| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: instead of words if we need more forcible though less
accurate illustrations.
Thus, at the time of the Moscow Congress the Soviets, then
Mensheviks, who were represented at the Congress (the
object of the Congress was to whip up support for the
Coalition Government) were against strikes of protest. The
Trades Unions took a point of view nearer that of
the Bolsheviks, and the strikes in Moscow took place in spite
of the Soviets. After the Kornilov affair, when the Mensheviks
were still struggling for coalition with the bourgeois parties, the
Trades Unions quite definitely took the Bolshevik standpoint.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde: away the bitterness out of your life, to take away the shadow that
lies on your name, that this marriage must take place. There is no
alternative: and after the marriage you and I can go away together.
But the marriage must take place first. It is a duty that you owe,
not merely to yourself, but to all other women - yes: to all the
other women in the world, lest he betray more.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT. I owe nothing to other women. There is not one of
them to help me. There is not one woman in the world to whom I
could go for pity, if I would take it, or for sympathy, if I could
win it. Women are hard on each other. That girl, last night, good
though she is, fled from the room as though I were a tainted thing.
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