That ' s a silly thing to say . Should Germans have opposed the liberation of their country by the Allies because those same Allies ended up killing innocents through bombings and general warfare ? If a workers ' state had to resort to terror to keep itself alive , and innocent family members of mine were killed in the process , I ' d hope my emotions would not override my understanding that as Jefferson noted the arm of the people is blind to a certain degree . This goes into the whole excessive costs of revolutions , to which Mark Twain had a fitting answerThere were two Reigns of Terror , if we would but remember it and consider it the one wrought murder in hot passion , the other in heartless cold blood the one lasted mere months , the other had lasted a thousand years the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons , the other upon a hundred millions but our shudders are all for the horrors of the minor Terror , the momentary Terror , so to speak whereas , what is the horror of swift death by the axe , compared with lifelong death from hunger , cold , insult , cruelty and heartbreak ? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake ? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled with that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terrorthat unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves .