e lighted on
the Clyde, and will spread over the whole country; the leaders in
question will be released from gaol by enthusiastic "revolutionary"
crowds; and then will follow a glorified transformation scene as in a
pantomime, with the heroes bathed in gorgeous "revolutionary"
lime-light effects. I should not write in this fashion did I not know
that this idea has influenced a few of the most single-minded and
devoted Socialists on the Clyde, and we can only regret that such
really noble spirits should have been unable to keep their heads in
the greatest crisis in the world's history.

The "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" in Operation.

The battle cry of the Russian Bolsheviks and their sympathisers and
would-be imitators elsewhere is the "dictatorship of the proletariat."
Let us consider what that means. Dictatorship means despotism, and
whether it is that of a Tsar or a Kaiser, an oligarchy or a Bolshevik
administration, it is despotism--nothing more and nothing less.
Impatience with the slowness of the mass of the people is only to be
expected in all who see what human existence could be made on this
planet, how enjoyable and pleasurable life might be made by light and
pleasant labour for all, with the vast powers which man now possesses
over Nature. I don't suppose there is a single Socialist who has spent
twenty years of his or her life in the cause of International
Social-Democracy who has not at times wished that the Social
Revolution could be quickly brought about by some benevolent
despotism. That a similar train of thought should have entered the
minds of Russian refugees, driven from a land where political
democracy in any form appeared almost hopeless of achievement, is only
natural, and equally natural that it should have been pursued to its
abstract logical conclusion, inasmuch as, unlike ourselves, they were
not working actually amongst the people day in and day out to
understand how impossible of realisation such a wish must be.
Impatience with the mass--however the Mass may be worshipped--is at
the bottom of the idea of the "dictatorship of the proletariat." They
must be emancipated in spite of themselves. Liberty and democracy can
come afterwards when the Socialist dictators have transformed
capitalist society into the Socialist State. During that
transformation the mass must obey the minority which has seized power;
it must accept as right and just what that minority decrees; it must
abandon li