over, Bolshevism, as
it has developed in Russia, is quite peculiarly inapplicable to China,
for the following reasons: (1) It requires a strong centralized State,
whereas China has a very weak State, and is tending more and more to
federalism instead of centralization; (2) Bolshevism requires a very
great deal of government, and more control of individual lives by the
authorities than has ever been known before, whereas China has developed
personal liberty to an extraordinary degree, and is the country of all
others where the doctrines of anarchism seem to find successful
practical application; (3) Bolshevism dislikes private trading, which is
the breath of life to all Chinese except the literati. For these
reasons, it is not likely that Bolshevism as a creed will make much
progress in China proper. But Bolshevism as a political force is not the
same thing as Bolshevism as a creed. The arguments which proved
successful with the Ameer of Afghanistan or the nomads of Mongolia were
probably different from those employed in discussion with Mr. Lansbury.
The Asiatic expansion of Bolshevik influence is not a distinctively
Bolshevik phenomenon, but a continuation of traditional Russian policy,
carried on by men who are more energetic, more intelligent, and less
corrupt than the officials of the Tsar's regime, and who moreover, like
the Americans, believe themselves to be engaged in the liberation of
mankind, not in mere imperialistic expansion. This belief, of course,
adds enormously to the vigour and success of Bolshevik imperialism, and
gives an impulse to Asiatic expansion which is not likely to be soon
spent, unless there is an actual restoration of the Tsarist regime
under some new Kolchak dependent upon alien arms for his throne and his
life.

It is therefore not at all unlikely, if the international situation
develops in certain ways, that Russia may set to work to regain
Manchuria, and to recover that influence over Peking which the control
of Manchuria is bound to give to any foreign Power. It would probably be
useless to attempt such an enterprise while Japan remains unembarrassed,
but it would at once become feasible if Japan were at war with America
or with Great Britain. There is therefore nothing improbable in the
supposition that Russia may, within the next ten or twenty years,
recover the position which she held in relation to China before the
Russo-Japanese war. It must be remembered also that the Russians hav