Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 13 - From Marx to Mao

THE HAPPENING TO THE KING OF PORTUGAL471Commenting on this, the liberal correspondent writes:“A people as innately good-natured and friendly as the Portugueseare, must have gone through a harsh school to learn to hate so implacablyeven in the grave. And if this is true—as it undoubtedly is,and by keeping silent about it I would be distorting historical truth—if not only such mute demonstrations pronounce judgement on thecrowned victim, if at every turn you hear words of abuse, even from‘law-abiding people’, levelled at the victim of assassination, younaturally find yourself wanting to study the rare combination ofcircumstances which has made the psychology of a people so abnormal.For a people which does not concede to death its ancient andsacred right of atoning for all earthly sins, must be either morallydegenerate already, or there must exist conditions engendering anunfathomable feeling of hatred, which clouds the clear eye of fairjudgement.”O, liberal hypocrites! Why do you not brand as moraldegenerates those French scholars and writers, who even tothis day hate and virulently abuse not only the leading personalitiesof the 1871 Commune but even those of 1793?Not only the fighters of the proletarian revolution, buteven those of the bourgeois revolution? Because the “democratic”lackeys of the modern bourgeoisie regard it as “normal”and “moral” that the people should “good-naturedly”endure every possible indignity, outrage, and atrocity at thehands of crowned adventurers.Otherwise, continues the correspondent (i.e., otherwisethan as a result of exceptional conditions), “one couldnot understand the fact that already today one monarchistnewspaper speaks about innocent victims from among thepeople with almost greater sorrow than it does about theking, and we already see quite clearly how legends are beginningto form that will invest the assassins with a haloof glory. Whereas in almost all cases of assassination thepolitical parties hasten to dissociate themselves from theassassins, the Portuguese Republicans are frankly proud ofthe fact that the ‘martyrs and heroes of February 1st’ camefrom their ranks...”.The bourgeois democrat, in his excessive zeal, goes tothe length of being ready to describe as a “revolutionarylegend” the respect which Portuguese citizens pay to themen who sacrificed themselves in order to remove a kingwho had made a mockery of the constitution!