continues unchecked, it will make
impossible the regeneration of Russian industry, and will result in
the increasing independence of the villages, which will tend to become
entirely self-supporting communities, tilling the ground in a less and
less efficient manner, with ruder tools, with less and less incentive to
produce more than is wanted for the needs of the village itself. Russia,
in these circumstances, may sink into something very like barbarism, for
with the decay of the economic importance of the towns would decay
also their authority, and free-booting on a small and large scale would
become profitable and not very dangerous. It would be possible, no
doubt, for foreigners to trade with the Russians as with the natives of
the cannibal islands, bartering looking-glasses and cheap tools, but,
should such a state of things come to be, it would mean long years of
colonization, with all the new possibilities and risks involved in the
subjugation of a free people, before Western Europe could count once
more on getting a considerable portion of its food from Russian corn
lands.

That is the position, those the natural tendencies at work. But opposed
to these tendencies are the united efforts of the Communists and of
those who, leaving the question of Communism discreetly aside, work with
them for the sake of preventing such collapse of Russian civilization.
They recognize the existence of every one of the tendencies I have
described, but they are convinced that every one of these tendencies
will be arrested. They believe that the country will not conquer the
town but the reverse. So far from expecting the unproductive stagnation
described in the last paragraph, they think of Russia as of the natural
food supply of Europe, which the Communists among them believe will, in
course of time, be made up for "Working Men's Republics" (though, for
the sake of their own Republic, they are not inclined to postpone trade
with Europe until that epoch arrives). At the very time when spades and
sickles are wearing out or worn out, these men are determined that
the food output of Russia shall sooner or later be increased by the
introduction of better methods of agriculture and farming on a larger
scale. We are witnessing in Russia the first stages of a titanic
struggle, with on one side all the forces of nature leading apparently
to an inevitable collapse of civilization, and on the other side nothing
but the incalculable force of