icts in what were once regarded as the
most settled parts of India which are being abandoned by the rich
because their property is not safe. So great is the contempt for the law
that it is employed by the unscrupulous as a means of offence against
the innocent. Frontier Pathans commit outrages almost unbelievable in
their daring. Mass-meetings are held and agitation spreads in regard to
topics quite outside the business of orderly people. There is no matter
of domestic or foreign politics in which crowds of irresponsible people
do not want to have their passionate way. Great grievances are made of
little, far-off things. What ought to be the ordered, spacious life of
the District Officer is intruded upon and disturbed by a hundred
distracting influences due to the want of discipline of the people. In
the subordinate ranks of the great services themselves, trades-unions
have been formed. Military and police officers have to regret that the
new class of recruits is less subordinate than the old, harder to
discipline, more full of complaints."[297]

The Great War of course enormously aggravated Oriental unrest. In many
parts of the Near East, especially, acute suffering, balked ambitions,
and furious hates combined to reduce society to the verge of chaos. Into
this ominous turmoil there now came the sinister influence of Russian
Bolshevism, marshalling all this diffused unrest by systematic methods
for definite ends. Bolshevism was frankly out for a world-revolution and
the destruction of Western civilization. To attain this objective the
Bolshevist leaders not only launched direct assaults on the West, but
also planned flank attacks in Asia and Africa. They believed that if the
East could be set on fire, not only would Russian Bolshevism gain vast
additional strength but also the economic repercussion on the West,
already shaken by the war, would be so terrific that industrial collapse
would ensue, thereby throwing Europe open to revolution.

Bolshevism's propagandist efforts were nothing short of universal, both
in area and in scope. No part of the world was free from the plottings
of its agents; no possible source of discontent was overlooked. Strictly
"Red" doctrines like the dictatorship of the proletariat were very far
from being the only weapons in Bolshevism's armoury. Since what was
first wanted was the overthrow of the existing world-order, any kind of
opposition to that order, no matter how remote doctrinally fr