y will emerge, I feel no doubt. And I also feel no
doubt that the new order will be either some form of Socialism or a
reversion to barbarism and petty war such as occurred during the
barbarian invasion. If Bolshevism remains the only vigorous and
effective competitor of capitalism, I believe that no form of
Socialism will be realized, but only chaos and destruction. This
belief, for which I shall give reasons later, is one of the grounds
upon which I oppose 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 Republic. 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 concentrated, still lives by hope, though the
pressure of events has made the hope severe and stern and somewhat
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 under 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 Bolshevism 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 or 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 of the uncertainty as to whether the desired goal will be reached
in the end. I believe that the West is capable of adopting less
painful and more certain methods of reaching Socialism than those that
have seemed necessary in Russia. And I believe that while some forms
of Socialism are imm