hat the
artificial incubation of civil war within the frontiers of old Russia
was not deliberately undertaken by Western Europe with the object of so
far weakening Russia as to make her exploitation easy. Those who look
with equanimity even on this prospect forget that the creation in Europe
of a new area for colonization, a knocking out of one of the sovereign
nations, will create a vacuum, and that the effort to fill this vacuum
will set at loggerheads nations at present friendly and so produce a
struggle which may well do for Western Europe what Western Europe will
have done for Russia.

It is of course possible that in some such way the Russian Revolution
may prove to be no more than the last desperate gesture of a stricken
civilization. My point is that if that is so, civilization in Russia
will not die without infecting us with its disease. It seems to me that
our own civilization is ill already, slightly demented perhaps, and
liable, like a man in delirium, to do things which tend to aggravate
the malady. I think that the whole of the Russian war, waged directly
or indirectly by Western Europe, is an example of this sort of dementia,
but I cannot help believing that sanity will reassert itself in time.
At the present moment, to use a modification of Gusev's metaphor, Europe
may be compared to a burning house and the Governments of Europe to fire
brigades, each one engaged in trying to salve a wing or a room of the
building. It seems a pity that these fire brigades should be fighting
each other, and forgetting the fire in their resentment of the fact that
some of them wear red uniforms and some wear blue. Any single room to
which the fire gains complete control increases the danger of the whole
building, and I hope that before the roof falls in the firemen will come
to their senses.

But turning from grim recognition of the danger, and from speculations
as to the chance of the Russian Government collapsing, and as to the
changes in it that time may bring, let us consider what is likely to
happen supposing it does not collapse. I have already said that I think
collapse unlikely. Do the Russians show any signs of being able to carry
out their programme, or has the fire gone so far during the quarrelling
of the firemen as to make that task impossible?

I think that there is still a hope. There is as yet no sign of a general
improvement in Russia, nor is such an improvement possible until the
Russians have