that love
of power is quite as strong a motive, and quite as great a source of
injustice, as love of money; yet this must be obvious to any unbiased
student of politics. It is also obvious that the method of violent
revolution leading to a minority dictatorship is one peculiarly
calculated to create habits of despotism which would survive the
crisis by which they were generated. Communist politicians are likely
to become just like the politicians of other parties: a few will be
honest, but the great majority will merely cultivate the art of
telling a plausible tale with a view to tricking the people into
entrusting them with power. The only possible way by which politicians
as a class can be improved is the political and psychological
education of the people, so that they may learn to detect a humbug. In
England men have reached the point of suspecting a good speaker, but
if a man speaks badly they think he must be honest. Unfortunately,
virtue is not so widely diffused as this theory would imply.

In the second place, it is assumed by the Communist argument that,
although capitalist propaganda can prevent the majority from becoming
Communists, yet capitalist laws and police forces cannot prevent the
Communists, while still a minority, from acquiring a supremacy of
military power. It is thought that secret propaganda can undermine the
army and navy, although it is admittedly impossible to get the
majority to vote at elections for the programme of the Bolsheviks.
This view is based upon Russian experience, where the army and navy
had suffered defeat and had been brutally ill used by incompetent
Tsarist authorities. The argument has no application to more efficient
and successful States. Among the Germans, even in defeat, it was the
civilian population that began the revolution.

There is a further assumption in the Bolshevik argument which seems to
me quite unwarrantable. It is assumed that the capitalist governments
will have learned nothing from the experience of Russia. Before the
Russian Revolution, governments had not studied Bolshevik theory. And
defeat in war created a revolutionary mood throughout Central and
Eastern Europe. But now the holders of power are on their guard. There
seems no reason whatever to suppose that they will supinely permit a
preponderance of armed force to pass into the hands of those who wish
to overthrow them, while, according to the Bolshevik theory, they are
still sufficiently popular