58 THE GREEN RISING 



much better off now than they were under the old 

 regime. I saw no evidences of famine. I lived well 

 at moderate cost, and even had one thing in Russia 

 that I could not get anywhere else in Europe 

 watermelon. The land has all been confiscated by 

 the state, it is true, but did not the French do the 

 same in their revolution, and did not our own gov- 

 ernment 'confiscate' 4,000,000 negro slaves when 

 in the Civil War it abolished slavery? Who will 

 assert that vested rights with no other basis than 

 centuries of expropriation are sacrosanct? 



"The people now have the land and are working 

 it for themselves. Is not this as it should be? 

 Moreover, they have gone to the Mosaic law for 

 a model for their revenue system, the peasants 

 yielding up to the government for its support the 

 tenth part of their increase. Was the lawgiver of 

 Israel a Bolshevik? This agricultural individualism 

 is something the Communists may yet make some 

 sort of compromise with, but they never can over- 

 come it. What cares the peasant for theoretical 

 national titles to the land while he has the land 

 itself and its fruits on such terms?" 



After the World War the Communist government 

 of Hungary also took the plunge into land nation- 

 alization. The feudal Latifimdia had long been 

 accepted as a rural land policy of this country. Be- 

 fore the social revolution following the War, the 

 former government had proposed to break up the 

 vast estates and partition them out as small farms 



