give them land for their mosques. They applaud them in their books; they invite them to buy Park Lane. They name their heroes after Arabia. They flirt with Islam as a young girl flirts with the demon-lover who plans to make her a harlot. They are simple-minded. They lack the ancient experience of Russia. Beware Carthage! I had pamphlets printed at my own expense. There is no point in explaining to the British. At best I was laughed at. I used to keep them in my shop. The National Front is no good. I am not afraid of Indians. Or the Chinese who run the fish-and-chip shop across the road. Can nobody see but me? Spies fill these streets. It is like a nightmare. I am the sole person who realises what is going on. Nazis and National Front have only acne and envy in common. Communists and foreigners steal our souls, our blood, our minds. But these are not Martians. This is not The War of the Worlds. We cannot expect a natural solution. The body fights cancer. It usually wins. The new cells destroy the rogues. Only when intelligence interferes is there danger. Many die because they are diagnosed. Cancer comes and goes, the body instinctively fights it. So we should fight. Nothing so spectacular as the Gorynich dragon. Chur menia! Chur menia! But who will listen? Not the Chinese or the Africans or the Indians. Not the Italians. Even the Greeks will not listen. There is a Serbian Church, admittedly, behind the Public Library. And a Greek Church in Bayswater. I continue to be optimistic. I have become more subtle in my methods. It is all monasteries and convents, all Catholics and Irish and negro chapels here. Some of the young people appear to understand. Perhaps we will muddle through. When we have sent back all the foreigners, and transported Golders Green to the Promised Land. But I think it is too late. Oh, Byzantium! Come to us with your horses and your swords to save us.