*TH£ PRESENT CONDITION OF RUSSIA
Bolshevism. But to oppose it from the point of view of
a supporter of capitalism would be, to my mind,
utterly futile and against the movement of history in
the present age.
The effect of Bolshevism as a revolutionary hope is
greater outside Russia than within the Soviet Re-
public. Grim realities have done much to kill hope
among those who are subject to the dictatorship of
Moscow. Yet even within Russia, the Communist
party, in whose hands all political power is concen-
trated, still lives by hope, though the pressure of
events has made the hope severe and stern and some-
what remote. It is this hope that leads to concentration
upon the rising generation. Russian Communists often
avow that there is little hope for those who are already
adult, and that happiness can only come to the children
who have grown up ujider the new regime and been
moulded from the first to the group-mentality that
Communism requires. It is only after the lapse of a
generation that they hope to create a Russia that shall
realize their vision.
In the Western World, the hope inspired by Bol-
shevism is more immediate, less shot through with
tragedy. Western Socialists who have visited Russia
have seen fit to suppress the harsher features of the
present regime, and have disseminated a belief among
their followers that the millennium would be quickly
realized there if there were no war and no blockade.
Even those Socialists who are not Bolsheviks for their
own country have mostly done very little to help men
in appraising the merits 0r demerits of Bolshevik
methods. By this lack of courage they have exposed
Western Socialism to the danger of becoming Bolshevik
through ignorance of the price that has to be paid and
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