whenever
a nation has had its back to the wall-is expressed in Russia in terms
of industrial conscription; in measures, that is to say, which would be
impossible in any country not reduced to such extremities; in measures
which may prove to be the inevitable accompaniment of national crisis,
when such crisis is economic rather than military. Let us now see what
the Russians, with that machinery at their disposal are trying to do.

It is obvious that since this machinery is dominated by a political
party, it will be impossible to understand the Russian plans, without
understanding that particular political party's estimate of the
situation in general. It is obvious that the Communist plans for Russia
must be largely affected by their view of Europe as a whole. This view
is gloomy in the extreme. The Communists believe that Europe is steadily
shaking itself to pieces. They believe that this process has already
gone so far that, even given good will on the part of European
Governments, the manufacturers of Western countries are already
incapable of supplying them with all the things which Russia was
importing before the war, still less make up the enormous arrears which
have resulted from six years of blockade. They do not agree with M.
Clemenceau that "revolution is a disease attacking defeated countries
only." Or, to put it as I have heard it stated in Moscow, they believe
that President Wilson's aspiration towards a peace in which should be
neither conqueror nor conquered has been at least partially realized in
the sense that every country ended the struggle economically defeated,
with the possible exception of America, whose signature, after all, is
still to be ratified. They believe that even in seemingly prosperous
countries the seeds of economic disaster are already fertilized. They
think that the demands of labor will become greater and more difficult
to fulfill until at last they become incompatible with a continuance of
the capitalist system. They think that strike after strike, irrespective
of whether it is successful or not, will gradually widen the cracks
and flaws already apparent in the damaged economic structure of Western
Europe. They believe that conflicting interests will involve our nations
in new national wars, and that each of these will deepen the cleavage
between capital and labor. They think that even if exhaustion makes
mutual warfare on a large scale impossible, these conflicting interests
will