g
what I have written concerning him, since it will apply to
any successor he may have. Each general who has stepped
into Kolchak's shoes has eventually had to run away in them,
and always for the same reasons. It may be taken almost as
an axiom that the history of great country is that of its
centre, not of its periphery. The main course of English
history throughout the troubled seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries was never deflected from London. French history
did not desert Paris, to make a new start at Toulon or at
Quiberon Bay. And only a fanatic could suppose that Russian
history would run away from Moscow, to begin again in a
semi-Tartar peninsula in the Black Sea. Moscow changes
continually, and may so change as to make easy the return of
the "refugees." Some have already returned. But the
refugees will not return as conquerors. Should a Russian
Napoleon (an unlikely figure, even in spite of our efforts)
appear, he will not throw away the invaluable asset of a
revolutionary war-cry. He will have to fight some one, or
he will not be a Napoleon. And whom will he fight but the
very people who, by keeping up the friction, have rubbed
Aladdin's ring so hard and so long that a Djinn, by no means
kindly disposed towards them, bursts forth at last to avenge
the breaking of his sleep?

And, of course, should hostilities flare up again on the Polish
frontier, should the lions and lambs and jackals and eagles of Kossack,
Russian, Ukrainian and Polish nationalists temporarily join forces, no
miracles of diplomacy will keep them from coming to blows. For all these
reasons a military collapse of the Soviet Government at the present
time, even a concerted military advance of its enemies, is unlikely.

It is undoubtedly true that the food situation in the towns is likely to
be worse this winter than it has yet been. Forcible attempts to get food
from the peasantry will increase the existing hostility between town and
country. There has been a very bad harvest in Russia. The bringing of
food from Siberia or the Kuban (if military activities do not make that
impossible) will impose an almost intolerable strain on the inadequate
transport. Yet I think internal collapse unlikely. It may be said almost
with certainty that Governments do not collapse until there is no one
left to defend them. That moment